Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

China Manufacturing Contraction Continues Second Month; Japanese Manufacturing Sentiment Turns Negative; Asia Pacific Equities Sink
Rick Perry, Unfit for Office, ANY Office
"Decision was rational. I put it into a model" says Hungarian Economics Professor who took Mortgage in Swiss Francs, then Clobbered on 40% Currency Move
On the Titanic towards Economic and Democratic Disaster
Dear Nouriel Roubini: The Fundamental Case for Gold Has Not Changed; To Understand, All Roubini Need Do is Look in a Mirror

China Manufacturing Contraction Continues Second Month; Japanese Manufacturing Sentiment Turns Negative; Asia Pacific Equities Sink

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 11:47 PM PST

All Asia-Pacific Equity indices are in the red tonight following more bad news from China and Japan.

Asia Pacific Equities

Japanese Manufacturing Sentiment Sinks

Bloomberg reports Japan Manufacturing Slides on Europe Crisis

Japan's largest manufacturers became more pessimistic than economists expected and China reported the first decline in foreign direct investment since 2009 as Europe's crisis drags down the global economy.

The Tankan large manufacturer index of sentiment fell to minus 4 in December, the Bank of Japan (8301) said today in Tokyo, worse than the median estimate for a reading of minus 2 by 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Investment in China slid 9.8 percent from a year earlier to $8.76 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said.

In Japan, manufacturers from Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) to TDK Corp. (6762) are also under threat from a yen that rose to a postwar record against the dollar on Oct. 31 as investors seek a haven from turmoil in Europe.

TDK, the world's biggest maker of magnetic heads for disk drives, is among Japanese companies cutting jobs, while Panasonic Corp. (6752) has picked Malaysia as the site for a solar-cell plant, to hedge against currency risks. At Toyota, poised to lose its crown as the world's largest automaker, currency gains have forced price increases, threatening to further erode global market share after production disruptions from the temblor and floods in Thailand.

"We raised prices of some our models on the high yen, and this is very difficult for us to admit, but we expect a drop in sales from this," Satoshi Ozawa, chief financial officer at Toyota, said this month. "Still, the yen is too strong, and we had to sacrifice some unit sales."

China Manufacturing Contraction Continues Second Month

MarketWatch reports China manufacturing cools further

Chinese manufacturing activity extended its decline in December, as production at factories and the volume of new orders generated eased from the previous month, according to the preliminary reading of an HSBC survey, released Thursday.

HSBC's so-called "flash" Purchasing Managers' Index for the month printed at 49, staying below the threshold of 50 that separates expansion and contraction.

The flash PMI number is based on the responses of 85% to 90% of the total respondents in a survey.

In response to the weakening fundamentals of China, the Shanghai Stock index is down again this evening, having fallen back to March 2009 lows.

$SSEC Weekly Chart

click on chart for sharper image

That snapshot is as of yesterday's close. The Shanghai Index is down another 2% this evening to 2,182, approximately where the dashed blue line is in the above chart.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Rick Perry, Unfit for Office, ANY Office

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 08:09 PM PST

Rick Perry is out to prove to everyone on the planet why he is unfit for office, any office. A recent video does just that.

Please consider Rick Perry 'Strong' Ad Goes Viral, Sparks Parodies

Maybe Rick Perry should have worn a different jacket.

The Republican presidential hopeful's new campaign ad, "Strong," has become a viral video sensation since being released last week – but not necessarily for the reasons the campaign might hope for.

By Monday afternoon, the ad had registered nearly 650,000 "dislikes" on YouTube, compared to just over 20,000 likes. And it has sparked nearly 700 reply videos, including some mercilessly funny parodies that feature people wearing the same kind of jacket Perry wears, and lots of chatter about how Perry looks like a gay cowboy from the movie "Brokeback Mountain."

In the ad, Perry suggests that President Barack Obama is waging a "war on religion" after signing legislation allowing gays to serve in the military. It's drawn some 6 million views on YouTube, more than any other campaign video this year, company officials said.

As he struggles for traction three weeks before the GOP nominating contest opens in Iowa, Perry is using the ad to appeal to the kind of Christian conservatives who typically dominate the state's precinct caucuses. In it, he makes some eyebrow-raising claims.

Perry is seen walking up a grassy hillside, dressed in a brown barn jacket and blue shirt.

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm Christian," Perry says. "But you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in schools." ....

