Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Serious People Are Starting To Realize That We May Be Looking At World War III
The statement released Friday by Standard & Poor's explaining its downgrade of the United States' credit rating expressed greater concern about the inability of the American political system to handle troublesome economic realities than it did about those economic realities themselves. It read:
"The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011."
Thus, what directly prompted the historic decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating was worsening political dysfunction, not the "economic challenges" which Standard & Poor's described as "ongoing." The political, even geopolitical, repercussions of those challenges can only be expected to grow.
Noting liberal despair over the government's inability to combat economic depression, and conservative skepticism that traditional tools will be effective, John Judis of The New Republic argues that a global depression far longer and more severe than anyone expected now seems nearly impossible to avoid. Judis believes that the coming "depression" will be accompanied by geopolitical upheaval and institutional collapse.
"As the experience of the 1930s testified, a prolonged global downturn can have profound political and geopolitical repercussions. In the U.S. and Europe, the downturn has already inspired unsavory, right-wing populist movements. It could also bring about trade wars and intense competition over natural resources, and the eventual breakdown of important institutions like European Union and the World Trade Organization. Even a shooting war is possible."
Daniel Knowles of the Telegraph has noticed a similar trend. In a post titled, "This Really Is Beginning To Look Like 1931," Knowles argues that we could be witnessing the transition from recession to global depression that last occurred two years after the 1929 market collapse, and eight years before Germany invaded Poland, triggering the Second World War:
"The difference today is that so far, the chain reaction of a default has been avoided by bailouts. Countries are not closing down their borders or arming their soldiers – they can agree on some solution, if not a good solution. But the fundamental problem – the spiral downwards caused by confidence crises and ever rising interest rates – is exactly the same now as it was in 1931. And as Italy and Spain come under attack, we are reaching the limit of how much that sticking plaster can heal. Tensions between European countries unseen in decades are emerging."
Knowles wrote that post three days ago. Since then it has become abundantly obvious that Europe will soon become unwilling or unable to continue bailing out every country with a debt problem. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy continues to chug along, to the extent it is chugging at all, on the false security offered by a collective distaste for one ratings agency and its poor mathematics.
That can't continue forever. The next few months will show S&P's downgrade to have been too little and too late, rather than too drastic and too soon. The Eurozone will fall apart. The American political crisis will only worsen; the "super-committee" will utterly fail, true to design. Soon enough, we may all wake up to a "reckoning" truly deserving of the name.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/serious-people-are-starting-to-realize-that-we-may-be-looking-at-world-war-iii-2011-8?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMoneyGame+%28The+Money+Game%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz1UXjNtnU1
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Gold may hit $2,500 in 2011: JP Morgan
Gold could surge to US$2,500 per ounce or higher by the end of 2011, according to J.P. Morgan commodity analysts Colin Fenton and Jonah Waxman.
Before Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ debt rating, they thought spot gold could average US$1,800 by year-end. Now that view looks too conservative, the analysts told clients.
They also see a lot of upside for raw sugar prices, possibly doubling or more in a spike as a result of weakness in the U.S. dollar and rising inflation.
They analyst recommend owning commodities geared toward Asia, investment and inflation, while being underweight those tied to the United States or consumption.
“In the near term, most commodity markets appear likely to convulse lower, as a growth scare dislodges physical inventories and impairs orders,” they said. “These fears could linger in the United States, where private funding costs will likely go up and household balance sheets will be further strained.”
However, the analysts expect commodity markets linked to emerging market growth, infrastructure investment and inflation will stabilize relatively quickly, outperforming markets more closely tied to developed markets.
Not only is this trend already evident in the rising gold price since Friday’s downgrade, but also in renewed widening of the Brent-WTI crude oil spread.
The J.P. Morgan analysts favour a basket that includes Brent crude oil, gasoil, gold, raw sugar, copper, corn and wheat. They recommend hedging this risk with underweights or shorts in a group that includes WTI crude oil, RBOB gasoline, aluminum, zinc and North American natural gas.
“Despite the novelty of a US downgrade, a debt-focused scare is normal for this stage of the business cycle,” they said. “The macro backdrop better parallels mid-cycle pauses in 1995 and 1998, rather than end cycle 1981 or 2008, though the risk of a worse outcome is rising and should not be ignored.”
financial post
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Freddie Mac Seeks $1.5 Billion More From Taxpayers
Mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac said on Monday it would need to ask for an additional $1.5 billion from taxpayers due to losses stemming from weak housing markets.
CNBC.com
Freddie Mac
The company reported a comprehensive loss in the second quarter of $1.1 billion. Despite income of $1 billion, the company registered a net worth deficit of $1.5 billion.
That is, in part, because it was required to pay dividends worth $1.6 billion to the Treasury. As a result, the cost to taxpayers of its rescue declined by $100 million this quarter.
