Category: zerohedge

Authored by Lance Roberts via Real Investment Advice,

There is in interesting dichotomy currently occurring within the economy. While consumer confidence, as reported by the Census Bureau, soared to some of the highest levels seen since the turn of the century, the hard economic data continues to remain quite weak. As noted by Morgan Stanley just recently:

“Compare the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s current 1Q GDP tracking vs ours – FRBNY is currently tracking 1Q GDP at 3.0% versus us around 1%. The difference is larger than usual and is being driven by the fact that the New York Fed incorporates soft data into its tracking (attempting to tie it econometrically to GDP, a very hard thing to do especially in real-time). Our method translates the incoming hard data into its GDP equivalent. Note that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracking also focuses on hard data and is currently tracking 1% for 1Q GDP.”

 

The stunning divergence can be seen in the chart attached to that same article which shows the difference between the “hard” and “soft” data specifically.

 

What is currently expected by those with a more “bullish bias” is the hard data will soon play catch up with the soft data. Importantly, as I discussed in “Fade To Black”, this is the basis of the markets continued optimism that tax reforms, repatriations and infrastructure spending create the “reflationary” dynamics necessary to spur economic growth of 3-4%.

However, there may be a problem.

Economic cycles do not last indefinitely. While fiscal and monetary policies can extend cycles by “pulling forward” future consumption, such actions create an eventual “void” that cannot be filled. In fact, there is mounting evidence the “event horizon” may have been reached as seen through the lens of auto sales.

Following the financial crisis the average age of vehicles on the road had gotten fairly extended so a replacement cycle became more likely. This replacement cycle was accelerated when the Obama Administration launched the “cash for clunkers” program which reduced the number of “used” vehicles for sale pushing individuals into new cars. Combine replacement needs with low interest rates, easy financing, and extended terms and you get a sales cycle as shown below.

 

The issue is, of course, there are only a finite number of people to sell new cars too.

 

What the chart above shows is the number of cars sold currently now exceeds both the total increase in population and replacement needs of the existing population. In other words, the pool of available buyers is rapidly being depleted.

But more importantly, while the media touts “record auto sales,” it is a far different story when compared to the increase in the population. With total sales only slightly eclipsing the previous record, given the increase in the population this is not the victory the media wishes to make it sound. In fact, the current level of auto sales on a per capita basis is only back to where near the bottom of recessions with the exception of the “financial crisis.”

 

Furthermore, the annual rate of auto sales has slowed dramatically and is approaching levels normally associated with more severe economic weakness.

 

But slowing auto sales is only one-half of the problem. The problem for automakers is, as always, they continue to produce inventory even though demand is slowing. The cars are then shifted to dealers which have to resort to increasing levels of incentives to get the inventory sold. However, eventually, this is a losing game. The chart below shows the current level of swelling inventories relative to sales.

 

There is a limit to the level of incentives that dealers can provide to move inventory. Wolf Richter recently penned a really good report on this issue:

“J.D. Power and LMC Automotive pegged incentives at $3,768 per new vehicle sold – the highest ever for any March. The prior record for March was achieved in 2009 as the industry was collapsing. In June 2009, GM filed for bankruptcy.”

The Subprime Problem Resurfaces

Given the lack of wage growth, consumers are needing to get payments down to levels where they can afford them. Furthermore, about 1/3rd of the loans are going to individuals with credit scores averaging 550 which carry much higher rates up to 20%. In fact, since 2010, the share of sub-prime Auto ABS origination has come from deep subprime deals which have increased from just 5.1% in 2010 to 32.5% currently. That growth has been augmented by the emergence of new deep sub-prime lenders which are lenders who did not issue loans prior to 2012.

 

While there has been much touting of the strength of the consumer in recent years, it has been a credit driven mirage. With income growth weak, debt levels elevated and rent and health care costs chipping away at disposable incomes, in order to make payments even remotely possible, terms are often stretched to 84 months.

The eventual issue is that since cars are typically turned over every 3-5 years on average, borrowers are typically upside down in their vehicle when it comes time to trade it in. Between the negative equity of their trade-in, along with title, taxes, and license fees, and a hefty dealer profit rolled into the original loan, there is going to be a substantial problem down the road. As noted by Reuters:

“Typically, car dealers tack on an amount equal to the negative equity to a loan for the consumers’ next vehicle. To keep the monthly payments stable, the new credit is for a greater length of time.

 

Over the course of multiple trade-ins, negative equity accumulates. Moody’s calls this the ‘trade-in treadmill,’ the result of which is ‘increasing lender risk, with larger and larger loss-severity exposure.’

 

To ease consumers’ monthly payments, auto manufacturers could subsidize lenders or increase incentives to reduce purchase prices, though either action would reduce their profits, the report said.”

Auto loans, in general, have been in a huge boom that reached $1.11 trillion in the fourth quarter 2016. As noted above, 33.5% of those loans are sub-prime, or $371.85 billion.

 

With more sub-prime auto loans outstanding currently than prior to the financial crisis, defaults rising rapidly and a large majority with negative equity in their vehicles, swapping out to a new car is becoming a near impossible option. Recently, Matt Turner cobbled together some interesting data from several sources on this issue.

