Feldstein: Worry About the Dollar, Not the Euro: Keep an Eye on Sterling

by ilene - March 11th, 2010 9:03 pm

Feldstein: Worry About the Dollar, Not the Euro: Keep an Eye on Sterling

Here is Marty Feldstein’s view of the economic fundamentals in the euro and dollar portion of the forex markets.

Fundamentals mean little in the short term for trading purposes, at least in my own judgement. However, it does look as though the euro/dollar cross is a bit overdone. If that is correct, then it is likely that this correction in the precious metals should be almost done as well. But we will have to see what happens. The markets are shallow and edgy, almost wobbly. In a liquidation everything gets sold on the short term. Selling and buying on the margins makes price, no matter what size the market. Such it is with most auction markets disconnected from rational valuation.

On the fundamentals, however, Feldstein makes some good points. The problem with Europe is that it is sitting on the fence with its union, and the Greek debt crisis merely highlights their weakness which are largely structural. What is the EU likely to become.

As for the US, its day is fading, and it is in the grip of financial interests that will wring the last drop of vitality out of it given their way.

There are several roads to losing weight. One is to engage in healthy exercise and a good diet. The other way is starvation either through deprivation or disease. In both instances one ‘loses weight.’ The modern day Liquidationists favor starvation, for the other guys, not themselves. The modern day Keynesianians seem to wish to indulge in overeating with a change in diet to be left for another day.

The American economic system cries out for meaningful reform. Deficit spending without reform is futile, the road to addiction. But no government led structural repair efforts is the sure road to stagnation and a zombie-like existence such as has been seen in Japan, or even worse, a third world status and regional fragmentation.

My own bellwether is the UK. I believe quite strongly that Britain will reach its crisis before the US. And it may provide a proper warning, but all things considered, it may be too late. While there are many good signs in the financial reform regime from regulators aghast at the mindless venality that has brought the country to the brink of ruin, there is still the matter of the current political leadership, and its…

Tags: Dollar, Economy, euro/dollar cross, Europe, forex markets, Greece, Greek debt crisis, japan, Marty Feldstein, sterling, Stock Market, UK, US, valuation

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Roubini Says The Problems of Greece and the Euro Area Are a Sign of Things to Come: Sovereign Risks To Spread to U.S., U.K., and Japan

by ilene - February 15th, 2010 7:01 pm

Roubini Says The Problems of Greece and the Euro Area Are a Sign of Things to Come: Sovereign Risks To Spread to U.S., U.K., and Japan

Courtesy of Shocked Investor

Panel & Premiere Of "American Casino" At The 2009 Tribeca Film Festival

In a teleconference with investors, Nouriel Roubini, professor at the University of New York, says he sees a new wave of losses. He was adamant: "The problems of Greece and the euro area are a sign of things to come." This was reported today by Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo.

Perhaps on a media offensive lately, Roubini adds:

"There was a socialization of the losses of the financial system and housing market, and now there are huge budget deficits and public debt almost doubled, so we see sovereign risk serious not only in Greece but also in Portugal and Spain, and spreading in the future to the United States, Britain and Japan."

The article mentions that, as we know, Roubini is not alone. Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a warning as well stating that Greece is just the beginning of a second wave of bankruptcies. After the financial turmoil of 2008, now it is the excessive indebtedness of the governments of advanced countries that will undermine the economy. Rogoff examined 800 years of financial crisis to write his book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, with Carmen Reinhart. "There are several other countries on the radar: Ireland, Portugal, Spain." Outside the euro zone, Romania, Hungary and the Baltic countries would be other nations that are quite fragile.

He concludes that the pattern is repeated throughout history: after banking crises like the one in the world in 2008, after Lehman Brothers, there is always a wave of sovereign debt crises. To save the financial systems, governments enter into debt. A few years later, there is a wave of crises and sovereign debt defaults. That is, after a crisis in the financial system, there comes a crisis of sovereign debt.

Niall Ferguson, writing in the Financial Times last week, swelled the chorus of pessimists. "It started in Athens. It is spreading to Lisbon and Madrid. But it would be a grave mistake to think that the crisis of sovereign debt under way will be confined to weaker economies in the euro area. This is more than just a Mediterranean problem. This is a fiscal crisis of the Western world."