Freddie Mac has drawn $65.2 billion from the government since it was taken over at the height of the financial crisis in September of 2008.
Because of dividend payments, the net cost of Freddie Mac's rescue peaked at $56.2 billion in the second quarter of last year. In the most recent quarter, the cost eased to $52 billion.
Freddie Mac said it expects home prices to decline in the near term, and that it expects its credit losses to remain elevated in the second half of the year.
Labor market weakness and households' worries about their financial security dampened home sales during the quarter, Freddie Mac chief executive Charles Haldeman said.
"While we expect some improvement in home sales during the second half of the year, our outlook for the single-family housing market remains cautious," he said.
Fellow mortgage finance provider Fannie Mae said last week it will ask for an additional $5.1 billion from taxpayers. It reported a second quarter loss attributable to common shareholders of $5.2 billion or 90 cents a share.
The government seized control of both firms almost three years ago as losses piled up from mortgages gone bad.
The administration and Congress are considering ways to restructure the two enterprises, which despite their financial woes are central to U.S. housing finance. The issue is highly contentious politically and lawmakers are not expected to take up the matter for several more months.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's on Monday downgraded the debt issued by the firms to double-A-plus from triple-A, the highest level, following their weakening of the U.S. government's credit rating last week.
Stocks Suffer Sharpest Drop Since 2008
The stock market resumed its free fall Monday on mounting fears about the stalling economy and worries that the government had few options to increase growth, dual concerns that overshadowed the downgrade of long-term United States government debt.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 634 points, or 5.6 percent, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 -stock index dropped 6.7 percent, the biggest retreats since December 2008 in the midst of the financial crisis, accelerating a sell-off that began a couple of weeks ago. The S.& P. 500 is now down 18 percent from its April 29 peak and is nearing official bear market territory, defined as a fall of 20 percent.
So anxious are many investors that they poured money intoTreasury securities, the debt the government sells to finance its operations. Even though the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded United States debt a notch from the sterling AAA rating on Friday, judging them a slightly higher risk than before, many still deem Treasuries to be safer than just about any other investment.
Typically, a downgrade would cause investors to sell, but financial turmoil in Europe and policy gridlock in Washington overrode concerns about the downgrade. “This is investors running from risk wherever they see it,” said David Kelly, chief market strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “The biggest risk we face here is recession.”
The stock sell-off picked up speed even though President Obama sought to calm markets, telling reporters that “our problems are eminently solvable and we know what we need to do to solve them.” However, there is sharp disagreement how to solve them, as demonstrated by the fiercely partisan battle over raising the federal government’s borrowing limit, which was resolved only through a last-minute compromise.
In the wake of the financial collapse more than two years ago, the government took various steps to invigorate the economy, pouring money into the financial system and adopting stimulus spending. Some economists say they think more stimulus spending is needed now to keep the economy from slowing further, but this seems unlikely given that many Republicans say the country can ill afford to add to the gaping budget deficit with more spending.
It was not just the stock market that was rattled. A few obscure but important parts of the credit market also showed signs of some stress. For example, the market for commercial paper, short-term loans that companies use to finance themselves, became less favorable. This was not nearly as bad as during the financial crisis but people will be keeping an eye on this to see if conditions deteriorate.
“The cause of all this was the marking down of growth expectations,” said Barry Knapp, strategist at Barclays Capital. “It has morphed into one giant global growth recession concern.”
The trading day opened ominously in the United States, after sharp drops of stocks in Asia and in Europe. The European Central Bank sought to calm investors by intervening aggressively in bond markets with special measures to help support financially troubled Spain and Italy, to little avail.
On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Doreen Mogavero, a trader for Mogavero, Lee & Company, noted that other traders had canceled vacations in anticipation of a wild day. Extra staff was on duty to make sure the computer systems were working properly as volumes surged.
The exchange processed a record 390 million orders in the first hour of trading, eclipsing the last record in May 2010. All told, 18 billion shares trades on the nation’s stock market, the most active day in a year.
Many investors — burned by the relentless decline of stocks in the months after the 2008 financial collapse — seem inclined to sell rather than wait. “It is the psychological impact that I am concerned about in terms of confidence on the market,” said Ms. Mogavero.
The force of the stock market sell-off that has accelerated over the last two weeks — the broader S.& P. 500-stock index has lost 16.8 percent since July 22 — is creating the growing sense that the economy may be nearing a double-dip recession as everyone from consumers to businesses retrench.
The biggest declines were in bank stocks. Bank of America fell 20 percent. Citigroup fell 16 percent. Morgan Stanley dropped 14 percent. JPMorgan fell 9 percent. And Goldman Sachs fell 6 percent.
Investors feared that banks could be hit by the economic slowdown and that, with government spending constrained, lenders would be less likely to receive official support in the future should they need it, as they did during the financial crisis.
New York Times
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