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Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Big Picture

The Big Picture

Link to The Big Picture

Post-crash, investing in a better world

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 04:00 PM PDT

As we reboot the world’s economy, Geoff Mulgan poses a question: Instead of sending bailout money to doomed old industries, why not use stimulus funds to bootstrap some new, socially responsible companies — and make the world a little bit better?

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It’s hard to believe that it’s less than a year since the extraordinary moment when the finance, the credit, which drives our economies froze. A massive cardiac arrest. The effect, the payback, perhaps, for years of vampire predators like Bernie Madoff, whom we saw earlier. Abuse of steroids, binging and so on. And it’s only a few months since governments injected enormous sums of money to try and keep the whole system afloat. And we’re now in a very strange, sort of twilight zone where no one quite knows what’s worked, or what doesn’t. We don’t have any very clear maps, any compass to guide us. We don’t know which experts to believe anymore.

What I’m going to try and do is to give some pointers to what I think is the landscape on the other side of the crisis, what things we should be looking out for and how we can actually use the crisis. There’s a definition of leadership which says, “is the ability to use the smallest possible crisis for the biggest possible effect.” And I want to talk about how we ensure that this crisis, which is by no means small, really is used to the full.

I want to start just by saying a bit about where I’m coming from. I’ve got a very confused background which perhaps makes me appropriate for confused times. I’ve got a Ph.D. in telecoms, as you can see. I trained briefly as a Buddhist monk under this guy. I’ve been a civil servant, and I’ve been in charge of policy for this guy as well.

But what I want to talk about begins when I was at this city, this university, as a student. And then as now, it was a beautiful place of balls and punts, beautiful people, many of whom took to heart Ronald Reagan’s comment that, “even if they say hard work doesn’t do you any harm, why risk it?”

But when I was here, a lot of my fellow teenagers were in a very different situation, leaving school at a time then of rapidly growing youth unemployment, and essentially hitting a brick wall in terms of their opportunities. And I spent quite a lot of time with them rather than in punts. And they were people who were not short of wit, or grace or energy, but they had no hope, no jobs, no prospects. And when people aren’t allowed to be useful, they soon think that they’re useless. And although that was great for the music business at the time, it wasn’t much good for anything else. And ever since then, I’ve wondered why it is that capitalism is so amazingly efficient at some things, but so inefficient at others, why it’s so innovative in some ways and so uninnovative in others.

Now, since that time, we’ve actually been through an extraordinary boom, the longest boom ever in the history of this country. Unprecedented wealth and prosperity, but that growth hasn’t always delivered what we needed. H.L. Mencken once said that, “to every complex problem, there is a simple solution and it’s wrong.” But I’m not saying growth is wrong, but it’s very striking throughout the years of growth, many things didn’t get better. Rates of depression carried on up, right across the Western world. If you look at America, the proportion of Americans with no one to talk to about important things went up from a tenth to a quarter. We commuted longer to work, but as you can see from this graph, the longer you commute the less happy you’re likely to be. And it became ever clearer that economic growth doesn’t automatically translate into social growth, or human growth.

We’re now at another moment when another wave of teenagers are entering a cruel job market. There will be a million unemployed young people here by the end of the year. Thousands losing their jobs everyday in America. We’ve got to do whatever we can to help them, but we’ve also got to ask, I think, a more profound question of whether we use this crisis to jump forward to a different kind of economy that’s more suited to human needs, to a better balance of economy and society.

And I think one of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity. They bring ideas from the margins into the mainstream. They often lead to the acceleration of much needed reforms. And you saw that in the Thirties, when the Great Depression paved the way for Bretton Woods, welfare states and so on. And I think you can see around us now, some of the green shoots of a very different kind of economy and capitalism which could grow. You can see it in daily life. When times are hard, people have to do things for themselves, and right across the world, Oxford, Omaha, Omsk, you can see an extraordinary explosion of urban farming, people taking over land, taking over roofs, turning barges into temporary farms.

And I’m a very small part of this. I have 60,000 of these things in my garden. A few of these. This is Atilla the hen. And I’m a very small part of a very large movement, which for some people is about survival, but is also about values, about a different kind of economy, which isn’t so much about consumption and credit, but about things which matter to us. And everywhere too you can see a proliferation of time banks and parallel currencies, people using smart technologies to link up all the resources freed up by the market, people, buildings, land and linking them to whoever has got the most compelling needs.

There’s a similar story, I think, for governments. Ronald Reagan, again, said the two funniest sentences in the English language are, “I’m from the government. And I’m here to help.” But I think last year when governments did step in, people were quite glad that they were there, that they did act. But now, a few months on, however good politicians are at swallowing frogs without pulling a face, as someone once put it, they can’t hide their uncertainty. Because it’s already clear how much of the enormous amount of money they put into the economy, really went to fixing the past, bailing out the banks, the car companies, not preparing us for the future. How much of the money is going into concrete and boosting consumption, not into solving the really profound problems we have to solve.

And everywhere, as people think about unprecedented sums which are being spent of our money and our children’s money, now, in the depth of this crisis, they’re asking: Surely, we should be using with a longer term vision to accelerate the shift to a green economy, to prepare for aging, to deal with some of the inequalities which scar countries like this and the United States rather than just giving the money to the incumbents? Surely, we should be giving the money to entrepreneurs, to civil society, for people able to create the new, not to the big, well-connected companies, big, clunky government programs. And, after all this, the great Chinese sage Lao Tzu said, “Governing a great country is like cooking a small fish. Don’t overdo it.”