He continues, "As president, I'll end Obama's war on religion and I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage."

In fact, Obama has had nothing to do with banning school prayer – the Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that prayer in public school was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Perry's suggestion that gays serving in the military represent an assault on religious faith has drawn scorn from Democrats and gay rights activists, many of whom are expressing themselves in video.

....

First, there's the jacket. Many videos have noted that it's the same type worn by actor Heath Ledger in the 2005 movie "Brokeback Mountain," which centers on a long love affair between two cowboys.

....

Stephen Farnsworth, an associate professor of communications at George Mason University, said the ad may well help Perry in Iowa, where polls are starting to show him inch up a bit. But Farnsworth said the ad's message – and the parodies it has spawned – won't help in the long run, particularly when it comes to connecting with moderate and swing voters.

"The worst thing to be in American politics is a joke," Farnsworth said.

The Perry campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Joke is not the correct word for Rick Perry. Use your imagination as to what is. However, Rick Perry certainly is the brunt of jokes.

First the insensitive and politically foolish video by Rick Perry ironically titled "Strong".

"Strong"

Link if video does not play: Rick Perry "Strong"

There are numerous parodies of that video, many of them quite funny. One of my favorites takes off on the jacket aspect.

"Jacket"

Link if video does not play: Rick Perry - "Jacket" ("Strong" Parody)

The Huffington Post has links to their Seven Favorite "Strong" Parodies.

Perry is finished.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

"Decision was rational. I put it into a model" says Hungarian Economics Professor who took Mortgage in Swiss Francs, then Clobbered on 40% Currency Move

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 03:49 PM PST

In case you need further proof that economics professors are frequently clueless about economics, please consider Austrian Banks Facing Payback as Hungary's $22 Billion Debt Slaves Revolt

When Hungary's former central bank governor was buying a house two months before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed and the country sought an emergency bailout, he received an offer he couldn't refuse.

Peter Akos Bod, now an economics professor at Corvinus University in Budapest, was given a choice of mortgages by his bank. The 60 year-old could select a loan in Hungary's currency, the forint, at 13 percent interest, or one in Swiss francs at less than 6 percent. After crunching the numbers on a spreadsheet, he picked the cheaper franc loan.

"It was rational," he said of his 2008 decision in an interview in the Hungarian capital. "I put it into a model."

Three years later, Bod and about one million compatriots who took mortgages in francs are faced with a debt pile that has swelled to 4.9 trillion forint ($22 billion). The currency's 40 percent slump against the franc has raised repayment costs, pushing mortgage arrears to a two-decade high and prompting Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government to brand the loans "debt slavery."

In Models We Trust

The decision to take out mortgages or other long-term debt in a foreign currency is not rational unless one is fully prepared for these kinds of currency fluctuations. Not only was the professor unprepared, he was silly enough to base his move on a model.

Haven't these geniuses heard about the demise of Long Term Capital Management?

The short story is future Nobel Prize winners, Myron Scholes and Robert C. Merton along with John Meriwether made leveraged bets based on a model that said bond rates would converge over time. The firm was initially successful with annualized returns of over 40%. However, LTCM blew up in 1998 following the Russian financial crisis in which bond spreads "unexpectedly" widened.

Professor Bod made a leveraged bet (that's what most mortgages are), that based on a model, Hungary's currency (the Forint) would be stable against the Swiss Franc.

Why any model would presume such a thing is beyond me. Why anyone would trust such a model is even more ridiculous. But that's just what the professor did.

Hungarian Currency Crisis

There is much more to the story including a bailout of Hungary by the IMF and debt restructurings that spilled over into Austria.

To help homeowners, [prime minister] Orban imposed currency losses on banks including Erste Group Bank AG and Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI) that may total 900 million euros ($1.2 billion), according to Cristina Marzea, an analyst at Barclays Capital. Faced with the risk Orban would impose further measures, lenders have offered to accept $2.2 billion of additional losses if the government promised to take no further action. If it doesn't, banks are threatening they may withdraw from the country.

Almost 18 months after Orban was elected in April 2010, he passed a law allowing Hungarians to repay mortgages denominated in foreign currencies at discount of about 25 percent to today's exchange rate. As long as a client applies before Dec. 31 and repays the entire loan before Feb. 28, the banks have to make up the difference.

"I paid it back last week," Bod said. "I'm free of debt slavery," said the former industry minister. The plan "is easy to explain from a political viewpoint. It's cheap for the government, expensive for the banks, good for voters."