The 60-day delinquency rate for subprime auto loans is at the highest level in at least seven years according to Fitch. The jump in losses on sub-prime auto loans moved to 9.1% in January, up from 7.9% a year earlier. The data suggests there is notable deterioration in the performance of these loans and given there are roughly 6-million individuals at least 90-days late on payments suggests rising stress levels of the consumer.

 

While the “cash for clunkers” program by the Obama Administration caused a massive surge in used vehicle prices due to the rapid depletion of inventory at the time, much of that inventory has now been rebuilt. Now, used vehicle prices are dropping sharply, as the market is flooded with off-lease vehicles and consumer demand is weakening.

 

As noted above, the issue of the “trade-in treadmill” is a major issue for auto lenders as default risk continues to increase. Per Moody’s:

“The percentage of trade-ins with negative equity is at an all-time high, as is the average dollar amount of that negative equity. Lenders are increasingly faced with the choice of taking on greater risk by rolling negative equity at trade-in into the next vehicle loan. We believe they are increasingly taking this choice, resulting in mounting negative equity with successive new-car purchases.”

 

Asset-backed securities based on auto loans are showing signs of stress, with the subprime auto ABS delinquency rate closing in on crisis-era peak levels. Per Morgan Stanley:

“Across prime and subprime ABS, 60+ delinquencies are currently printing at 0.54% and 4.51%, respectively, with the latter approaching crisis-era peak levels (4.69%). Default rates are also picking up in similar fashion (prime: 1.52%; subprime: 11.96%), printing close to crisis levels. While prime severities slowly crept past 50% recently, subprime severities have breached 60%, a level we haven’t seen since late 2009. With both default rates and loss severities trending up, it is no surprise to see annualized net loss rates moving in the same direction.”

 

Given the importance of automobiles to the domestic manufacturing sector of the economy, the extent to which the sale of autos to consumers has likely reached an important inflection point. As shown in the last chart below, the previous recessionary warnings from autos was dismissed until far too late, it is likely not a good idea to dismiss it this time.

 

Why does this matter? Because it isn’t just auto loans. As Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns noted:

“The big three areas of credit expansion this cycle – energy, auto and student loans.”

In the fall 2016 survey ahead of the latest borrowing reassessment this past October, Haynes and Boone said that respondents on average expected 41 percent of the borrowers to see a decrease. This decrease was expected at an average of 20 percent, in which lenders were expecting a 16-percent decrease and borrowers a 29-percent decrease.

While energy prices recovered enough to allow drillers to start back operations, primarily in the Permian Basin, the surge in supply is leading to another potential glut by 2018 and another downturn in oil prices. Such an event will put further strain on lenders as default risk rise in the sector. 

Currently, 42.4 million Americans owe $1.3 trillion in federal student loans. More than 4.2 million borrowers were in default as of the end of 2016, up from 3.6 million in 2015. In all, 1.1 million more borrowers went into or re-entered default last year.

And then there is also the problem of commercial real estate (CRE) where rapid loan growth over the past year, combined with recent underwriting reviews, raise many concerns over the quality of CRE risk management, particularly managing concentrations. Add to that weak underwriting and erosion of covenant protections in leveraged lending and you have real problems.

So, if you are wondering where the next “economic shock” may come from...there is a “clear and present danger” lurking below the headlines.

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In a just released report from the CBO looking at the long-term US budget outlook, the budget office forecasts that both government debt and deficits are expected to soar in the coming 30 years, with debt/GDP expected to hit 150% by 2047 if the current government spending picture remains unchanged.

The CBO's revision from the last, 2016 projection, shows a marked deterioration in both total debt and budget deficits, with the former increasing by 5% to 146%, while the latter rising by almost 1% from 8.8% of GDP to 9.6% by 2017.

According to the CBO, "at 77 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II. If current laws generally remained unchanged, the Congressional Budget Office projects, growing budget deficits would boost that debt sharply over the next 30 years; it would reach 150 percent of GDP in 2047."

In addition to the booming debts, the office expects the deficit to more than triple from the projected 2.9% of GDP in 2017 to 9.8% in 2047. The deficit at the end of fiscal year 2016 stood at $587 billion.

A comaprison of government spending and revenues in 2017 vs 2047 shows the following picture:

The CBO also mentions rising rates as another key reason for the increasing debt burden. The Federal Reserve has kept rates low since the financial crisis but is on track to gradually hike rates in the coming year.

On the growth side, the CBO expects 2% or less GDP growth over the next three decades, far below the number proposed by the Trump administration.

The budget office breaks down the primary causes of projected growth in US spending as follows: not surprisingly, it is all about unsustainable social security and health care program outlays.

The CBO's troubling conclusion:

Greater Chance of a Fiscal Crisis. A large and continuously growing federal debt would increase the chance of a fiscal crisis in the United States. Specifically, investors might become less willing to finance federal borrowing unless they were compensated with high returns. If so, interest rates on federal debt would rise abruptly, dramatically increasing the cost of government borrowing. That increase would reduce the market value of outstanding government securities, and investors could lose money. The resulting losses for mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and other holders of government debt might be large enough to cause some financial institutions to fail, creating a fiscal crisis. An additional result would be a higher cost for private-sector borrowing because uncertainty about the government’s responses could reduce confidence in the viability of private-sector enterprises.