And I think more and more people are also asking: Why boost consumption, rather than change what we consume? Like the mayor of São Paulo who’s banned advertising billboards, or the many cities like San Francisco putting in infrastructures for electric cars. You can see a bit of the same thing happening in the business world. Some, I think some of the bankers who have appear to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. But ask yourselves: What will be the biggest sectors of the economy in 10, 20, 30 years time? It won’t be the ones lining up for handouts like cars and aerospace and so on.

The biggest sector, by far, will be health — already 18 percent of the American economy, predicted to grow to 30 even 40 percent by mid-century. Elder care, child care, already much bigger employers than cars. Education, six, seven, eight percent of the economy and growing. Environmental services, energy services, the myriad of green jobs, they’re all pointing to a very different kind of economy which isn’t just about products, but is using distributed networks and it’s founded above all on care, on relationships, on what people do to other people, often one to one, rather than simply selling them a product.

And I think that what connects the challenge for civil society, the challenge for governments and the challenge for business now is in a way a very simple one, but quite a difficult one. We know our societies have to radically change. We know we can’t go back to where we were before the crisis. But we also know it’s only through experiment that we’ll discover exactly how to run a low carbon city, how to care for a much older population, how to deal with drug addiction and so on.

And here’s the problem. In science, we do experiments systematically. Our societies now spend two, three, four percent of GDP to invest systematically in new discovery, in science, in technology, to fuel the pipeline of brilliant inventions which illuminate gatherings like this. It’s not that our scientists are necessarily much smarter than they were a hundred years ago, maybe they are, but they have a hell of a lot more backing than they ever did. And what’s striking though, is that in society there’s almost nothing comparable, no comparable investment, no systematic experiment in the things capitalism isn’t very good at, like compassion, or empathy, or relationships, or care.

Now, I didn’t really understand that until I met this guy who was then an 80-year-old, slightly shambolic man who lived on tomato soup and thought ironing was very overrated. He had helped shape Britain’s post-war institutions, its welfare state, its economy, but sort of reinvented himself as a social entrepreneur, became an inventor of many, many different organizations. Some famous ones like the Open University which has 110,000 students, the University of the Third Age which has nearly half a million older people teaching other older people, as well as strange things like DIY garages and language lines and schools for social entrepreneurs. And he ended his life selling companies to venture capitalists.

He believed if you see a problem, you shouldn’t tell someone to act, you should act on it yourself, and he lived long enough and saw enough of his ideas first scorned and then succeed, that he said you should always take no as a question and not as an answer. And his life was a systematic experiment to find better social answers, not from a theory, but from experiment, and experiment involving the people with the best intelligence on social needs, which were usually the people living with those needs. And he believed we live with others, we share the world with others and therefore our innovation must be done with others too, not doing things at people, for them, and so on.

Now, what he did didn’t used to have a name, but I think it’s rapidly becoming quite mainstream. It’s what we do in the organization named after him where we try and invent, create, launch new ventures, whether it’s schools, web companies, health organizations and so on. And we find ourselves part of a very rapidly growing global movement of institutions working on social innovation, using ideas from design or technology or community organizing to develop the germs of a future world, but through practice and through demonstration and not through theory. And they’re spreading from Korea to Brazil to India to the U.S.A. and across Europe. And they’ve been given new momentum by the crisis, by the need for better answers to joblessness, community breakdown and so on.

Some of the ideas are strange. These are complaints choirs. People come together to sing about the things that really bug them. (Laughter) Others are much more pragmatic, health coaches, learning mentals, job clubs. And some are quite structural like social impact bonds where you raise money to invest in diverting teenagers from crime or helping old people keep out of hospital, and you get paid back according to how successful your projects are.

Now, the idea that all of this represents, I think, is rapidly becoming a common sense and part of how we respond to the crisis, recognizing the need to invest in innovation for social progress as well as technological progress. There were big health innovation funds launched earlier this year in this country as well as a public service innovation lab. Across northern Europe many governments now have innovation laboratories within them. And just a few months ago, president Obama launched the Office of Social Innovation in the White House.

And what people are beginning to ask is: Surely, just as we invest in in R and D, two, three, four percent, of our GDP, of our economy, what if we put, let’s say, one percent of public spending into social innovation, into elder care, no kinds of education, new ways of helping the disabled? Perhaps, we’d achieve similar productivity gains in society to those we’ve had in the economy and in technology.

And if a generation or two ago, the big challenges were ones like getting a man on the moon, perhaps the challenges we need to set ourselves now are ones like eliminating child malnutrition, stopping trafficking, or one, I think closer to home for America or Europe, why don’t we set ourselves the goal of achieving a billion extra years of life for today’s citizens. Now those are all goals which could be achieved within a decade, but only with radical and systematic experiment, not just with technologies, but also with lifestyles and culture and policies and institutions too.

Now, I want to end by saying a little bit about what I think this means for capitalism. I think what this is all about, this whole movement which is growing from the margins, remains quite small. Nothing like the resources of a CERN or a DARPA or an IBM or a Dupont. What it’s telling us is that capitalism is going to become more social. It’s already immersed in social networks. It will become become more involved in social investment and social care and in industries where the value comes from what you do with others, not just from what you sell to them, and from relationships, as well as from consumption. But interestingly too, it implies a future where society learns a few tricks from capitalism about how you embed the DNA of restless continual innovation into society, trying things out and then growing and scaling the ones that work.