While borrowers in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia also took foreign currency loans, Hungary is unique because average household borrowing in overseas currencies is more than six times the region's average, according to Barclays. In Poland, where more than half of all mortgages are franc- denominated, banks limited them to more affluent customers, and cushioned the franc's advance against the zloty by cutting rates. Hungarian banks raised rates.

Every redeemed mortgage equates to a loss for the banks, Barclay's Marzea said in a Nov. 17 report that banks operating in Hungary may lose 12 percent of their combined capital, or about 900 million euros, because of the early repayment plan.
'Immediate Action'

Lenders responded by suing the government in the Hungarian Constitutional Court and asking the European Union in a Nov. 14 letter to take "urgent and immediate action" against Orban, adding they will need to reassess their commitments in Hungary. Erste and Raiffeisen, which signed the letter, have said they will cut lending in the country.

By June 30, Austrian banks had lent $42 billion to Hungarian borrowers, Italians $23 billion and Germans $21 billion, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

Austria's central bank Governor Ewald Nowotny in October described the Hungarian law as "brutal" as well as legally unworkable and "economically nonsensical." Nowotny last month ordered the country's lenders to limit new loans in eastern Europe to make their business "more sustainable."

Moody's Investors Service last week said that Austrian banks' exposure to the central and eastern European region is "the single biggest event risk for the sovereign." Austrian banks are also the biggest lenders in the broader eastern European region. Standard & Poor's said Dec. 5 it may downgrade Austria, one of the six remaining euro area countries rated AAA, because it may have to inject capital into its banks.

Everyone in Hungary has suffered from this mess to varying degrees. Banks made stupid mortgage loans believing they would be paid back regardless of currency fluctuations. Borrowers took out stupid mortgage loans ignoring the possibility of huge currency swings.

Worse yet, the IMF is in the picture bankrolling Hungarian banks as foreign lending has all but dried up. It's never good to be in a position of borrowing money from the IMF.

Did Bod learn anything? Of course not.

Bod explains ... The plan "is easy to explain from a political viewpoint. It's cheap for the government, expensive for the banks, good for voters."

The plan was not good for voters in general (at least voters who did not take out stupid loans based on models). The plan however was good for Bod, but not as good as if he had stayed away from his faulty economic model in the first place.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

On the Titanic towards Economic and Democratic Disaster

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 12:46 PM PST

Here is another entertaining video from Nigel Farage. In this video Farage proclaims the UK will eventually exit the EU.

Link if video does not play: On the Titanic towards Economic and Democratic Disaster

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Dear Nouriel Roubini: The Fundamental Case for Gold Has Not Changed; To Understand, All Roubini Need Do is Look in a Mirror

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 09:39 AM PST

In response to Dollar Soars vs. All Major Currencies Following FOMC No Hint of QE3; Looking Ahead, What's Next? I received the following email question from a reader.

Still standing by your position? The euro has tanked, US dollar has shot up, and lo-and-behold gold drops $150.

Sigh.

What does it take for people to realize movements in the US dollar have been irrelevant to the price of gold for nearly six years?

Don't believe me? Please consider the following chart.

Gold vs. the US Dollar

click on chart for sharper image

Day in and day out someone writes me concerned about strength in the US dollar and what it might mean for gold. Still others email that gold will soar because the US dollar is plunging and will continue to plunge.

However, the US dollar is about where it was at the start of 2005 (a bit higher actually).

The US dollar has seen or crossed this level six times. In effect there has been no net movement in the US dollar for six years. Meanwhile in every instance, with each cross of 80.50 level on the US dollar index, there has been an upward trend in the price of gold.

At the beginning of 2005 gold was at $435. The US dollar index was 80.5.

Now gold is $1640 with the US dollar index a half-point higher at 81.0

Is there any conceivable reason I should change my position on gold (or for that matter the US dollar).

Hyperinflation Theories Remain Laughable

Hyperinflation theories remain as silly as ever. Try as he might, Bernanke has not been able to stimulate lending or credit growth to any significant degree since 2007.

Consumers are stuck in their houses, unable to move, owing far more on them than they are worth. Students are mired in student loans. Demand for dollars from Europe as well as to pay US debts has soared.

It is preposterous to assume hyperinflation will result from these conditions, especially since Bernanke will not act to destroy banks.