 

It is impossible for anyone to accurately predict whether or when such a fiscal crisis might occur in the United States. In particular, the debt-to-GDP ratio has no identifiable tipping point to indicate that a crisis is likely or imminent. All else being equal, however, the larger a government’s debt, the greater the risk of a fiscal crisis.

 

The likelihood of such a crisis also depends on conditions in the economy. If investors expect continued growth, they are generally less concerned about the government’s debt burden. Conversely, substantial debt can reinforce more generalized concern about an economy. Thus, fiscal crises around the world often have begun during recessions and, in turn, have exacerbated them.

 

If a fiscal crisis occurred in the United States, policymakers would have only limited—and unattractive—options for responding. The government would need to undertake some combination of three approaches: restructure the debt (that is, seek to modify the contractual terms of existing obligations), use monetary policy to raise inflation above expectations, or adopt large and abrupt spending cuts or tax increases.

Then again, as the past 8 years have shown, only debt cures more debt, so expect nothing to change.

Also, we find it just a little confusing why the CBO never warned of an imminent "fiscal crisis" over the past 8 years when total US debt doubled, increasing by $10 trillion under the previous administration.

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Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is holding its first open hearing in its investigation into Russian interference in the election.  The two-part panel, held at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., will first question academics on Russian influence operations, then turn to a cybersecurity company that confirmed the original hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last summer.

As The Hill notes, committee leaders have sought to distance themselves from the partisan furor in the House Intelligence Committee’s concurrent investigation, publicly vowing cooperation and bipartisanship.  Chair and ranking member Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) gave a joint press conference to that effect Thursday, and rank-and-file members made the rounds on the morning shows Thursday to tout the same message: “We’ve got this. “

On the witness docket for today’s first hearing are:

Eugene Rumer
Director of Russia and Eurasia Program
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Roy Godson
Professor of Government Emeritus
Georgetown University

Clint Watts
Senior Fellow
Foreign Policy Research Institute Program on National Security

Watch the hearing live below:

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As the imbroglio within the House Intel Committee continues with Democrats refusing the listen to the 'message' without knowing who the 'messenger' was, Speaker Ryan provided a little more color on the source of Devin Nunes' information about incidental surveillance of President Trump’s team.

.@SpeakerRyan says Nunes told him that "like a whistleblower-type person had given him some info that was new." https://t.co/dVqkkpkv2d http://pic.twitter.com/kYqIyUEZRG

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) March 30, 2017

As The Hill reports, Ryan said Thursday on “CBS This Morning" that:

"[Nunes] had told me that a whistleblower type person had given him some information that was new, that spoke to the last administration and part of this investigation,”

 

“What Chairman Nunes said was he came into possession of new information he thought was valuable to this investigation and he was going to go and inform people about it.”

We wonder what Ryan's definition of a "whistleblower-type" is?

Ryan also said he did not urge Nunes to inform Trump of his findings, saying he told him to include it in his committee's probe of Russia’s election interference.

“He didn’t have the documents, so I didn’t,” Ryan said when asked if he saw Nunes's physical evidence. "He was going to brief everybody.”

Of course, 'whistleblower' or not, Democrats will refuse to accept the facts in the new information because it just does not fit their narrative. Is anyone surprised that multiple Democrats (and one Republican) have demanded that Nunes recuse himself (or resign) and are even beginning a probe into Nunes' connections? Govern the bloody country already!!

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Moments ago, all three main US FX pairs, the yen, euro and yuan snapped higher, following a CNBC report according to which the Trump administration is studying ways to penalize countries whose currencies it believes are undervalued. CNBC cited two unidentified people with direct knowledge of the review who work within the administration.

Trump’s econ team is studying alternative strategies to labeling China a currency manipulator, the people say and add that the “effort” includes Treasury, Commerce Dept, National Economic Council, National Trade Council and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative One law that has generated particular attention is the Trade Enforcement and Trade Facilitation Act.

The result: an immediate plunge in the USD as follows:

USDJPY

USDCNH:

In the report, CNBC notes that the Trump administration is assessing the scope of its power to penalize countries whose currencies it believes are undervalued, according to two people with direct knowledge of the review, “an effort to fulfill the president’s campaign pledge to crack down on what he frequently called unfair trade.”

President Donald Trump promised to label China as a currency manipulator on day one of his presidency, but has not done so. That process is actually directed by the Treasury Department, which is not slated to release its official analysis of international currency until later this spring. Even then, many analysts are skeptical that the administration would take the aggressive step of slapping China with such a label.

 

In the meantime, the administration’s economic team is looking at alternative strategies, said the two people, both of whom work within the administration. The effort includes not only Treasury, but also the Commerce Department, National Economic Council, National Trade Council and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, one of the officials said.

According to CNBC one approach that has garnered particular attention is the Trade Enforcement and Trade Facilitation Act, which was enacted during the final months of President Barack Obama’s administration. “It was intended to act as a check on separate legislation that gave Obama broad latitude to negotiate the Asian trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. Critics of that agreement argued that it did not sufficiently protect against currency manipulation.”

The Trade Enforcement and Trade Facilitation Act details several consequences for nations that have devalued their currency and also have large current account surpluses. It allows the president to block future federal contracts with those countries and to choke off government financing for U.S. businesses seeking to invest there. The law also calls for pressuring the International Monetary Fund for heightened surveillance and for currency valuation to be considered in trade negotiations.