Now, I think this future will be quite surprising to many people. In recent years, a lot of intelligent people thought that capitalism had basically won. History was over and society would inevitably have to take second place to economy. But I’ve been struck with a parallel in how people often talk about capitalism today and how they talked about the monarchy 200 years ago, just after the French Revolution and the restoration of the monarchy in France.

Then, people said monarchy dominated everywhere because it was rooted in human nature. We were naturally deferential. We needed hierarchy. Just as today, the enthusiasts of unrestrained capitalism say it’s rooted in human nature, only now it’s individualism, inquisitiveness, and so on. Then monarchy had seen off its big challenger, mass democracy, which was seen as well-intentioned, but doomed experiment. Just as capitalism has seen off socialism. Even Fidel Castro now says that the only thing worse than being exploited by multinational capitalism is not being exploited by multinational capitalism. And whereas then monarchies, palaces and forts dominated every city skyline and looked permanent and confident, today it’s the gleaming towers of the banks which dominate every big city.

I’m not suggesting the crowds are about to storm the barracades and string up every investment banker from the nearest lamppost, though that might be quite tempting. But I do think we’re on the verge of a period when, just as happened to the monarchy, and interestingly the military too, the central position of finance capital is going to come to an end, and it’s going to steadily move to the sides, the margins of our society, transformed from being a master into a servant, a servant to the productive economy and of human needs.

And as that happens, we will remember something very simple and obvious about capitalism, which is that, unlike what you read in economics textbooks, it’s not a self-sufficient system. It depends on other systems, on ecology, on family, on community, and if these aren’t replenished, capitalism suffers too. And our human nature isn’t just selfish, it’s also compassionate. It’s not just competitive, it’s also caring. Because of the depth of the crisis, I think we are at a moment of choice.

The crisis is almost certainly deepening around us. It will be worse at the end of this year, quite possibly worse in a year’s time than it is today. But this is one of those very rare moments when we have to choose whether we’re just pedaling furiously to get back to where we were a year or two ago, and a very narrow idea of what the economy is for, or whether this is a moment to jump ahead, to reboot and to do some of the things we probably should have been doing anyway. Thank you.

(Applause)


European Summit: A Plan with No Details

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 03:30 PM PDT

European Summit: A Plan with No Details
By John Mauldin
October 29, 2011

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A Definite Plan (Minus Those Sticky Details)
Dear Mario
When Leverage Is the Kind-of Answer
Meanwhile Back in Portugal
Let's Just Change the Rules
San Francisco, Kilkenny, Atlanta, DC … and the World Series Loss

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Where is the peace dividend that was supposed to come after the end of the Cold War? Where are the fruits of the amazing gains in efficiency that technology has afforded? It has been eaten by the bureaucracy that manages our every move on this earth. The voracious and insatiable monster here is called the Federal Code that calls on thousands of agencies to exercise the police power to prevent us from living free lives.

It is as Bastiat said: the real cost of the state is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don’t exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesses that do not come into existence, and the bright future that is stolen from us. The state has looted us just as surely as a robber who enters our home at night and steals all that we love.

- William “Bill” Bonner

Exactly what happened in Europe yesterday? The market reacted like it was the Second Coming of the Solution to End All Solutions. No problem here! The European debt crisis is solved! But if you look deeply (almost always dangerous when it comes to Europe) there is more to the market “melt-up” than simple euphoria and relief. What you find is a very disturbing unintended consequence that will come back to haunt us, as, sadly, I have written about in the past. The finger points to our old friends derivatives and credit default swaps. This week, as I recover from a rather nasty bug, we look at gamma and delta and other odd entities that may be behind the real reason for the market response, as we march inexorably toward the final chapters of the Endgame. Let’s see how far out on a limb I can go.

But first an important announcement. I am very excited to be able to introduce my readers to a mutual fund offered by my friends at Altegris Investments. This special fund is a blend of five commodity trading advisors, or CTAs. Normally, to access a CTA you be to be an accredited investor, with all the net-worth requirements and limited liquidity. But Altegris has figured out how to wrap a mutual fund around CTAs and create a fund of commodity traders with all the usual aspects of a mutual fund (daily pricing, liquidity, etc.).

I have long been involved in the commodity-trading advisor space (some 20 years) and am a proponent of CTAs as a way to diversify portfolio risk. I have written a detailed report on this fascinating sector in relation to the fund, and it is available for free, along with more information on the fund (including the offering memorandum and important risk disclosures, which are also included at the end of this letter).

The fund has been very well received since its launch and has grown rapidly to almost $1 billion. There has been very active interest in the professional community, as advisors and brokers are looking for simple and realistic ways to diversify their clients’ portfolio risk in a manner that is truly noncorrelated to typical stock funds and many other asset classes. Whether you are a professional or individual, you really should take the time to research what I think is a very solid fund. My partners at Altegris have decades of experience in the CTA space, with the largest available database of CTAs and long-term relationships with many of the managers (I actually started my investment career in the commodity fund space, so I have more than a passing knowledge of the arena). Given the potential for volatility in the global markets, I think it makes sense to have some exposure to funds that can go both long and short (depending on their models). I urge you to read my report here.

A Definite Plan (Minus Those Sticky Details)

Tonight there are so many moving parts it is hard to know where to start, so in the interest of time we will briefly scan a number of facts and opinions and see if we can come to something like a conclusion.