Rogoff and Carmen in January published a study, Growth…

Tags: banking crises, Eurozone, Financial System, Greece, japan, Kenneth Rogoff, Niall Ferguson, Nouriel Roubini, Sovereign Debt Defaults, UK, US

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Iceland’s President Effectively Tells UK “Go To Hell” - Hooray For Iceland

by ilene - January 6th, 2010 9:48 am

Iceland’s President Effectively Tells UK "Go To Hell" - Hooray For Iceland

Iceland, Jokulsarlon Lagoon with icebergs

Congratulations to Iceland for figuring out that it is better to suffer a credit rating downgrade than to torture its citizens for a decade or longer. Please consider Iceland president vetoes collapsed Icesave Bank’s bill to UK.

Iceland was plunged back into crisis after its president refused to sign a bill promising to repay more than €3.8bn (£3.4bn) to Britain and the Netherlands after the collapse of the country’s Icesave bank in 2008.

The escalating row threatens to further destablise the Icelandic economy, which went into meltdown after the failure of its three big banks, cutting off further aid from the International Monetary Fund and jeopardising efforts to join the European Union. The credit rating agency Fitch immediately downgraded Iceland, describing the latest political row as a "significant setback".

The British and Dutch governments had compensated savers who lost money when Icesave’s parent Landsbanki filed for bankruptcy. But both have since put pressure on Reykjavik to repay the money.

Opinion polls suggest that Icelanders will overwhelmingly vote against the passage of the bill. A petition urging Grimsson not to sign the bill attracted 62,000 signatures, around one-fifth of the population. Critics say the bill would burden each citizen with a debt of €12,000 including interest.

In a televised address, Grimsson said: "It is the cornerstone of the constitutional structure of the Republic of Iceland that the people are the supreme judge of the validity of the law. It is…the responsibility of the president to ensure that the nation exercises this right." He said the referendum would take place as soon as possible.

Almost 300,000 British savers had deposits with Icesave, attracted by market beating interest rates. Their accounts were frozen in October 2008, sparking a diplomatic row between Britain and Iceland, which had only recently begun to thaw. Britain outraged ordinary Icelanders at the time by invoking anti-terrorist legislation to freeze the UK assets of Landsbanki.

Repayment Blocked

The Times Online Reports Iceland blocks repayment of £2.3bn to Britain

Today Iceland’s President, Olafur Grimsson, vetoed a bill that would have enforced the repayment of the money by 2024.

Under Iceland’s constitution there must now be a referendum on the issue.

But the repayment is deeply unpopular in Iceland. A poll in August found 70 per cent of the country was opposed to it.

The Icelandic Government issued a statement to try to reassure Britain and the…

Dylan Ratigan Goes Nuts On Goldman Exec Who Advocated Inequality

by ilene - October 22nd, 2009 12:24 am

Dylan Ratigan Goes Nuts On Goldman Exec Who Advocated Inequality

Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock

As soon as we saw this last night, we knew it was going to be huge.

Goldman Vice-Chairman Lord Fforestfatch defended his bank’s huge pay and the general notion of inequality at a debate in the UK.

Naturally, Dylan Ratigan was stunned and apoplectic. It starts around the 2:30 mark.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

When Monetizing 12% Percent Of GDP Isn´t Enough…….

by ilene - August 19th, 2009 2:44 pm

When Monetizing 12% Percent Of GDP Isn´t Enough…….

Courtesy of Jan-Martin Feddersen at Immobilienblasen

Not quite an "Exit Strategy"……. This Cartoon on "Green Shoots" is spot on….. As long as the pound & gilts are not crashing this will continue…..I´m pretty sure Bernanke is watching the market reaction very closely…. Especially with the Fed running low on ammo….. Read A 300-year-old example of quantitative easing…. John Law, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke… via The Mess That Greenspan Made as a reminder what can happen……

trillions of dollars

The governor’s insatiable appetite for QE FT Alphaville

The Governor invited the Committee to vote on the proposition that:

Bank Rate should be maintained at 0.5%;

The Bank of England should finance a further £50 billion of asset purchases by the creation of central bank reserves, implying a total quantity of £175 billion of such asset purchases. The Bank should seek to complete the additional purchases within the next three months.