“China is likely to take overt as well as covert retaliatory actions, that could include restricting American companies’ access to markets and investment opportunities in China, as well as disrupting the supply chains of U.S. businesses that rely on Chinese intermediaries,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade professor at Cornell University. “The U.S. economy, especially U.S. multinational corporations that operate in China in one form or another, could suffer significant collateral damage if an open trade war were to break out.”

That said, it is unlikely that China, or any other nation will be branded a currency manipulator outright: as CNBC notes, “to be labeled a currency manipulator, China would need to meet three rigorous requirements: a U.S. trade surplus of more than $20 billion, a current-account surplus of more than 3 percent of its economy and purchases of foreign assets totaling more than 2 percent of GDP. The last analysis by the Obama administration found that China met only the standard on bilateral trade.”

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It appears negotiations between the Trump/Ryan camps and the conservative Freedom Caucus over Obamacare repeal have not only gone nowhere but are back to square one, or perhaps zero, because moments ago Donald Trump, who had taken a modest sabbatical from his favorite social network, lashed out on Twitter against the conservative group that scuttled last Friday’s repeal vote, saying “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!“

The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017

After this antagonistic tweet we doubt that relations between, already on edge between the two camps, will improve.

And with Paul Ryan speaking out against Trump negotiating with the Democrats, it appears that any renewed attempt to repeal Obamacare remains on indefinite hiatus.

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Speaking at a CNBC-moderated panel, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again said that accusations of Russian interference in the US presidential elections are “lies” used for “domestic American politics.”

“We said on numerous occasions and I reiterate that we are confident … And know for sure that opinion polls in the Unites States show that very many people are … friendly towards the Russian Federation and I’d like to tell these people that we perceive and regard the United States as a great power with which we want to establish good partnership relations,” Putin said and added “All those things are fictional, illusory and provocations, lies. All these are used for domestic American political agendas. The anti-Russian card is played by different political forces inside the United States to trade on that and consolidate their positions inside.”

Putin refuted the findings of a January ODN report which in January found that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the report said, adding that intelligence agencies have “high confidence” in that assessment, although have yet to release any of the facts backing the assessment.

FInally, Putin explicitly denied that Russia meddled in the U.S. elections. Putin quoted George Bush when asked if the “Russian government had ever tried to influence the outcome of the US presidential election, and there will be no evidence found?” to which he responded “Watch my lips, no.”

Did Russia ever interfere in the U.S. elections?

Russia’s Putin: “Watch my lips — No.”https://t.co/g3Jbx1kVtS http://pic.twitter.com/KMyK0cA04z

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 30, 2017

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In the third and final estimate of Q4 GDP, the BEA revised the previous estimate of 1.8% notably higher to 2.1%, driven by a sharp upward revision to consumer spending, which rose 3.5% in Q4, after rising 3.0% in Q2, and contributed 2.4% to the bottom GDP line – in other words consumption alone was more than the entire GDP increase- up from 2.05% in the second revision.

The increase in real GDP reflected an increase in consumer spending, private inventory investment, residential investment, business investment, and state and local government spending. These contributions were partly offset by declines in exports and federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased. Trade subtracted 1.82 percentage points from growth, the most since 2004, compared with the prior estimate of a 1.7-point drag, on weaker exports and higher imports

The biggest contributor to the upward revision to consumption reflected spending on net foreign travel and recreation services, as well as gasoline and other energy goods

Prices of goods and services purchased by U.S. residents increased 2.0 percent in the fourth quarter after increasing 1.5 percent in the third quarter. Excluding energy and food, prices rose 1.6 percent after increasing 1.7 percent.

The final revision also presented the latest update to corporate profits, which according to the BEA increased 0.5% at a quarterly rate in the fourth quarter after increasing 5.8 percent in the third quarter.
Profits of nonfinancial corporations decreased 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter, profits of financial corporations increased 5.4 percent, and profits from the rest of the world increased 11.0 percent.

In total, corporate profits in the U.S. jumped 9.3 percent from a year earlier, the most since 2012, and rose 0.5 percent from the previous three months, in the first estimate for the fourth quarter.

Other details, courtesy of Bloomberg:

• Nonresidential fixed investment revised lower on intellectual-property products, reflecting Census data and company financial reports
• Data represent the last of three GDP estimates for the quarter before annual revisions in July
• Pre-tax corporate profits were down 0.1 percent for all of 2016, after a 3 percent drop in 2015
• Inventories added 1.01 percentage point to growth, revised from 0.94 point
• Stripping out inventories and trade, so-called final sales to domestic purchasers increased at a 2.8 percent rate, revised from a 2.6 percent pace

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Brexit Gold Buying – UK Demand for Gold Bars Surges 39% 

– UK investors buy gold bars as demand surges 39% in 2016
– Brexit Day sees Article 50 triggered and pound weakens
– “Brexit nerves” see “Brits hoard gold” reports WSJ
– End of 44 year relationship with closest economic partner
– May sets Brexit clock ticking in letter to Tusk
– UK PM says “A great turning point in our story”
– Threat as security raised as negotiating tool
– Brexit uncertainty to impact business and economy
– Robust demand for gold coins, bars due to political and economic uncertainty
– French elections in 3 weeks & U.S. ‘Civil War’ politics
– UK National Debt now £1.84 trillion 

As the UK triggered its formal departure from the European Union yesterday, gold demand from UK investors remained ongoing and robust with increased numbers of British investors diversifying into physical gold in order to hedge the considerable uncertainty and volatility that the coming months and years will bring.