First, let’s look at what came out of Europe. Before the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel went before her parliament and, in an impassioned speech, basically declared that unless the parliament approved the expansion and leverage of the EFSF the European Union would collapse, along with the decades-long peace that has prevailed. And the Bundestag went along with her – with an important caveat. They made their approval conditional on the European Central Bank continuing to comply with Article 123 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which says that the ECB cannot print money (or words to that effect). The Germans are obsessed with an independent ECB that will maintain the value of the euro – something to do with Weimar being embedded in their collective psyche.

Contrast this “obsession” with Martin Wolf leading the chorus for incoming ECB president Mario Draghi (an Italian) to ignore the Germans. Here are some choice paragraphs from his recent piece:

“Dear Mario,

“Congratulations and commiserations: next week, you will take up one of the most important central banking jobs in the world; but you will also bear a frightful responsibility. The European Central Bank alone has the power to quell the eurozone crisis. You must choose between two paths: the orthodox one leads towards failure; the unorthodox one should lead towards success.

“The eurozone confronts a set of complex longer-term challenges. But the members will not get the chance to make needed adjustments and implement required reforms if it does not survive. The immediate requirements include putting Greece on a sustainable path; avoiding a meltdown in public debt markets of several large countries; and preventing a collapse of banks. Of these, it is the last two that matter. Any effort by the ECB to be the lender of last resort that members need will start a firestorm of protest. People will argue that the central bank may lose money, exacerbate moral hazard and stoke inflation.

“….To the first of these objections, the right response is: so what? The central bank’s aim is to stabilize economies, not make money. Indeed, it is far more likely to lose money through half-hearted interventions than through forceful interventions that succeed.

“….The eurozone risks a tidal wave of fiscal and banking crises. The European financial stability facility cannot stop this. Only the ECB can. As the sole eurozone-wide institution, it has the responsibility. It also has the power. I am sorry, Mario. But you face a choice between pleasing the monetary hawks and saving the eurozone. Choose the latter. Explain why you are making the choice. And remember: fortune favours the bold.”

Martin Wolf is by no means alone in his call for the ECB to aggressively shore up the European sovereigns and bank markets. There is a very long line of establishment types throughout Europe who are doing so, though there is a notable lack of German figures.

Indeed, from what I read, the ECB seemed to indicate that after the summit it would continue to buy Italian and Spanish debt. But that commitment was rather vague. As is much of what came from the summit. Italian paper was just north of 4% in July. Today Italian interest rates rose to 5.88%, even with apparent ECB buying. More on the reason for the rise later.

They did agree at the summit that private bondholders should lose 50% on their Greek debt. This mostly means banks, pension funds, and insurance companies, along wih the €35 billion owed to the Greek pension system, which promptly declared, “Any solution on the long-term viability of public debt will be accompanied by measures that do not just sustain but visibly improve the current level of the assets of the Greek pension funds.… We are answering the concerns of pensioners and those insured by the system.”

We should note that the summit decided that the Greeks should also privatize another €15 billion in national assets, on top of the €50 billion they are already supposed to have done, but on which no progress has been made. All the while finding €17.5 billion to fix the hole in their pension funds, which was already so deep that no daylight could seep in.

Right, if I was a Greek pensioner I would feel soooo relieved. I mean, if you can’t trust the Greek government to do what it says it will do… OK, let’s not go there.

When Leverage Is the Kind-of Answer

The Europeans also agreed to leverage the EFSF by some amount, but they were unclear on the details as to what that actually meant. The concept is that they will guarantee the first 20% of losses on any newly issued debt. It was left unstated whether that includes the loans committed to Ireland and Portugal but not yet issued, or just new commitments. Remember, they started with €440 billion but have committed €278 billion already (if memory serves), so that leaves only €170 billion (give or take) that can be leveraged (maybe). If everyone goes along.

Somehow, by a mechanism not revealed, this is to be leveraged up to about €1 trillion, which is about half of the lowest estimate I have seen of what is needed. Thus the desperate hope that the ECB will step in, because that is the only real source for the money that will be needed.

I am not going to go into great historical detail, as I would lose the most patient of readers, but guaranteeing 20% of a government bond is rather pointless. This has been done in the past, and at most it drops a small amount from the interest rates. Nothing meaningful, as the market assumes that it is an 80% bond and rates it accordingly. Further, whatever rating is conferred by the market is an amalgam of total Eurozone credit ratings. That would include guarantees by Greece and Portugal, et al., on their portion of the debt. Think about that for a second. (Those guarantees are supposedly where the privatization of Greek assets comes in, if I read the tea leaves right.)

Further, if you are a market participant thinking of investing in sovereign debt, and not a total rookie, when was the last time you saw a sovereign country write down less than 20% of its debt? (Greece is starting with 50%. On its way to what I suspect will be something far closer to 90%.)

Keep searching. If a sovereign debt goes south, it’s for a whole lot more than 20%. It seems to me that whatever the EFSF guarantees is almost certain to turn into a loss. What self-respecting country would write off less, if the hit is taken by entities that have no votes in the national parliament? 20% becomes the starting point, and then the fun begins. There will be lots of screaming and shouting and gnashing of teeth when those losses come home.

Merkel and Co. are selling the whole proposition on the premise that the problem is simply one of confidence, and that if the EFSF restores confidence in the various nefarious government debt schemes, then all is saved. Well, except for Greece. Which has already been flushed.

