Monday Madness – G20 FinMins Set Two Week Deadline
by Phil - October 17th, 2011 8:01 am
Two weeks!
European leaders have two weeks to settle differences and flesh out a strategy to terminate their sovereign debt crisis as global finance chiefs warn failure to do so would endanger the world economy. “The risk of a recession would be increased dramatically were the Europeans to fail to accomplish goals that they’ve set for themselves,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said after the G-20 meeting on Saturday.
The Brussels meeting “has the potential to turn into a positive historic moment,” Joachim Fels, London-based chief economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note to clients yesterday. “But it could also easily turn into a negative catalyst.”
Europe’s plan, which has still to be made public, includes writing down Greek bonds by as much as 50 percent, establishing a backstop for banks and magnifying the strength of the 440 billion-euro ($611 billion) temporary rescue fund known as the European Financial Stability Facility. “The plan has the right elements,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in Paris. “They clearly have more work to do on the strategy and the details.”
The G-20 officials — who met to prepare for a Nov. 3-4 gathering of leaders in Cannes, France (and we’re fondly remembering London’s 2009 meeting with the graphic on the right) — said in a statement that the world economy faces “heightened tensions and significant downside risks.” European authorities must “decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan.”
The policy makers held out the possibility of rewarding European action with more aid from the International Monetary Fund, while splitting over whether the Washington-based lender’s $390 billion war chest needs topping up. Europe’s latest strategy hinges on putting Greece, whose government forecasts its debt to reach 172 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, on a sustainable path. Austerity has plunged the country deeper into recession and provoked civil unrest that threatens political stability.
My reaction to this in Member Chat this Morning was to call for shorting the jacked up Dow Futures (/YM) at 11,600, saying:
Speaking of the illusion of power – yet another G20 meeting ends with yet another plan to have a plan but this time, for some insane reason, they only gave themselves a week to fix everything. I’ll be writing about this this morning but the gist of it is the Finance Ministers have essentially sent their own
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DiggGerman Finance Minister calls Fed “Clueless”; G20 Showdown with China; Why Geithner’s “Non-Plan” is Nothing but Hot Air
by ilene - November 7th, 2010 5:32 pm
German Finance Minister calls Fed "Clueless"; G20 Showdown with China; Why Geithner’s "Non-Plan" is Nothing but Hot Air
Courtesy of Mish
Outside the blogosphere and into realm of high ranking government officials, it is rare to hear words like "clueless" to describe the Fed. That such talk is now occurring shows just how upset the rest of the world is at Bernanke’s policies.
Reuters reports US Policy ‘Clueless’: German Finance Minister.
Europe needs to strengthen economic governance and agree on a permanent crisis resolution mechanism, all the more so given current U.S. economic weakness, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday.
France and Germany should maintain their leadership role in Europe, Schaeuble said, especially in order to harmonise its economic policy and bolster stability given current economic uncertainties.
These are being worsened by reckless policy in part from the the United States, Schaeuble said, sharpening his criticism of the Federal Reserve’s program to buy an additional $600 billion worth of U.S. government bonds. Pumping more money into the economy will not solve the country’s problems, he said, adding that the world needed U.S. leadership that was currently lacking.
"With all due respect, U.S. policy is clueless," Schaeuble said. "(The problem) is not a shortage of liquidity. Late on Thursday, Schaeuble said Germany would take up this point critically with the United States both bilaterally and at next week’s G20 summit of industrialised and emerging nations.
G20 Showdown
The Financial Times reports China tees up G20 showdown with US
China has curtly dismissed a US proposal to address global economic imbalances, setting the stage for a potential showdown at next week’s G20 meeting in Seoul.
Cui Tiankai, a deputy foreign minister and one of China’s lead negotiators at the G20, said on Friday that the US plan for limiting current account surpluses and deficits to 4 per cent of gross domestic product harked back “to the days of planned economies”.