Gold in GBP – 10 Years

The U.K. government yesterday triggered Article 50–the legal mechanism which will start negotiations on how the UK will exit the EU – after the British voted to leave the EU last June.

This is creating considerable uncertainty and concerns about the political and economic outlook – both for the UK and for the EU itself.

Demand for gold bars by UK investors has surged 39% in 2016 according to GFMS as reported by the WSJ:

The resulting political and economic uncertainty helped drive a 39% rise in U.K. gold bar hoarding in 2016, according to Ross Strachan from GFMS, part of media group Thomson Reuters.

“Macroeconomic fears are conducive to increased investment demand in gold,” Mr. Strachan said. During and after the global financial crisis, he pointed out, global gold bar investment increased from 237.7 metric tons in 2007 to 1246.9 metric tons in 2011.

Given the scale of the uncertainty created by the UK decision to leave the EU, robust gold demand in the UK should continue.

Indeed, given the fact that cohesion of the European Union itself will be tested and there is the risk of contagion, gold demand in the EU should also remain robust. Ireland and the Irish economy is particularly vulnerable.

Gold has edged up in recent days and appears to be consolidating at the $1,250 level. In sterling terms, the pound has fallen against gold and gold in sterling terms is back above the important psychological level of £1,000 per ounce.

The pound fluctuated wildly yesterday against other currencies after the Prime Minister triggered Article 50. A period of intense uncertainty for financial markets, both UK and EU markets and for sterling and indeed the euro awaits.

The negotiations are likely to be fractious and divisive and this uncertainty for UK companies, business in general and for the already indebted UK economy does not bode well for sterling.

It is not not just uncertainty about Brexit talks that will likely support gold. The French elections are now just three weeks away (April 23 and May 7) and the mess that is politics in the U.S. should lead to further safe-haven diversification in the coming weeks.

The ‘Trumpflation’ meme has run its course in markets and stocks and the dollar looks vulnerable to weakness which should support gold.

The failure last week to overturn ‘Obamacare’ and the ‘Civil War’ style politics in the U.S. should also support and those seeking to allocate to gold should continue to do so on price weakness.

Gold and Silver Bullion – News and Commentary

Gold investment seen rising for 4th year in 2017 (Reuters)

Gold slips on firmer dollar; political uncertainty supports (Yahoo Finance)

Gold steady amid Brexit, doubts over Trump policy and French election (Nasdaq)

May’s Opening Brexit Bid to Tie Security to Trade Hits Wall (Bloomberg)

Gold Set to Soar to $1,500 as Inflation Makes a Comeback (Bloomberg)

Gold to accelerate amid economic, political concerns – CPM Group (BN Americas)

UK investors exposed – Gold “will smooth investment returns” (Telegraph)

Trump’s $4 Trillion Fiscal Hole (The Daily Reckoning)

Welcome To The Third World, Part 22: Whites Are Dying “Deaths Of Despair” (Dollar Collapse)

Stocks are expensive – but they won’t stay expensive (MoneyWeek)

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

30 Mar: USD 1,250.90, GBP 1,005.72 & EUR 1,165.34 per ounce
29 Mar: USD 1,252.90, GBP 1,007.71 & EUR 1,161.19 per ounce
28 Mar: USD 1,253.65, GBP 996.15 & EUR 1,154.49 per ounce
27 Mar: USD 1,256.90, GBP 1,000.49 & EUR 1,157.86 per ounce
24 Mar: USD 1,244.00, GBP 996.20 & EUR 1,150.82 per ounce
23 Mar: USD 1,247.90, GBP 997.95 & EUR 1,157.93 per ounce
22 Mar: USD 1,246.10, GBP 999.50 & EUR 1,154.76 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

30 Mar: USD 18.10, GBP 14.53 & EUR 16.85 per ounce
29 Mar: USD 18.13, GBP 14.58 & EUR 16.81 per ounce
28 Mar: USD 17.94, GBP 14.29 & EUR 16.53 per ounce
27 Mar: USD 17.94, GBP 14.25 & EUR 16.51 per ounce
24 Mar: USD 17.63, GBP 14.11 & EUR 16.31 per ounce
23 Mar: USD 17.55, GBP 14.04 & EUR 16.27 per ounce
22 Mar: USD 17.58, GBP 14.12 & EUR 16.30 per ounce

Recent Market Updates

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– Digital Gold On Blockchain – For Now Caveat Emptor

Access Daily and Weekly Updates Here

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Authorerd by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg

When I first started becoming aware of how sleazy, parasitic and corrupt the U.S. economy was, I only had expertise in one industry, financial services. Coming to grips with the blatant criminality of the TBTF Wall Street banks and their enablers at the Federal Reserve and throughout the federal government, I thought this was the main issue that needed to be confronted. What I’ve learned in the years since is pretty much every industry in America is corrupt to the core, more focused on sucking money away from helpless citizens via rent-seeking schemes versus actually producing a product and adding value. Unfortunately, the healthcare industry is no exception.