The problem is that it is not a lack of confidence, nor even a lack of hubris. It is a lack of solvency. The simple arithmetic says there is too much debt in Greece and Ireland and Portugal and Spain and Italy. And ultimately France, though Merkel is too polite to say so and knows that she needs their signature, at least for now. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, no one is paying attention to poor Portugal.

Meanwhile Back in Portugal

“Data released by the European Central Bank show that real M1 deposits in Portugal have fallen at an annualized rate of 21pc over the past six months, buckling violently in September.

” 'Portugal appears to have entered a Grecian vortex and monetary trends have deteriorated sharply in Spain, with a decline of 8.4pc,’ said Simon Ward, from Henderson Global Investors. Mr. Ward said the ECB must cut interest rates 'immediately’ and launch a full-scale blitz of quantitative easing of up to 10pc of eurozone GDP. [Shades of Martin Wolf!]

“The M1 data – cash and current accounts – is watched by experts as a leading indicator for the economy six months to a year ahead. It has been an accurate warning signal for each stage of the crisis since 2007.” (The Telegraph)

Portugal is rapidly descending to Greek status. Yet another banking crisis looms.

And then there is Ireland. I wrote a few weeks ago that there is a universal assumption in Ireland, at all levels of society and from all sides of the political spectrum, that the country will get debt relief. That is a €60-billion hole in the ECB balance sheet. From Businessweek.com:

“In Dublin, pressure is building on [prime minister] Kenny to seek more debt relief after the government injected about 62 billion euros into the Irish financial system.

“Why is it acceptable to write down Greek debt, when the Irish pay private bankers’ debts?” Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, said in parliament on Oct. 25. Kenny told Adams he’s seeking debt reduction on a 'number of fronts.’

“The IMF said on Sept. 7 it estimates Ireland’s government debt will peak at 18 percent more than the country’s gross domestic product in 2013, equivalent to almost 200 billion euros. That’s up from 25 percent of GDP in 2007.

“The government has already signaled it may seek to shift some of the costs of bailing out the banking system to Europe, relieving the burden on the taxpayer. [And putting it squarely on European taxpayers as a whole!]

“The Irish government has a legitimate claim that there should be some sort of burden-sharing on a European level.” [said Kenny]

Think that will sell to Spain, when they have to figure out how to back their banks, which are for the most part basically insolvent? What about Italy?

Let’s see, what else did they do? Oh, yes. European banks will have to come up with €106.5 billion (don’t you just love exact figures?), which will bring their Tier 1 capital up to 9%. Never mind that Dexia was supposedly at 12% right before it went bankrupt. Tier 1 in Europe is a meaningless construct, as they don’t require haircuts for sovereign debt.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde royally annoyed European leaders when she called last August for a €200-billion-euro bank recapitalization. I wonder how they felt when the IMF upped its figure to €300 billion two weeks ago. Nouriel Roubini is an optimist, by comparison – he thinks it will only take €280 billion. And Sarkozy wants the EFSF to bail out the banks, especially the French banks. Which would blow through most of the EFSF’s assets, even leveraged. Of course, if each government has to bail out its own banks, then France will likely lose its AAA rating, which will make the EFSF lose its AAA rating, which… Are we having fun yet?

Let’s Just Change the Rules

I’ve always had a soft spot for Bunker Hunt. Yes, I know, he was a voracious manipulator who tried (and did) corner the silver market back in 1980, but boys will be boys. Maybe it’s a fellow-Texan thing. He went bankrupt because they changed the rules on him. Lesson for all of us: Never assumes the rules are what you think they are just because they are written down, if someone else can change them. You can only push so far and then the peasants revolt.

And that is the final thing that happened at the summit. The banks “voluntarily” took a 50% haircut. Voluntary in that Merkel, Sarkozy, et al. told them that the alternative was a 100% haircut. “That’s the offer, guys. Take it or leave it.” Cue the theme from The Godfather.

And because the write-off was voluntary, there would be no triggering of credit default swaps clauses. Because if it’s voluntary it’s not a default – capiche?

And that smooth move, dear reader, triggered a rather significant unintended consequence, which resulted in the market “melt-up.” Let me see if I can walk you through this rather bizarre world of derivative exposure without exposing too much of my own ignorance.

Let’s say you bought credit default swaps on a certain bank’s debt (let’s use JPMorgan, but it could be any bank) because you think that Morgan is exposed to too much credit default swap risk. Just in case. Now, if (say) Goldman sold you the CDS, they could and would in turn hedge their risk by shorting some quantity of Morgan stock, or perhaps if the risk was sizeable enough, the S&P as a whole. It would depend on what their risk models suggested.

But as of yesterday, the risk evaporated: there would be no CDS event. So why buy CDS? Time to cover. And then the shorts get covered.

Further, the risk to financials was cut by a large, somewhat murky amount. But it was definitely cut, so buy some risk assets. Which puts any long/short hedge fund in a squeeze, especially those with an anti-financial-sector bias. But because of the nature of the hedge, the whole market moves. It involves rather arcane concepts that traders call delta and gamma. (Remember that the recent rogue traders had been at delta trading desks?) Guys at those desks can calculate that risk in a nanosecond. You and I take a day just to wrap our head around the concepts.

And it just cascades. The high-frequency-trading algo computers notice the movement and jump in, followed quickly by momentum traders, and the market melts up. Because a significant risk was removed. But not without cost.