Six members of the Committee (Charles Bean, Paul Tucker, Kate Barker, Spencer Dale, Paul Fisher and Andrew Sentance) voted in favour of the proposition. Three members of the Committee (the Governor, Tim Besley and David Miles) voted against, preferring to increase the size of the asset purchase programme by £75 billion to a total of £200 billion.

Yep, Mervyn King, together with Besley and Miles wanted the rate of monetary stimulus increasing, not just extending at the current rate of £50bn-a-quarter. That was good for half a cent off sterling versus the dollar and a third of a cent v the euro on Wednesday morning. Gilts, of course, spiked higher.

Somebody stop me Alice Cook from the great blog UK Bubble

The extraordinary thing about UK monetary policy today is how close it is shadowing fiscal policy. This year, the Bank of England printing presses will produce roughly the same amount of new money as this year’s fiscal deficit. Or to put it more bluntly, the private sector have, on a net basis, stopped lending money to the government.

The Casey Report

> The estimated issuance is based on this "optimitic" forecast…. Especially compared to the IMF, OECD, Bloomberg etc….. No surprise to see the BOE also out of touch……. Good to know that at least this leads to a "review" of the AAA rating…. Hallelujah!

FT Alphaville

The Chancellor has forecast that the economy will contract by 3.5% in 2009, followed by GDP growth of 1.25% in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. He sees long-term trend growth at 2.75%

UK GDP forecasts - RBC (amended)

> While…

Tags: "quantitive easing", boe, british pound, competitive devaluation, exit strategy, fiat money, gilts, Gold, inflation vs deflation, Monetary Policy, printing press, UK

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Testy Tuesday Morning - $1.70 for a Pound? I Don’t Think So…

by Phil - August 4th, 2009 8:12 am

Has the dollar fallen too far?

The British Pound is now fetching $1.70, a huge break-out and well above the June highs, now valued higher to the dollar than any time since last October. Britain has aggressively cut rates and expanded their money supply and Britain had banks falling like dominoes before being taken over by the government. The UK’s budget deficit as a percent of GDP is forecast to be 11.6% this year, the second worst on the planet, exceeded only by the US’s projection of 13.5% but the UK is forecast to catch up in 2010 with 13.3% of their GDP taken up by debt. Why then, you may wonder, is the British Pound up 25% against the dollar this year and almost 10% this past month?

The answer to that is the same as the answer to many irrational market moves - SPECULATION. The dollar in general has been pushed back down to 1-year lows by currency speculators and the Pound is benefiting from their No-Euro policy that makes the UK a relatively safe-looking investment for currency traders who are worried that Eastern Europe will eventually prove to be a weight that drags the rest of the EU down. With a population and economy about the size of California and the independence of a sovereign nation, any small sign of improvement (like the recent uptick in manufacturing data in the UK) can quickly pull money back to the Pound who, just 30 years ago, were the second strongest currency in the world and, for 500 years before that, was the undisputed global leader. The UK, as it was 500 years ago, is still ruled by its powerful banking sector and again the fishbowl-like nature of the island nation tends to magnify small improvements we’ve seen in the UK banks, which causes Japanese housewives (who are very into FOREX trading) to push more money into British currency.

Japan Housewife forex Today it may become apparent that the Japanese housewives have become a little irrational in their Pound exuberance as nationalized British Bank, Northern Rock, showed a 31% increase in first-half losses to $1.25Bn as bad loan provisions jumped to over $1Bn from under $300M last year. Even worse for the bank - deposits fell 17% despite the bank’s 100% government guarantee while mortgage delinquencies rose 10%. This is a pretty clear indication that Britain is not quite out of the woods yet and we’ll see today…

Tags: BMW, BNP, Dollar, Forex, MSCI, Personal Income, Pound, UBS, UK

Posted in Uncategorized | 197 Comments »

Global Consumers Still Skittish, But Buzz Slowing and Some Spending Up

by Phil - July 15th, 2009 5:32 pm

With thanks to James Russo of Neilson Economic Current:

Consumers in 10 of the world’s top economies continued to be wary of spending their money in May, according to the latest edition of the Nielsen Economic Current, which provides a snapshot of global consumer and retail trends across 10 countries which represent nearly 65 percent of global GDP. Tracking key performance indicators, Brazil and the U.K. led the pack with solid improvements in their scores, while the U.S. and Canada showed declines. The rest of the countries tracked (China, France, Germany, India, Italy and Spain) showed no movement from the previous month. In all countries measured, consumers are saving more of their money - even Americans, who have had a low savings rate, are holding onto their cash as concerns about unemployment and financial security continue.