Today’s post zeros in on a particular slice of that industry. A group of companies known as Pharmacy Benefit Managers, or PBMs. Companies that seem to extract far more from the public than they give back. It’s a convoluted sector that is difficult to get your head around, which is why we should be thankful that David Dayen wrote an excellent piece on the topic recently. What follows are merely excerpts from his lengthy and highly informative piece, The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices. I strongly suggest you read the entire thing.

Below are a few highlights from the piece published in The American Prospect:

Like any retail outlet, Frankil purchases inventory from a wholesale distributor and sells it to customers at a small markup. But unlike butchers or hardware store owners, pharmacists have no idea how much money they’ll make on a sale until the moment they sell it. That’s because the customer’s co-pay doesn’t cover the cost of the drug. Instead, a byzantine reimbursement process determines Frankil’s fee.

 

“I get a prescription, type in the data, click send, and I’m told I’m getting a dollar or two,” Frankil says. The system resembles the pull of a slot machine: Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. “Pharmacies sell prescriptions at significant losses,” he adds. “So what do I do? Fill the prescription and lose money, or don’t fill it and lose customers? These decisions happen every single day.”

 

Frankil’s troubles cannot be traced back to insurers or drug companies, the usual suspects that most people deem responsible for raising costs in the health-care system. He blames a collection of powerful corporations known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs. If you have drug coverage as part of your health plan, you are likely to carry a card with the name of a PBM on it. These middlemen manage prescription drug benefits for health plans, contracting with drug manufacturers and pharmacies in a multi-sided market. Over the past 30 years, PBMs have evolved from paper-pushers to significant controllers of the drug pricing system, a black box understood by almost no one. Lack of transparency, unjustifiable fees, and massive market consolidations have made PBMs among the most profitable corporations you’ve never heard about.

 

Americans pay the highest health-care prices in the world, including the highest for drugs, medical devices, and other health-care services and products. Our fragmented system produces many opportunities for excessive charges. But one lesser-known reason for those high prices is the stranglehold that a few giant intermediaries have secured over distribution. The antitrust laws are supposed to provide protection against just this kind of concentrated economic power. But in one area after another in today’s economy, federal antitrust authorities and the courts have failed to intervene. In this case, PBMs are sucking money out of the health-care system—and our wallets—with hardly any public awareness of what they are doing.

 

Even some Republicans criticize PBMs for pursuing profit at the public’s expense. “They show no interest in playing fair, no interest in the end user,” says Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, one of the industry’s loudest critics. “They act as monopolistic terrorists on this market.” Collins and a bipartisan group in Congress want to rein in the PBM industry, setting up a titanic battle between competing corporate interests. The question is whether President Donald Trump will join that effort to fulfill his frequent promises to bring down drug prices.

Here’s how it works…

In the case of PBMs, their desire for larger patient networks created incentives for their own consolidation, promoting their market dominance as a means to attract customers. Today’s “big three” PBMs—Express Scripts, CVS Caremark, and OptumRx, a division of large insurer UnitedHealth Group—control between 75 percent and 80 percent of the market, which translates into 180 million prescription drug customers. All three companies are listed in the top 22 of the Fortune 500, and as of 2013, a JPMorgan analyst estimated total PBM revenues at more than $250 billion.

 

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the industry’s lobbying group, claims that PBMs will save health plans $654 billion over the next decade. But we do know that PBMs haven’t exactly arrested skyrocketing drug prices. According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, between 1987 and 2014, expenditures on prescription drugs have jumped 1,100 percent. Numerous factors can explain that—increased volume of medications, more usage of brand-name drugs, price-gouging by drug companies. But PBM profit margins have been growing as well. For example, according to one report, Express Scripts’ adjusted profit per prescription has increased 500 percent since 2003, and earnings per adjusted claim for the nation’s largest PBM went from $3.87 in 2012 to $5.16 in 2016. That translates into billions of dollars skimmed into Express Scripts’ coffers, coming not out of the pockets of big drug companies or insurers, but of the remaining independent retail druggists—and consumers.

 

Why haven’t PBMs fulfilled their promise as a cost inhibitor? The biggest reason experts cite is an information advantage in the complex pharmaceutical supply chain. At a hearing last year about the EpiPen, a simple shot to relieve symptoms of food allergies, Heather Bresch, CEO of EpiPen manufacturer Mylan, released a chart claiming that more than half of the list price for the product ($334 out of the $608 for a two-pack) goes to other participants—insurers, wholesalers, retailers, or the PBM. But when asked by Republican Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia, the only pharmacist in Congress, how much the PBM receives, Bresch replied, “I don’t specifically know the breakdown.” Carter nodded his head and said, “Nor do I and I’m the pharmacist. … That’s the problem, nobody knows.”

 

The PBM industry is rife with conflicts of interest and kickbacks. For example, PBMs secure rebates from drug companies as a condition of putting their products on the formulary, the list of reimbursable drugs for their network. However, they are under no obligation to disclose those rebates to health plans, or pass them along. Sometimes PBMs call them something other than rebates, using semantics to hold onto the cash. Health plans have no way to obtain drug-by-drug cost information to know if they’re getting the full discount.