Let’s go back to where I noted that Italian interest rates are rising even as the ECB is supposedly buying. What gives? It is clearly the lack of private buyers, and a lot of selling. Because now you can’t hedge your sovereign debt. If you ever need that insurance, they will just change the rules on you, so why take the risk?

Destroying the credit default swap market will make it harder to sell sovereign debt, not easier. Those “shorts” were not the cause of Greek financial problems; the Greeks did it all to themselves. As did the Portuguese, and on and on. Now admittedly, rising CDS spreads called attention to the problem, much as rising rates did in eras long past. And that did annoy politicians. And clearly, banks that had exposure to that market got the “fix” in to make their problems go away.

(OK, this is just my conjecture; but I have speculated before – with reason – that a major writer of sovereign CDS were German Landesbanks. Think Merkel didn’t have that report? As did Sarkozy, on French exposure? It was a very high-stakes poker game they were playing this week. But one side of the table could rewrite the rules.)

Now, I know I am greatly oversimplifying the CDS situation. Even so, a great deal of the volatility of recent times can be laid at the feet of the CDS market, because it is so opaque. There is no way to prove or disprove my speculations, because there is no source that can really plumb the true depths of the situation. And that is the problem.

I am not against CDS. We need more of them. But they should all be moved to a very transparent exchange. If I buy an S&P derivative (or gold or oil or orange juice), I know that my counterparty risk is the exchange. I don’t have to hedge counterparty risk. The exchange tells whoever is on the other side of the trade that they need to put up more money, as the trade warrants. Or tells me if the trade goes against me.

The banks lobbied to keep CDS “over the counter.” The commissions are huge that way. If they are on an exchange the commissions are small. This was a huge failure of Dodd-Frank. And we all pay for it in ways that no one really sees. As the Bastiat quote at the beginning said, there is what you see and what you don’t see.

Equity markets are supposed to help companies raise capital for business purposes, not be casinos. Investors want to and should be able to buy and sell stocks with a long view to the future. And increasingly there is the feeling that this is not the case. When I talk to institutional investors and managers, it is clear that they are very frustrated.

I am not arguing against hedge funds here. There is a need for short sellers in a true market. But that selling should be transparent. In a regulated exchange, you can see the amount of short interest. Everyone knows the rules. But without an exchange, things happen for reasons that are not apparent. An event like the Eurozone summit changes an obscure rule with some vague clauses about triggering a credit event – and the market reacts. This time it was a melt-up. Next time it could be a meltdown, as it was in 2008.

CDS markets should be moved to an open regulated exchange. And while we are at it, high-frequency trading should be stemmed. This could be done easily by requiring all bids or offers to last for at least one second, instead of a few microseconds. You make the offer, you have to honor it for a whole second. What a concept. That would not hurt liquidity, but it would cut into the profits of the exchanges (especially the NYSE) – but I thought these were public markets and not the playground of the privileged few.

If it weren’t so cold here in New York, I might just wander down and join Occupy Wall Street and see if I could enlighten a few minds. If those kids only knew what they really should be protesting.

San Francisco, Kilkenny, Atlanta, DC, and the World Series Loss

As noted above, I am in New York tonight (where I spoke at the Van Eck conference, who were wonderful hosts), in my warm hotel, writing away and hoping to skip town tomorrow before a fluke snowstorm hits. Tuesday I leave for the Schwab conference in San Francisco, to be there with my Altegris partners (see you at their booth, where I will be signing books); and then I jump to Kilkenny, Ireland, to join in the fun at the Kilkenomics festival. I am told that my friend Bill Bonner is coming, as well as all sorts of surprise guests. David McWilliams puts on a great show, and it is (fire up Irish brogue here) sure and begorra to be a fun time. (http://www.kilkenomics.com/)

Then I am back for a day or two and then off again to Atlanta for the Hedge Funds Care fund-raising dinner, where I will speak. You should come. http://hedgefundscare.org/event.asp?eventID=74. Then the next week I am at the UBS conference outside of DC, and then home for most of the next nearly two months – or at least that’s the plan. I am looking forward to putting in some time in my own bed!

I am indeed recovering from some nasty variant of flu. I so rarely get sick (for which I am grateful) that this one really kicked my derriere. I am still somewhat weak, but at least can type and talk and expect to get back into the gym soon. I miss it.

Last night was tough. Alone in my room, I watched the Rangers blow two opportunities to win a World Series. Twice we were within one strike. Just one lousy strike. TWICE. And tonight we were clearly not in it. I am getting reports on my phone from my kids as I write (I can’t bear to watch while we are way behind). Oh well. Wait till next year!

It is time to hit the send button and get some shuteye. Sunday will be a family brunch, where we will console ourselves about the World Series, and just enjoy ourselves. Have a great week!

Your looking forward to Ireland analyst,

John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com


Why Startups Fail

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Here’s another look at last week’s graphic:

Hat tip Tech Crunch


A Historical Perspective of Recessions and Bear Markets

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 08:30 AM PDT

James Stack of InvesTech Research looks at past bear markets and recessions going back more than 82 years. The details of his findings?

• Generational bear markets, with losses exceeding 40% are the exception, not the norm. Since 1940, only one in four bear markets reached such a loss.

• The 2000-02 bear market was so severe because of record overvaluation extremes at the start, and the washout of the high-tech bubble with a -78% loss in the Nasdaq (of which many of the largest stocks were also components of the S&P 500).

