Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Spanish Banks Account for 47% of ECB Credit in February; Spain's Real Debt to GDP Ratio is 110% Not Reported 68%; Spain Will Implode. It's a Wonder it Hasn't Already
Gallup Struggles to Explain BLS Jobs Data
Real Hourly Earnings Decline in February
Wall Street Pimps and Whores Story Extends Far Beyond Goldman Sachs: Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, All Guilty

Spanish Banks Account for 47% of ECB Credit in February; Spain's Real Debt to GDP Ratio is 110% Not Reported 68%; Spain Will Implode. It's a Wonder it Hasn't Already

Posted: 16 Mar 2012 11:11 PM PDT

Spain's weight in the eurozone economy is roughly 14%. Yet Spanish Banks Account for Nearly Half of ECB Credit in February. Vial Google translate ...

Spanish banks in February captured almost half of the credit granted by the European Central Bank (ECB), before the drought through the wholesale market funding. As reported on Wednesday the Bank of Spain, the use of the entities to the extraordinary liquidity window of the body that presides Mario Draghi reached half the 152,400 million euros, equivalent to 47% of total outstanding debt to return to ECB for all banks in the Eurosystem.

Both the percentage and the total volume of borrowed money account for two-time highs, exceeding by far the weight of Spain in the European sector, 14%.

Furthermore, for the future, the figure will rise, as these data do not reflect the impact of the second extraordinary auction to three years of the ECB, on February 29 which dealt with 529,000 billion from 800 banks.

Public debt has grown by 21% on bank balance sheets in December 2011 compared to 2010, "which shows that liquidity in the ECB does not reach the economy."

Juan Luis Garcia Alejo, Inversis Management director, said "There is no doubt that institutions take advantage of LTRO money to earn net interest income by investing in debt."

Spain's Real Debt to GDP Ratio is 110% Not Reported 68%

While noting that Spanish banks are betting heavily on the success of the LTRO, please note strong evidence that Spain's debt-to-GDP ratio is wildly understated because it does not include regional debt, nor does it include government guaranteed bank debt and other miscellaneous items.

Please consider these snips from The Fool's Game: Unraveling Europe's Epic Ponzi Pyramid of Lies by Zero Hedge.

If we just take the newest figures for Spain, which were released this morning, we find an admitted sovereign debt of $732Bn and a touted debt to GDP ratio of 68.5% which is up 10.7% from last year.

In a report issued on 2/29/12 and apparently ignored by everyone including the ratings agencies, Eurostat reports that Spain has total sovereign guarantees of "other debt" which is 7.5% of their total GDP which would total around another $72.2 billion in uncounted debt. Then if we consider [all] the "known" debt we find:

Admitted Sovereign Debt ................. $732 Billion

Admitted Regional Debt ................... $183 Billion

Admitted Bank Guaranteed Debt ..... $103 Billion

Admitted Other Guaranteed Debt .... $72 Billion

Total Admitted Debt ......................... $1.09 Trillion

A More Accurate Debt to GDP Ratio ....... 113.2%

In the same Eurostat report, by the way, of 2/29/12 we also find that Belgium's sovereign guarantee of "other debt" is 21.3% of their GDP, for Italy it is 3.6% of their GDP and for Portugal the number is 7.7% of their GDP. This does not include any guarantees of bank debt which would also have to be added in to the totals to reflect some sort of accurate fiscal picture. Consequently, as investors, we are not in some murky place but smack dab in a carefully engineered plan of outright Fraud where we are given manipulated and inaccurate numbers in the hopes that we will fund based upon them.

Spain Will Implode

Not only are published GDP figures a lie, so are published debt figures. The result is a complete farce in debt-to-GDP accounting.

Meanwhile Spanish banks continue to plow into leveraged debt on their own bonds, with Spanish unemployment over 23%, with youth unemployment of 49%, with widening regional debt problems, with massive unrecognized housing sector losses, and with more austerity measures coming that will exacerbate all of the previously mentioned problems!

This Ponzi scheme cannot last, which means it won't. Spain will implode. Indeed, it's a wonder it hasn't already.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Gallup Struggles to Explain BLS Jobs Data

Posted: 16 Mar 2012 12:40 PM PDT

The latest BLS jobs report and the latest Gallup survey on jobs and unemployment are so out of line, that Gallup has commented on it in followup article Unemployment Numbers Suggest U.S. Economic Boom, or Not

A careful look at the government's unadjusted household unemployment data shows a stunning 740,000 jobs added to the economy in February -- three times the 227,000 reported based on the establishment payroll survey.