 

Controlling the formulary gives PBMs a crucial point of leverage over the system. Express Scripts and CVS Caremark have used it to exclude hundreds of drugs, while preferring other therapeutic treatments. (This can result in patients getting locked out of their medications without an emergency exemption.) And there are indications that PBMs place drugs on their formularies based on how high a rebate they obtain, rather than the lowest cost or what is most effective for the patient.

 

Additionally, The Columbus Dispatch explained last October how, in some cases, a consumer’s co-pay costs more than the price of the drug outside the health plan. But the pharmacy is barred from informing the patients because of clauses in their PBM contracts; they can only provide the information when asked. The excess co-pay goes back to the PBM.

Absolutely disgusting and should be criminal.

Game-playing with brand-name drugs pales in comparison to more profitable schemes for generics, which represent the vast majority of filled prescriptions (though they account for only about half of the revenues, since brand-name drugs are so much more expensive). PBMs reimburse pharmacies for generics based on a schedule called the maximum allowable cost (MAC). But the actual number is hidden until the point of sale. “The contracts are written in the form of algorithms,” says Lynn Quincy, director of the Healthcare Value Hub for Consumers Union. “It’s not a list of drugs with a price next to it. Nobody knows what they’re up to.”

 

The MAC list that goes to the pharmacy does not necessarily match the one for the health plan. By charging the plan sponsor more than they pay the pharmacy in a reimbursement, PBMs can make anywhere from $5 to $200 per prescription, without either player in the chain knowing. While some spread pricing can be expected, the opacity of the profit stream masks the allegedly low costs PBMs tout to health plans to get them to sign up.

PBMs can also charge pharmacies additional fees months after a sale. Direct and indirect remuneration (DIR) fees were originally conceived as a way for Medicare to discover the true net cost of the drugs Medicare beneficiaries purchased through Part D, by forcing disclosure of all rebates from drug manufacturers. But PBMs secured a key loophole keeping their disclosures to the federal government confidential, while arguing that DIRs also legally apply to pharmacies.

 

The PBMs’ use of these fees also harms patients and taxpayers. Consumers pay co-pays or deductibles for drugs based on the list price, without DIR fees or rebates that would lower them. And retroactive DIR fees are routinely not reported to Medicare, as PBMs call them “network variable rates” or “pharmacy performance payments” and keep them for themselves. Obscuring DIR fees makes the net costs of drugs look higher to Medicare than they actually are. As a result, patients hit the “donut hole” coverage gap in Medicare Part D faster, forcing them to pay the full cost of their drugs. And it accelerates high-usage patients into catastrophic coverage faster as well, where Medicare pays 80 percent of all costs. All of this leaves subscribers and Medicare, i.e. the taxpayers, to pay more out of pocket, as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services noted in a January report.

 

The question begging to be asked is why all the players in the market—plan sponsors, drug companies, and pharmacies—put up with a middleman that extracts profits from all of them? And the answer is the failure of federal antitrust policy.

Consolidation…

Three years later, Optum gobbled up Catamaran, creating the current situation where three firms control 80 percent of the market. Brill adds that the Big Three carve up the market geographically, effectively not competing in certain regions of the country. Amid such concentration, plan sponsors have little ability to select the best PBM on price or quality. “I just sat down with [one of the Big Three PBMs], I had half a billion dollars on the table,” says Susan Hayes. “They said, ‘Where are you going to compromise?’ Really? Where else do I bring half a billion and they say where will you compromise?”

 

With such monopolized control, PBMs offer pharmacies take-it-or-leave-it contracts, with no opportunity to negotiate. These contracts employ punitive terms, including allowing the PBM to audit pharmacies, allegedly to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse. “Minor technicalities are used to extract money,” says Susan Pilch, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs for the NCPA. “There are examples where you were supposed to initial on the bottom right of prescription, not the bottom left. The PBM recouped all claims on that.”

Gotta love that “free market.”

Other pharmacies have little recourse to fight back. PBM contracts frequently contain gag orders, preventing them from talking to local elected officials or disclosing the terms of the contract. Pharmacists complain of being threatened for mailing or delivering drugs to local patients, which would compete with PBM mail-order operations. The combined toll makes it difficult for independent pharmacies to stay in business. “This takes away a medical provider patients have used for years,” said Representative Buddy Carter. “I’ve had grandparents come to my store in tears and say ‘I can’t come here anymore.’”

 

Worst of all, PBMs don’t stop at legal money-making schemes. At his site PBM Watch, attorney David Balto compiled 56 pages’ worth of state and federal litigation against PBMs. Just a handful of these cases yielded $370 million in damages for undisclosed rebates, artificial price inflations, kickbacks, steering, and other deceptive practices.

 

Last year, Anthem sued Express Scripts for $15 billion, claiming the PBM violated their agreement by charging excessive rates for drugs. Federal agents from two states issued subpoenas for Express Scripts last fall, seeking information on the company’s business practices. In January, diabetes patients sued three drug manufacturers for conspiring with PBMs to triple the price of insulin.

 

PBMs may even have contributed to the worst public health crisis in America—the opioid epidemic. An investigation by Stat News found that Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, paid off PBMs to keep prescriptions flowing for their product, over the howls of a state employee health plan in West Virginia. In exchange for rebates, PBMs kept OxyContin on their formulary with low co-pays, and without requiring prior authorization from the health plan to dispense the drug. Overprescribing of OxyContin laid the groundwork for a crisis that killed more than 20,000 Americans in 2015.