• Unweighted indexes declined only ~25% in the 2000-02 bear market;

• The 2007-09 bear market was extreme because the collapse suddenly exposed all of the mortgage derivatives on the balance sheets of major banks. The extent of this exposure was not well known — even to CEOs of the banks.

• Bear markets without recessions are more of a rarity. Since 1940, when they have occurred, the declines are usually milder. The 1987 Crash, with a loss of -34% was the exception; but ’87 was triggered in a monetary climate where interest rates were soaring and the U.S. dollar was tumbling.

• Average valuation, as measured by the P/E ratio of the S&P 500 Index, at the start of all the bear markets exceeding 30% was 21.8. Today, the P/E ratio of the S&P equals 14.7.

One thought on this: The fear of another giant bear market — of another 50% loss — is likely due to the recency effect and the aftermath of 2007-09 as much anything else.

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Click to enlarge:

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Source:
InvesTech Research
Technical and Monetary Investment Analysis, Vol11 Iss11
October 21, 2011


How Stellar Novae Get All Mixed Up

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT

In a nova, gas drawn off one star ends up exploding off the surface of its companion.

When you think of a nova explosion, you probably associate it with a supernova—a similar, but fundamentally different, stellar explosion. The word nova is Latin for "new," referring to what early astronomers thought was a bright new star in the sky (specifically, Tycho Brahe in 1573 with his book De nova stella). We now know the general mechanism behind a nova—it’s a runaway nuclear reaction—but there is (at least) one mystery that's confounded astronomers for almost 50 years.

The nuclear reactions propelling the nova produce isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (among others), in addition to the primary product of hydrogen fusion, helium. But even though the process should be spatially even, these species don’t end up spatially homogenous. For example, in observations of the nova V1974 Cygni, there's three times as much carbon in one position compared to another in the nova’s shell. Physical modeling hasn’t been able to account for this difference. A team of researchers from Spain, Italy, and the US tackled this problem and found that the source of this difference is actually a common fluid dynamics phenomenon.

There’s often some confusion about the difference between a nova and a supernova. A nova is a runaway nuclear explosion that results from the accretion of hydrogen on the surface of a white dwarf. This star must have a companion (the two form a binary system) from which to draw off the hydrogen. Only a small portion of the star's mass is consumed in a nova, so many (if not all) nova recur, although the period of time can range from decades to millennia.

A supernova, on the other hand, is a destructive, extremely bright explosion caused by the star gravitationally collapsing in on itself (there are a couple different ways this happens). Most of a star's mass is ejected in a supernova, so this can happen only once.

So how does a nova, which should start with relatively well-mixed materials, produce an asymmetric explosion? In order to explain this discrepancy, we need to understand the physical processes that occur during the explosion. It has been suggested that thermonuclear reactions may be producing greater quantities of certain species. But these reactions are well known and the temperatures of novas we’ve observed don't make sense with this theory.

The other main possibility is mixing at the core/shell interface, but one- and two-dimensional computational simulations haven't been able to see this. The team behind the new research performed three-dimensional simulations of a nova explosion and focused on mixing at the core/shell interface. They found that shear flow at the interface triggers Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instabilities—which in turn cause the mixing. Previous studies only used one- and two-dimensional simulations, which couldn't capture the three-dimensional nature of the complex vortex structures created.

The KH instability is a well-known fluid dynamics phenomenon (first described by Lord Kelvin in 1871 and Hermann von Helmholtz in 1868) caused by a significant velocity difference between two fluids. Basically, the faster-moving fluid pulls the other into motion, and this interaction develops swirling waves that eventually transition into full-blown turbulent mixing. This occurs frequently in nature, in clouds, the ocean, Saturn's atmosphere—and apparently also in novae.

The three-dimensional nature of turbulence is well-known to the fluid dynamics community, so it's not clear why this appears to be the first simulation of a nova explosion in 3D. However, the team did solve this decades-old mystery, which should help improve our understanding of not only this fascinating stellar phenomenon, but also one of the sources of heavier elements in the universe.

Source:
Decades-old mystery solved as researchers reveal how stellar novae get all mixed up
Ars Technica, October 27, 2011


10 Weekend Reads

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 04:00 AM PDT

Some reading material to stimulate your brains and start off your weekend:

Contrary Opinion: Wall of worry gives way to slope of hope (Market Watch)
• Ray Dalio’s radical truth (Institutional Investor)
• More 401(k) Plans, IRAs May Offer Investing Advice (Yahoo Finance)
• The past decade GDP was driven solely by Credit (NYT)
• Occupy Wall Street: It's Not a Hippie Thing (Businessweek) see also Nothing’s More American than Fighting Greedy Bankers (Tyee)
• European Bank Debt-Guarantee Proposals May Struggle to Thaw Funding Market (Bloomberg)
• Why do we need a financial sector? (Vox) see also Big Banks Blink on New Card Fees (WSJ)
• Mark Thoma on Econometrics (Browser)
• The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance (EH.net)
• The Ideological Fantasies of Inequality Deniers (NY Mag)

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BusinessWeek is Wrong: Small Businesses Create Most Net New Jobs

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 03:30 AM PDT

Dr. Bill Dunkelberg is the Chief Economist for the National Federation of Independent Business.