1=Very Strong Growth >/= +5%; 2 = Growth between +1 and +4%; 3 =Neutral Between -1 and +1%; 4 =Negative between -1 and -4%; 5 = Very Negative = -4%

A Link Between Buzz And Spending

For the latest Economic Current, Nielsen tracked online discussions about the economy and found that since mid-March 2009, recession buzz has dropped 47 percent in the U.S., UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand.

“Globally, Nielsen is tracking online discussions related to the recession and when the recovery may emerge. While discussions about the recovery are still quite low, we have seen that the public is talking less about the recession — often dramatically less,” said James Russo, Vice President, Global Consumer Insights for The Nielsen Company.

“In the U.S., we found that recession discussions have dropped since hitting a peak in January. There appears to be a strong correlation between what consumers are saying in discussion groups and their subsequent actual purchase behavior. From the end of 2008 to March 2009, when recession discussions were highest, we found that sales actually declined by 2.3 percent. From mid-March to early June, as recession chats dropped, we found that sales actually showed a modest increase,” continued Russo. “This is an important dynamic as we look to signs of a sustained recovery, and Nielsen will be at the forefront of this research.”

Noteworthy Highlights

After showing some positive movement in April, U.S. consumers pulled back on shopping and how much they spent per trip. Meanwhile, the shift to value channels such as supercenters, club and dollar stores continued, as did the move to private label store brands.
Canadians are slightly more optimistic than their southern…

Tags: brazil, Canada, CHINA, consumer behavior, economic recovery, France, Germany, India, Italy, James Russo, Nielsen Economic Current, online buzz, private label, Recession, Spain, UK, US

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Q2 Tuesday - Ending With A Whimper, Not A Bang

by Phil - June 30th, 2009 8:27 am

What happened to our great rally?

We started the quarter off well enough, with the Dow at 7,522 and S&P at 787 on April 1st, we flew right up to 8,000 on the Dow and 840 on the S&P the next day but then it took us the rest of the month to gain 200 more points and the last day of May we finished at 8,500 Dow, S&P 920 - nothing to write home about on the whole. June 1st was very exciting as we made all our gains for the month that day, flying up to Dow 8,800, S&P 944 but that’s where we called a top and cashed out and it’s been pretty dull ever since as we’ve bounced up and down between 8,800 and 8,300 on the Dow and 940 and 900 on the S&P, waiting for a breakout one way or the other.

It’s dull to stay in cash, it’s like going to the track and not betting on any races. We really thought we’d get a proper indicator by now and we had fun betting the downturn from the middle of June but even that fizzled and left us back in cash as we head into the holiday weekend. On the bright side, the VIX has come down substantially and we are now able to pick up long options again at reasonable prices. This will be fantastic and give us some great leverage but we still need the market to pick an actual direction.

At least now we have earnings coming so we can evaluate various sectors and place some bets for Q3 but index buying has ruled Q2 and the performance of individual stocks has been washed away as a factor as machine trading has yanked the broader market up and down on a daily basis. It used to matter how IBM or INTC was doing as an individual company, now the entire Nasdaq can fly to the moon and take PALM, AAPL and RIMM with it, even though it’s not very likely that all can do well in the same space for very long (remember MOT?). We are no longer deluding ourselves that 2Bn people in Asia and Africa will be sporting the newest smart phones on the beach next summer yet the pie in the sky valuations persist, as if there is infinite room for all competitors to sell in the global marketplace. In fact, emerging market valuations are are…

Tags: Bubbles, Case Shiller, CHINA, DJIA, Dollar, Pound, S&P, UK

Posted in Uncategorized | 123 Comments »

Phil's Stock World, Stock Options Trading & Information

Daily Stock and Options Tips & Updates; Get Our Daily Newsletter Here

Feldstein: Worry About the Dollar, Not the Euro: Keep an Eye on Sterling