“We believe a discussion about a current account target misses the whole point,” he added, in the first official comment by a senior Chinese official on the subject. “If you look at the global economy, there are many issues that merit more attention – for example, the question of quantitative easing.”
China’s opposition to the proposal, which had made some progress at a G20 finance ministers’ meeting last month, came amid a continuing rumble of protest
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Monday Market Mark-Up – 50 Ways to Dump the Dollar
by Phil - November 9th, 2009 8:18 am
"The problem is all inside your head", G20 said to me
The economy’s an easy fix if you don’t want to wait
All we need to do is globally inflate
There must be fifty ways to dump the dollarG20 said it’s really not our habit to deflate
Furthermore, we have elections and the voters hate to wait
So we’ll indebt ourselves, buy lowering the rates
There must be fifty ways to dump the dollar
Fifty ways to dump the dollarYou just buy a few Yen, Wen
Push up the Pound, Brown
You buy up the troy, boys
Give Goldman the fees
Take the IMF bling, Singh
Let it drop like a rock, Barack
Act like you’re bored Jean-Claude
Let the dollar fall free
I heard they were dancing to this one at the G20 Meeting so I thought I’d share it with you. Never have so many gathered so often to accomplish so little as our G20 in the past 18 months. This weekend’s meeting of the World’s "top" Finance Ministers resulted in a split on whether to tax financial trading as part of a broader strategy to ensure the global economy’s expansion is less crisis-prone. The idea of the levy was to prevent excessive risk-taking and fund future bank rescues but US Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner said trying to get the banks to behave is "not something we’re prepared to support."
That was all the Gang of 12 needed to hear and the commodity markets went wild with the guarantee of no additional regulation on the horizon and the dollar was taken down to new lows in overnight trading, plunging to $1.50 to the Euro and $1.685 to the Pound, over 2% off Friday’s lows. They Yen Rose back to under 90 to the Dollar and the Nikkei, of course, did not like that one bit and an early rally turned into a flatline for the day. The rest of the global markets, however, were off to the races with Europe up 1.5% at 8 am and the US futures up over a point as well as gold flies to $1,110 an ounce and oil heads back to $78.50, up $2 from Friday’s low.
Of course, doing nothing to prevent excessive speculation by the "too big to fail" crowd isn’t all the G20 didn’t accomplish this weekend (which is it for the year…
THE IMF CATAPULTS FROM SHUNNED AGENCY TO GLOBAL CENTRAL BANK
by ilene - October 7th, 2009 9:15 pm
THE IMF CATAPULTS FROM SHUNNED AGENCY TO GLOBAL CENTRAL BANK
Courtesy of Ellen Brown, http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/imf.php
“A year ago,” said law professor Ross Buckley on Australia’s ABC News last week, “nobody wanted to know the International Monetary Fund. Now it’s the organiser for the international stimulus package which has been sold as a stimulus package for poor countries.”
The IMF may have catapulted to a more exalted status than that. According to Jim Rickards, director of market intelligence for scientific consulting firm Omnis, the unannounced purpose of last week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh was that “the IMF is being anointed as the global central bank.” In a CNBC interview on September 25, Rickards said, “They’ve issued debt for the first time in history. They’re issuing SDRs. The last SDRs came out around 1980 or ’81, $30 billion. Now they’re issuing $300 billion. When I say issuing, it’s printing money; there’s nothing behind these SDRs.”
SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are a synthetic currency originally created by the IMF to replace gold and silver in large international transactions. But they have been little used until now. Why does the world suddenly need a new global fiat currency and global central bank? Rickards says it because of “Triffin’s Dilemma,” a problem first noted by economist Robert Triffin in the 1960s. When the world went off the gold standard, a reserve currency had to be provided by some large-currency country to service global trade. But leaving its currency out there for international purposes meant that the country would have to continually run large deficits, and that meant it would eventually go broke. The U.S. has fueled the world economy for the last 50 years, but now it is going broke. The U.S. can settle its debts and get its own house in order, but that would cause world trade to contract. A substitute global reserve currency is needed to fuel the global economy while the U.S. solves its debt problems, and that new currency is to be the IMF’s SDRs.