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A recent Bloomberg article entitled "Small-Business Job Engine Myth Hampers Effort to Lift Employment" (September 29) reports "…the notion that small business is the force behind prosperity is not true." The author cites statistics such as "Hourly wages at the largest companies, those with more than 2,500 employees, average around $27, compared with $16 in companies with payrolls of fewer than 100" to prove that small businesses are of little value. Out of 6 million employer firms, only 3,900 are this large. If this is such a good deal, why aren't all firms of that size? Maybe a barber shop with 2,500 chairs is not economical and too large to serve a local market? Maybe wages are better at larger firms because they are specialized (high tech, manufacturing) and require better skilled workers (which not everyone is)? Markets pay for skills. And maybe an economy full of these firms would not be able to provide the kinds of goods and service or convenience we like (no more "7-11"s, we just need a few 2,500 worker grocery stores to drive to?).

"Most small firms are restaurants, skilled professionals or craftsmen (doctors, plumbers), professional and general service providers (clergy, travel agents, beauticians), and independent retailers……most of these companies are going to remain small." I guess the author thinks this is bad. Notice that if all those big firms hired 500 new workers in a month, a very unlikely outcome even in good times, that would add about 2 million new jobs, just a few more than filed initial claims for unemployment last month (1.6 million, it was 1.2 million per month in 2000, a year of record HIGH employment)!

He quotes the view a professor at Case Western Reserve: "Because the average existing firm is more productive than the average new firm, we would be better off economically if we got rid of policies that encouraged a lot of people to start businesses instead of taking jobs working for others." Now, statistically, new firms are less productive than existing firms since it takes time to build the business to capacity, maturity. So I guess any new firm that starts must start at "maturity" or we should reject it. Bill Gates should have worked for someone else since Microsoft couldn't be started at the mature level it has today.

Nonsense, but this is the kind of misdirected thinking that is shaping policy. This assumes that Microsoft was not the result of many firms trying to compete to make the best operating system, but that somehow someone would identify Gates as the "right one" and every other entrepreneur should go to work for someone else. I guess government is supposed to do this (like with solar panels), making sure that once Gates is picked, he gets enough taxpayer money to open at "maturity" size.

More fundamentally, the author does not understand the main driver of job growth, and confuses our current problem of weak demand (not all the barber chairs are filled) with the factors that cause job growth (population growth), the need for more barber shops and the jobs this creates.

An economy with no population growth has no job growth in the long run (business cycles like our current situation can create lower employment temporarily). More people need more barber shops, clinics and all those small firms the author berates. Yes, those firms don't grow big very often, but it is the proliferation of these firms that accounts for the fact that over the past 20 years, 2/3ds of the net new jobs are created by small firms. Sure, more manufactured goods are needed too, but those are produced with fewer and fewer workers over time (productivity) and are not big job generators.

So here are the facts about small businesses:

• 99.7% of all employers are small (under 500 employees)
• 90% have fewer than 20 employees
• produce 65% of the new jobs in the last 17 years
• produce more than half of private GDP
• make up 97.5% of identified exporters
• produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms
Source: SBA

The author snipes "So much for being seedbeds of innovation." Yet small business is the R&D for the economy, where new ideas, products, processes are tested in the market. Good ideas are rewarded with profits, the others "re-price" their assets and try again. So what if "many go bust"? These are trials, looking for the best managers and ideas, letting markets (consumers) pick the winners, not the government.

In a growing U.S. economy 500,000 businesses terminate each year, but 600,000 new ones are started, and lots of people are employed and gain experience and training in the process. That's where the greatness of our economy comes from.

And a P.S., small firms don't need tax incentives to hire, they need customers. So get it together in Washington and restore consumer confidence, 131 million workers spending more is a great stimulus and reason to hire which will solve the unemployment problem.

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Source:
Rethinking the Boosterism About Small Business
By Charles Kenny
BusinessWeek, September 28, 2011   
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/rethinking-the-boosterism-about-small-business-09282011.html


Most Tablet Users Are Educated, Employed, Not Young

Posted: 29 Oct 2011 03:00 AM PDT

Tablet users are educated, employed, and earning money but are not necessarily young, according to new data.

At this point, 11 percent of Americans have a tablet device and 77 percent of them use it daily. Approximately 46 percent are in the 30 to 49 age bracket, however, and they are serious about their news, according to an infographic produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group.

Of the 1,200 tablet owners polled by Pew, 53 percent use their device to access news every day. Getting news is actually almost as popular as email, at 54 percent compared to 53 percent, and the average user spends about 90 minutes catching up on the day’s events.

It’s not just quick bursts of breaking news users are reading, however. About 42 percent read in-depth articles on their tablets, but despite social-networking linkups at every turn, just 16 percent share what they’re reading on those services. Most stick to a small number of recognized sources, though 33 percent said they have branched out to new publications on their tablets.

Surprisingly, apps have not taken over. About 21 percent of people mainly access news via apps, but 40 percent primarily use the browser. About 31 percent use both equally.

Who are these people? About 51 percent are college grads, 53 percent earn more than $75,000 per year, and 62 percent have full-time jobs. While most are between 30 and 50, 22 percent are between 18 and 29 and 32 percent are over 50.

Pew found that 81 percent are using the iPad, bolstering recent reports that suggest the iPad will dominate the market for many years to come. But Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire hits the market next month, which could take a bite out of the market for cheaper tablets.

For more, see the infographic below.

Click for ginormous chart:

Source:
Most Tablet Users Are Educated, Employed, Not Young
The Tablet Revolution–A PEJ Infographic


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