I currently like the US dollar (as I have on and off since 2005). However, that statement in relation to fiat currencies, not vs. gold.

More importantly, I still like gold in spite of the fact I expect the US dollar to strengthen, and in spite of the fact the US has gone into deflation twice (based on credit, not consumer prices) since 2007.

For further discussion as to a realistic approach to what inflation and deflation are all about, please see

Reasons to Own Gold Have Not Changed

The fact of the matter is gold does well in deflation. It also does well in times of credit stress. There is immense credit stress right now in sovereign debt in Europe.

Moreover, central banks have on-and-off stepped on the monetary pedal in unison to combat recessions and deflation. Gold has reacted to that. Recently, gold has reacted to Fed statements regarding QE3 and bond buying by the ECB.

Gold may or may not track short-term fluctuations in the US dollar, but on a long-term basis it is clear that it doesn't.

History suggests central banks will step up the printing presses again. When that happens, I expect gold to make another all-time high, perhaps just as the US dollar index makes another plunge below the 80.5 mark from well above it.

I Don't Know, They Don't Either

I do not know what the price of gold will be tomorrow, or next week, or any point in the future. No one else does either. Moreover, even if someone were blessed with the knowledge of where the US dollar index would be three years from now, that person would still be clueless about the price of gold.

Yet, I have lots of people asking me where gold will be and others telling me where it will be (based on the US dollar).

All anyone can really say is the fundamentals for gold are strong because the fundamentals for credit stress and central bank printing are strong.

When I perceive those fundamentals have changed, my position will change. In the meantime, we have had a relatively trivial drop in the price of gold to which many gold bugs threw in the towel in disgust.

Clearly, gold is not the fantastic bargain it was six years ago, but it is still a relative bargain as long as the fundamentals hold, no matter how the US dollar meanders over time. Maybe this correction steepens, and maybe it doesn't, but the fundamental case for gold has not changed one bit.

Reflections on a Tweet

I wrote the above this morning at 5:00AM for posting sometime today (with a title simply on the fundamentals of gold). Well low-and-behold (to use my reader's phrase), I wake up to see this tweet posted by Nouriel Roubini on ZeroHedge

"Gold at a 7 weeks low down to 1635. Where is 2000 gold dear gold bugs?"

Dear Nouriel Roubini

As noted above, the fundamental case for gold has not changed. In a single sentence, the fundamental case for gold is that Monetartist clowns and Keynesian fools will eventually get their way.

When it comes to bailouts and printing money, it is nearly given central banks will try it, with more and more force, each time. The irony Nouriel, is you are begging them to do just that, every step of the way.

Gold has only fallen because central bankers ignored (for the time being), your foolish recommendations to print and spend more money.

If central banks do not resort to the printing press, if governments do not give in to more absurd Keynesian stimulus ideas, and if the US budget deficit is brought under control, then, yes, gold may have topped.

How likely is that?

Nouriel, if you want to better understand the fundamentals of gold, I advise you to look in the mirror and recite your "cure" for the economy.

How long have you been bearish on gold anyway? For something like forever or simply the last 1000 points? Regardless of your answer, the monetary policies you yourself espouse would have us at $2000 right now.

Instead, central banks have actually acted more rationally (for the time being) than many expected.

No one can predict short-term movements, but it would behoove you to understand long-term fundamentals or gold will make you look like a fool, yet again.

Addendum:

Flashback October 22, 2009: Nouriel Roubini: Big Crash Coming

Roubini: I don't believe in gold. Gold can go up for only two reasons. [One is] inflation, and we are in a world where there are massive amounts of deflation because of a glut of capacity, and demand is weak, and there's slack in the labor markets with unemployment peeking above 10 percent in all the advanced economies. So there's no inflation, and there's not going to be for the time being.

The only other case in which gold can go higher with deflation is if you have Armageddon, if you have another depression. But we've avoided that tail risk as well. So all the gold bugs who say gold is going to go to $1,500, $2,000, they're just speaking nonsense. Without inflation, or without a depression, there's nowhere for gold to go. Yeah, it can go above $1,000, but it can't move up 20-30 percent unless we end up in a world of inflation or another depression. I don't see either of those being likely for the time being. Maybe three or four years from now, yes. But not anytime soon.

I do not care about wrong predictions. I do care about wrong thinking., especially consistently wrong thinking. Roubini's thinking has been and remains consistently wrong.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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