That’s the solution to Triffin’s dilemma, says Rickards, but it leaves the U.S. in a vulnerable position. If we face a war or other global catastrophe, we no longer have the privilege of printing money. The dollar becomes just another currency. To avoid…
Do Ben and Tim = Thelma and Louise?
by ilene - September 25th, 2009 5:33 pm
Do Ben and Tim = Thelma and Louise?
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
One cannot help but note that Team Obama is trying to derail serious proposals regarding financial reform for Wall Street at the G20 meeting, as we suggested they would.
The concerns raised by US revelations at the G20 today about new intelligence regarding Iran’s secret underground nuclear facility have overshadowed financial reform and economic problems, and Gordon Brown’s prescription yesterday that the G20 would become the new governing council for the world. It also stepped rather heavily on the House Hearings on HR 1207 "Audit the Fed" bill sponsored by Ron Paul and a good part of the Congress.
Why waste a crisis indeed. Especially when you can cop a two-fer.
Yesterday we put forward a somewhat lengthy piece on the Fed and reverse repos being considered titled Fed Eyes US Money Market Funds.
There is a key quote in there that we would like to highlight today.
The central bank is now considering dealing with money market funds because it does not think the primary dealers have the balance sheet capacity to provide more than about $100 billion… Money market mutual funds have about $2.5 trillion under management…"
Only 100 billion in available capital for a relatively risk free short term investment in the global banking system including the Primary Dealers, does seem a bit tight for a set of such ‘well capitalized’ banks, especially since they aren’t making many commerical loans, preferring to speculate in the commodity and equity markets for daytrading profits.
BNP Paribas Securities Corp., Banc of America Securities LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Daiwa Securities America Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Goldman, Sachs & Co., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. , Jefferies & Company, Inc., J. P. Morgan Securities Inc., Mizuho Securities USA, Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Nomura Securities International, Inc., RBC Capital Markets Corporation, RBS Securities Inc., UBS SecuritiesLLC.
Couple that with the revelation reported some time ago at ZeroHedge and covered here, that the Fed is taking on more than 50 percent of the longer dated Treasuries, and there is only about Ten Billion left on their balance sheet for expansion, and you get the picture of a financial system not cruising into recovery but heading straight at a…
Obama caves to pressure on consumer financial protection
by ilene - September 24th, 2009 1:25 pm
Obama caves to pressure on consumer financial protection
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
At issue here is the news that the Obama Administration dropped plans to force financial institutions to offer “plain vanilla” financial products that are simple enough for consumers to understand. My headline is editorial enough on this issue. So, rather than editorialize this latest announcement, I’ll quote from the press.
- The beginning of the end of meaningful regulatory reform – Felix Salmon
There’s no good reason for this capitulation, except for the financial lobby has so effectively captured Congress that no reform would be able to get through with such a common-sense provision in place… I fear that by the time Congress is done, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency won’t be able to protect consumers at all — and that’s assuming it’ll even exist.
- White House Pares Its Financial Reform Plan – Deal Book
At a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner announced that the administration had dropped a provision in its plan for a consumer financial protection agency that would have required banks and other financial services companies to offer so-called “plain vanilla” products, such as 30-year fixed mortgages and low-interest, low-fee credit cards
A requirement that firms providing financial products offer ‘plain vanilla’ loans and cards is dropped, indicating the Obama administration is willing to accept major revisions to get its plan passed…
On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner backed down on a key component that has stirred opposition — a requirement that companies providing financial products offer a "plain vanilla" option, such as fixed-rate mortgages or no-frills credit cards.
His retreat came after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, floated details of his own version of regulatory legislation that eliminated the requirement.
Geithner’s move showed that, just as with healthcare legislation, the administration is willing to accept significant revisions to get its plan passed.