If this is economic reality, then the underlying economy must be growing much faster than most Americans currently believe. If the U.S. economy is surging, and jobs increased at the rate of three-quarters of a million last month, why haven't we heard a lot more about it? And, given a rapidly expanding economy, how can Gallup's nearly 30,000 random interviews with Americans across the nation show a significant increase in the unemployment rate?

This morning on CNBC, there was discussion about how the increase in payroll survey jobs is hard to reconcile with economists' growth estimates for the U.S. economy. If the payroll jobs numbers are right, then the economy is growing faster than estimated, or maybe, productivity is plunging. Of course, if there are questions about how we reconcile payroll jobs with other economic data, making economic sense of the household survey surge in jobs is even more difficult.

Gallup Reports Large Jump in Unemployment to 9.1%, Underemployment to 19.1%

I talked about this on March 8 in Gallup Reports Large Jump in Unemployment to 9.1%, Underemployment to 19.1%

U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December.

The 0.5-percentage-point increase in February compared with January is the largest such month-to-month change Gallup has recorded in its not-seasonally adjusted measure since December 2010, when the rate rose 0.8 points to 9.6% from 8.8% in November. A year ago, Gallup recorded a February increase of 0.4 percentage points, to 10.3% from 9.9% in January 2011.

Gallup's U.S. underemployment measure, which combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed and the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, increased to 19.1% in February from 18.7% in January. This is an improvement from the 19.9% of February 2011.

Unemployment Rate Not Seasonally Adjusted

Except for the years 2008-2009, and recessions in general, seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate tends to peak in January. Thus it will be interesting to watch Gallup's numbers for the next few months to see if there is a definite change in trend.

As it stands now, I do not believe BLS numbers, and neither so it seems, does Gallup.

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

Real Hourly Earnings Decline in February

Posted: 16 Mar 2012 10:19 AM PDT

Earnings are up a fraction of a percent in February, but the CPI is up four times as much. The result is "real" earnings are down once again, having peaked in October 2010.

Real average hourly earnings for all employees fell 0.3 percent from January 2012 to February 2012, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. A 0.1 percent increase in the average hourly earnings was more than offset by a 0.4 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).

Real average weekly earnings fell 0.3 percent over the month due to the decline in the real average hourly earnings combined with an unchanged workweek. Since reaching a peak in October 2010, real average weekly earnings has fallen 1.2 percent.

Real average hourly earnings fell 1.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, from February 2011 to February 2012. The decrease in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.6 percent increase in average weekly hours resulted in a 0.4 percent decrease in real average weekly earnings during this period.

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

Wall Street Pimps and Whores Story Extends Far Beyond Goldman Sachs: Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, All Guilty

Posted: 15 Mar 2012 11:49 PM PDT

Much has been written these past few days about allegations of impropriety at Goldman Sachs. For example, I commented on the Parasitic Behavior of Goldman to Its Clients.

Some defended Goldman, however, there really is no defense. Worse yet, the problem goes far beyond Goldman to Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and for that matter everywhere else one looks.

I will get into specifics in a bit, but first consider an email from Timothy who writes

Hello Mish,

I just had to comment on your post. My dad lost 100's of thousands in GM bonds. He was a 30 year client of Merrill Lynch.

His portfolio is always 100% invested. That's the Wall Street psychology.

Timothy

Yes Timothy, that is the philosophy because it benefits Wall Street, not the client. Moreover, I am not surprised in the least by the pimping of GM.

Underwriters get paid to pimp garbage. They do not care what fools, pension plans, or widows on their last dime they sucker in. All they are concerned with is pimping the bond, pimping the IPO, and pimping whatever "trading" portfolio the corporation has to whatever suckers they can find.

Moral Bankruptcy of Wall Street

Flashback Aug 5, 2008.

Please consider General Motors and the Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Wall Street by by Karen De Coster and Eric Englund on Lew Rockwell.