Naturally, this won’t prevent Jeff Sessions from blaming recreational marijuana.

“They were making a profit on people’s addiction, which is fricking criminal,” says consultant Susan Hayes. “Rubbing their hands with glee that people are becoming addicted to opioids. I can’t believe it.”

Solutions?

Another model would empower pharmacies. A 2016 report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance highlights a quirk of law in North Dakota, which only allows drugstores to operate if owned by pharmacists (similar laws exist in Europe). The law prohibits chain pharmacies from entering the state. Not surprisingly, North Dakota’s independents deliver among the lowest prescription drug prices in the country, along with better health outcomes and more drugstores per capita than any other state. This flies in the face of industry claims that big chains and giant conglomerates save consumers money or improve services.

 

Why can’t this successful model be replicated elsewhere? “The answer is PBMs,” says Stacy Mitchell, the report’s author. “Because in North Dakota, independents are the only game in town, PBMs have to negotiate with them. In other states, they have no leverage.” Unsurprisingly, PBMs and chains want the North Dakota law overturned rather than adopted in other states.

 

For a more immediate impact, we must turn to Washington. And there, solutions often emerge when one large industry starts pointing the finger at another. Under fire for their many drug-pricing scandals, from Martin Shkreli to Valeant, the pharmaceutical industry has tried to deflect blame by citing PBMs. GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty said in a February conference call that so much of the list price on the company’s drugs went to “non-innovators in a system which thinks it’s paying high prices for innovation,” a veiled reference to PBMs. An industry-funded report in January asserted that manufacturers took only 63 percent of gross drug revenues, attributing the decline to discounts and rebates paid to PBMs. (Of course, this hasn’t stopped pharmaceutical companies from earning higher profit margins than any other industry.)

 

Doug Collins, a third-term House member, experienced the PBM issue personally, when his mother couldn’t get her regular medications and her plan had no substitute on the formulary. “I am a free-market person, as conservative as they come,” Collins says. “When dealing with this, it’s not a free market.” Buddy Carter, his colleague, has worked in independent pharmacies since 1980, and sees himself as their voice in Congress. I asked him if he had difficulty explaining the PBM market and its problems to his colleagues. “Heck, it’s difficult for me to understand and I’ve worked in the industry over 35 years!” Carter says.

 

If the FTC determined that the PBM market was anti-competitive, they could sever the relationship between PBMs and pharmacies through sanctions or divestiture demands. They could even break up the entire industry to generate competition. And the FTC has the power to demand the very transparency members of Congress and state legislatures believe is the key to ending profiteering. But this would require a radical shift at the FTC, which has often opposed state legislation to regulate PBMs or increase transparency. “The FTC had argued now for over ten years that lack of transparency is necessary because it can drive prices down,” says Brill, citing recent FTC statements. “Prices have not been driven down, and we need to take a different route.”

 

The wild card in all this is Donald Trump. At his one and only pre-inauguration press conference, Trump singled out drug companies for “getting away with murder,” vowing to create “new bidding procedures” for Medicare and earning praise from the likes of Bernie Sanders. But when Trump met with pharmaceutical executives two weeks into his presidency, he focused more on speeding up new drug approvals from the FDA and cutting regulations than on reducing industry profits. This lines up with the perspective of a key aide, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who wants to overhaul the FDA process. (In fact, the Republican Congress just overhauled the FDA process in one of the last bills signed by Barack Obama.) Trump doesn’t appear to understand the cost excesses in the supply chain.

 

Trump did say in his address to a joint session of Congress that he would “bring down the artificially high price of drugs.” And in his confirmation hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, discussing Trump’s idea for competitive bidding in Medicare, said that “right now the PBMs are doing that negotiation. … I think it is important to have a conversation and look at whether there is a better way to do that.”

 

But where Trump’s team will ultimately land is unknown. “We need to get to a point of clarity about whether the administration is serious,” says the NCPA’s John Norton. Furthermore, any attempt to move forward legislatively on any part of health-care policy will run headlong into the deeply polarized debate over the Affordable Care Act. While a bipartisan alliance appears possible on the PBM issue in isolation, it will be difficult to separate anything health-related from the Obamacare vortex.

 

The PBM industry’s leading trade group isn’t sleeping on the possibility of an attack. Days after Trump met with pharma execs, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association issued an internal memo leaked by Buzzfeed, stressing the need for “building a political firewall” in Congress to stop any legislative action.Frightened about drug manufacturers highlighting a “bloated supply chain,” PCMA CEO Merritt laid out a six-point strategy that included meetings

 

with White House staff and key members of Congress, a digital ad campaign targeting congressional leaders, partnerships with right-wing think tanks like the American Action Forum, and working groups to shape regulatory changes that make PBMs the savior instead of a villain. “We will continue to show how competition—not government intervention—is the way to manage high drug costs,” Merritt wrote, apparently without irony. Merritt even scheduled a meeting with the main health insurance lobby, AHIP, “to make sure the payer community is aligned and coordinated.”

Only in America can three companies controlling 80% of the market be seen as competition. No wonder our economy is a total neofeudal nightmare.

via http://ift.tt/2oeu1kr Tyler Durden