I said my piece in June. Serious reform is not going to be forthcoming – not on healthcare or in financial services. Am I wrong here? After all, Paul Volcker is singing another tune. Please…
G20 Thursday – Pittsburgh Ponders Our Planetary Predicament
by Phil - September 24th, 2009 8:29 am
Our global leaders all get together today with the Global Financial Crisis (yes, it’s still a crisis) topping the list for the 2nd year in a row.
Fresh from the UN general assembly in New York, heads of government and a vast diplomatic entourage will descend on Pittsburgh today to kick off two days of talks on economic stability, financial regulation, climate change and bankers’ bonuses. They will be greeted by boarded up shops and energetic protests. On the eve of the summit, China indicated it was willing to countenance an initiative by President Barack Obama to smooth the flow of capital around the world in the hope of securing greater long-term economic stability. The US proposal calls on rapidly expanding economies such as China, Brazil and India to boost domestic consumption in order to lower their trade surpluses, while the US and Europe would encourage more saving to reduce long-term budget deficits. Gordon Brown yesterday (see UK protests in picture) backed the effort, saying he hoped "different continents can better work together to achieve the growth we need."
Yes, like any addict we NEED growth. Stability just won’t give us the fix we need as our entire global economy is based on borrowing to spend money we don’t have today in anticipation of being able to pay it off in the future, when things are "better." The fact that this has clearly not worked out at all for the past does not seem to deter our leaders. In fact, in 2009, our pals in the G20 have borrowed an additional $5,365,000,000,0000 to see them over this little "rough patch" we’re having:
![[global_debt.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_7Se7iswAanA/Smm61lFPL8I/AAAAAAAAIcY/HCyeVuT39Y4/s1600/global_debt.jpg)
This doesn’t take into account the $6Tn worth of debt OBLIGATIONS taken on by our own Fed and Treasury, not to mention whatever nonsense the rest of the world is into – this is just the checks they wrote in excess of the cash that came in – and the year isn’t even over yet! Now $5.3Tn may not seem like a lot to you but it is a 16% increase in total global debt in just 12 months. In fact, according to the Global Debt Clock in the Economist, our friends in the G20 are on a path to increase our debt from a "mere" $30Tn last year all the way up to $45Tn in 2011. That’s a 50% increase in just 3 years! …
G20 Thinking: “In The Medium Run We Are All Retired”
by ilene - September 22nd, 2009 2:41 pm
In other words, don’t expect much. – Ilene
G20 Thinking: “In The Medium Run We Are All Retired”
Courtesy of Simon Johnson at The Baseline Scenario
It looks like the G20 on Friday will emphasize its new “framework” for curing macroeconomic imbalances, rather than any substantive measures to regulate banks, derivatives, or any other primary cause of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
This is appealing to the G20 leaders because their call to “rebalance” global growth will involve no immediate action and no changes in policy – other than in the “medium run” (watch for this phrase in the communiqué).
When exactly is the medium run?
That’s an easy one: it’s always just around the corner. Not today, of course; that would be short run. And not in 20 years; that’s the long run.
The medium run is perhaps in 3 years or perhaps in 5 years. It feels close enough not to be meaningless at the press conference, but it’s not close enough to be meaningful.
And – here’s the key – whatever you agree on for the medium-term, you know that the world will change, quite dramatically, 2 or 3 times before you get there. At that point you can say, quite reasonably: But the conditions today are quite different from what they were when we made this medium-term commitment, so we really need to rethink it.
Of course, having the IMF report back every year on progress towards these medium-term goals is equally pointless. This is what the IMF has been doing since 2006 and what it was preparing diligently to do just as the global crisis broke out.
Expectations for the G20 summit are low. But unless and until the leaders take any steps to address our pressing financial sector vulnerabilities, the summit is not worth its carbon footprint.
Remember what the financial experts said at the previous summit (April) and the one before that (November): we can’t fix the financial system in the height of the crisis. True enough, although the opportunity to break the power of the largest players was squandered in both the US and Europe.