On June 25, 2007, Wall Street powerhouse Morgan Stanley put out a "buy" recommendation with respect to General Motors' common stock. Robert Barry, Morgan Stanley's star analyst, proclaimed a 52-week target price of $42 per share. Less than five months later, on November 7, 2007, Wall Street analysts were stunned by General Motors' staggering third-quarter (9/30/07) loss of $39 billion — one of the largest bookkeeping losses in history, which was mostly related to the writedown of deferred tax assets.

Fifty-three weeks after Morgan Stanley's buy recommendation, GM's stock hit a 54-year low of $9.98 per share — on July 2, 2008, after Merrill Lynch's recommendation had gone from a "buy" to "underperform" (i.e., sell) on that day. In one sweeping move overnight, Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy cut his target price on GM by a whopping 75%, reducing the target price from $28 to $7. So how is it that GM suddenly went from respectability to mediocrity — in one analyst's mind — overnight? In fact, why did it take until July 2008 to concede that GM was on life support? Wall Street, belatedly, is willing to acknowledge the fact that General Motors is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

Accordingly, key questions come to the forefront. How did any stock analyst, worth his salt, get blindsided by the aforementioned $38.3 billion writedown of deferred tax assets? Are Wall Street's Ivy League-educated MBAs able to comprehend advanced accounting and finance? Has rigorous security analysis, on Wall Street, been supplanted by self-serving cheerleading and inane platitudes with the objective of transferring wealth from the masses to the Wall Street elites?

For Wall Street analysts to claim "surprise" at GM's massive deferred tax asset writedown, during fiscal year 2007, and to finally discuss (in mid-2008) General Motors' financial condition in terms of a possible bankruptcy, indicate that low-level fluff is easily passed on to Main Street "investors" under the guise of serious analysis.

The point here is that GM is so unprofitable that its top-level management realized they had to come clean and write down the value of its deferred tax assets because it became completely unpredictable as to when the company would actually return to making a profit, and thus use that tax asset against any future tax liability it incurs.

So, just how savvy are some of Wall Street's best and brightest analysts? Nine days before GM's deferred tax asset writedown bombshell, UBS upgraded its rating of GM to a "buy." On September 13, 2007, Citigroup initiated coverage and issued a buy recommendation. Other Wall Street heavyweights, in 2007, that had weighed in with "upgraded" opinions of GM included Banc of America Securities, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Securities. One must heed Graham and Dodd's words as to what purpose is behind a securities analyst's recommendation. But then again, Wall Street analysts long ago abandoned their roles of providing independent expertise, and instead turned to selling their firm's investment banking services.

Blatant Fraud, Not Rampant Stupidity

I invite you to read the rest of that damning exposé because there is plenty more to the story. Moreover, the story goes far beyond what is credible for a simple "stupidity" explanation.

Unfortunately, the pimping of GM stocks and bonds when GM was clearly headed towards bankruptcy is exactly the kind of "semi-soft fraud" that no one can prove.

A Word on Conflict of Interest and Bias

I am biased. So is John Hussman; So is Barry Ritholtz; So is Marc Faber; So is Jim Chanos; So is everyone else. We all are. It's impossible to not be biased by something.

However, no one in the above group gets paid to underwrite securities. No one in the above group to the best of my knowledge gets paid commissions on transactions.

Therein lies the rub. Wall Street pimps and whores have no fiduciary responsibility to clients but they do have a vested interest to peddle compete garbage to anyone and everyone.

For that reason, I am strongly in favor of a "hard" wall between giving investment advice and offering securities to trade. Clearly the "soft promise" by Wall Street that "we won't do it" is insufficient.

Some may suggest this goes against my Libertarian principles. I disagree. No Libertarian should be against laws that preserve property rights and no Libertarian should be against laws designed for the explicit purpose of preventing fraud.

Interestingly, independent investment advisors such as myself do have a hard legal requirement of fiduciary responsibility.

However, Wall Street pimps and whores do not have a legal requirement for fiduciary responsibility. Instead they duck and hide under "suitability" clauses.

That does not mean I will always be right, and indeed I guarantee you in advance I won't be. However, I will guarantee you that I will not recommend anything I do not believe to be in the best interest of clients.

GM bonds, rating agency garbage, IPO mania, Beat-the-Street hype, and "Strong Buy" hysteria while insiders unload and firms actually bet against advice given to clients are proof of the pudding.

The fraud and the greed speaks for itself.

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

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Friday, March 16, 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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