So, now the crisis is over – as the G20 heads of government will affirm – where are their efforts to fix the financial system? Please don’t tell me, “that’s what we’re doing, in the
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Obama to Tell the G20 to Fix the US By Changing the World
by ilene - September 21st, 2009 10:09 am
Obama to Tell the G20 to Fix the US By Changing the World
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
When you can’t run a state, run for President. When you can’t run your country, attempt to run the world.
This directive to the G20 is probably going to make the Organizer-in-Chief’s recent pathetic sermonette on altruism and self-denial to Wall Street seem effective by comparison.
Unless he is as prime an example of boobus Americanus as he appears to be by his actions, we suspect that this proposal is intended merely to be an unachievable blue sky diversion from a genuine agenda for reform and action, which might be an annoying hindrance to Obama’s constituents on Wall Street. It has been estimated that the reforms on the table from Europe, for example, might cut the trading revenues at Goldman Sachs by a third.
What Obama does not say, and perhaps does not realize, is that the majority of the problems that exist in the US’s imbalanced trade relationships is the position of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Owning the reserve currency is a significant benefit for your government and financial sectors, but it makes your manufacturing and productive economy the target of every mercantilist command economy around the globe that is by definition hungry for dollars.
Reuters
Obama wants G20 to rethink global economy
By Jeff Mason and Dave Graham
Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:29am EDT
WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday he would push world leaders this week for a reshaping of the global economy in response to the deepest financial crisis in decades…
The summit will be held in the former steelmaking center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, marking the third time in less than a year that leaders of countries accounting for about 85 percent of the world economy will have met to coordinate their responses to the crisis.
The United States is proposing a broad new economic framework that it hopes the G20 will adopt, according to a letter by a top White House adviser.
Obama said the U.S. economy was recovering, even if unemployment remained high, and now was the time to rebalance the global economy after decades of U.S. over-consumption. (The recovery is as tenuous as Mr. Obama’s prospects for a second term – Jesse)
"We can’t go back to the era where…
Monday Malicious Microbe Mania
by Phil - September 21st, 2009 8:29 am
Just when you thought it was safe to invest in Asia!
Today’s shocker came out of a World Health Organization meeting yesterday where officials estimate 20% to 30% of Asia’s population - or between 448 million and 672 million people will be infected by swine flu H1N1 this season. Hong Kong had their 15th death this weekend and eight more people are in critical condition. 492 new cases were confirmed over the weekend, bringing the official count in Hong Kong alone up to 22,054 infections. According to the WHO: "China may not be in a situation of what we call extensive local transmission, which Hong Kong is in now." Once it does happen, we can see a lot of severe cases."
It’s ironic that the G20s efforts to put lipstick on this pig of a global economy may all be derailed by a pig’s disease. Despite skipping testing and relaxing safety regulations (which will, of course lead to other problems) in order to get tens of millions of doses of vaccines out for mass-inoculation programs, the WHO estimates that China, at best, will be able to inoculate just 5% of the population (65M people). We went through our last major swine flu scare last April and, here at PSW, we turned it into a half-dozen very successful picks – so let’s look at a few more who should do well in this next round of the crisis:
- SVA is the primary vaccine maker in China and you can buy that stock for $8.88 and sell the Jan $7.50 puts and calls for $4.50, which is net $4.38 with a call away at $7.50 (up 71%) if they hold that level through Jan 15th and the break-even to the downside (where you would be assigned the puts) is $5.94, 33% lower than today’s price. I’m not one to jump on disaster plays usually but this one has pretty good odds.
- BCRX has Perimavir in late-stage trials and the FDA is considering a "pre-emergency use authorization review," of the drug, which would be great for BCRX if it goes through and bad if it doesn’t. As BCRX is already up a lot, the way I would play this one is buying the 2011 $10 calls for $4.10 and selling the 2011 $12.50 calls for $3.60, which is a net .50 entry with a 500% return if BCRX hits $12.50 in 15 months (now $10) and it shouldn’t cause too
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(