The Great EU Farce Continues… But For How Much Longer?

Mario Draghi once again surfaced this morning to promise to do “whatever it takes” to help the Eurozone. Draghi has done this anytime the EU markets drop ever since since the bottom in the summer of 2012.

 

It’s amazing to watch, particularly when you consider that it is now public information that Draghi actually didn’t have a plan when he first claimed this and is effectively making up policy on the fly.

 

Here are Draghi’s comments from this morning:

 

*DRAGHI SAYS ECB WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES, WITHIN ITS MANDATE?

*DRAGHI SAYS EXPANDED PURCHASE PROGRAM COULD INCLUDE GOVT BONDS

 

Note, that the first statement contains the qualifier “within its mandate.” Of course traders and investors won’t bother to consider that the ECB’s mandate DOESN’T ALLOW IT TO BUY SOVEREIGN BONDS.

 

It’s not entirely their fault. Draghi is huge liar (as in Jean-Claude Juncker’s statement that “when it gets serious, you have to lie.”) This is why he stated that the ECB’s expanded purchase program “could” include Government bonds.

 

Sure… it could, but it would be illegal and would instigate an outright revolt from Germany.

 

Draghi could just as easily have said that the program “could” include buying used cars or discarded aluminum cans… those assets would be more likely acquisition targets than EU Sovereign Bonds.

 

Indeed, if we wanted to take this approach to investment analysis, we “could” state that the EU “could” be a great place to invest if EU banks came clean about their balance sheets, the farce ended, and accurate pricing returned to the markets.

 

Similarly, savers “could” feel good about having their deposits in EU banks if interest rates were not negative and the ECB and EU Governments stopped stealing savers’ deposits to prop up insolvent banks.

 

The reality is Draghi is bluffing, just as he has been since the summer of 2012. He’s not willing to “do whatever it takes,” because in order for the EU to survive, accurate accounting has to come back and outright fraud and corruption have to end.

 

What Draghi really means is that he’s willing to do “whatever it takes,” to perpetuate the farce that is the EU recovery. Unemployment of 25% or higher in some countries? Doesn’t matter. People starving? Ignore. Corrupt politicians taking bribes to profit from the fraud? Irrelevant.

 

The show must go on. Eventually the music will stop. When it does, the EU will collapse. Until then, the farce will continue, though it’s getting old.

 

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Best Regards

 

Graham Summers

 

Phoenix Capital Research

 

 

 




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D.C. Police’s Asset Forfeitures Are Very Lucrative and Very Petty

"Look at all those jaywalkers. We're going to need back up to collect their wallets."The Washington Post’s
original
three-part, in-depth look at the use and abuse of police civil
asset forfeiture seems to have transformed into an open-ended,
ongoing series. Over the weekend they posted a sixth installment
exploring grabby police departments taking their citizens’ cash and
belongings.

This time they kept it local, noticing that Washington, D.C.’s,
police are actually attempting to plan in its budget for asset
forfeiture proceeds in advance. This is considered a no-no for any
law enforcement agency participating in the Department of Justice’s
Equitable Sharing Program, the program where the feds and local
enforcement agencies team up, and the local police get to keep 80
percent of whatever’s seized. This planning came to light to the
Post last week because members of D.C.’s Council are
attempting to overhaul the city’s asset forfeiture guidelines to
increase the threshold of proof and requiring all asset
seizures—including the ones that come from the DOJ program—to be
placed in D.C.’s general fund, rather than the police’s budget,
thus seriously reducing the police’s incentives for snatching
whatever they can.

And just
look at what they’ve snatched:

Since 2009, D.C. officers have made more than 12,000 seizures
under city and federal laws, according to records and data obtained
from the city by The Washington Post through the District’s open
records law. Half of the more than $5.5 million in cash seizures
were for $141 or less, with more than a thousand for less than $20.
D.C. police have seized more than 1,000 cars, some for minor
offenses allegedly committed by the children or friends of the
vehicle owners, documents show.

They’re literally just taking the money out people’s wallets at
this point. And the authorities cash in even more whenever somebody
fights back:

One case cited by the Public Defender Service involves Sharlene
Powell, who had worked for three decades as a Postal Service
employee. She loaned her car to her son, who was stopped and
arrested on a misdemeanor drug offense. Prosecutors dropped the
charges, but District police kept the car. To get her car back,
Powell had to pay a $1,772 “penal sum” bond to challenge the
seizure, the Public Defender Service said in a statement last year
to the judiciary committee.

Read more
here. The city is in a legal fight with the Public Defender
Service to try to get rid or reduce those massive bonds. The city
could lose $670,000 annually from the DOJ Equitable Sharing Program
if it can no longer participate. The program’s guidelines require
that law enforcement agencies keep the money, not put it into the
general fund.

Below, Reason TV interviews economist Bart Wilson about the
twisted incentives induced when law enforcement officers are
permitted to keep money and assets they grab when fighting
crime:

 

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CDS Liquidity Set To Tumble As Deutsche Bank Exits IG, HY Trading

Back in 2009, Deutsche Bank salesman J.P. Rorech was the CDS salesman who, alongside Millennium PM Renato Negrin, were the first two traders accused by the SEC of insider trading using Credit Default Swaps, a product which many then said the SEC has no jurisdiction over as it is a “security-based swap” transaction (an umbrella loophole which was subsequently revised). The insider trading charge was subsequently dropped after the SEC was unable to provide sufficient proof the two had colluded “off the record” in purchasing VNU CDS on material non-public info, but the stigma may have stuck.

And while it is not clear if that particular incident is what the bank with the world’s greatest amount of outstanding notional derivatives was concerned about, or whether the ongoing collapse in bond market liquidity was the factor but moments ago, Bloomberg released a stunning update that Europe’s largest bank is exiting the single-name, both IG and HY, CDS product line, which for years was one of its biggest revenue generators and a product in which DB was for a long time one of the best and deepest CDS trade axes.

As Bloomberg reports, Deutsche Bank AG will stop trading investment-grade and high-yield credit default swaps on single credits and will instead focus on trading corporate bonds, according to a spokeswoman.

“Deutsche Bank is redeploying resources and capital into credit cash trading,” Michele Allison, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt-based bank, said today.

 

The company will continue trading credit indexes and single-name CDS tied to distressed or emerging market debt, Allison said.

Of course, the very reason why banks moved from cash to CDS trading in the mid-2000s is because the cash liquidity was never high enough to allow massive profits for most entities involved. That, and that the collateral posted when trading credit via CDS was negligible as compared to actually having to own the underlying bond.

And with that, the CDS market just lost one of its key pillars of liquidity. Should other banks follow suit and stop making markets in CDS, watch as trading in CDS (so profitable due to its OTC nature, where dealers make big profits on the bid/ask spread), trickles to a halt, and as one after another TBTF bank warn their FICC revenue in the coming quarters is about to timble.

Finally, one can’t help but wonder: is a massive CDS-market rigging settlement about to be unveiled?




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DEA Searches NFL Teams for Illegally Prescribed Painkillers, Drugs

The Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched suprise investigations of
various NFL teams yesterday, reports
The Washington Post:

The inspections, which entailed bag searches and questioning of
team doctors by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, were based
on the suspicion that NFL teams dispense drugs illegally to keep
players on the field in violation of the Controlled Substances Act,
according to a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of
the investigation.

A class-action lawsuit filed by 1,300 retired football players
“allege[s] that NFL medical staffs regularly violate federal and
state laws in plying their teams with powerful addictive narcotics
such as Percocet and Percodan, sleeping pills such as Ambien and
the non-addictive painkiller Toradol to help them play through
injuries on game days.”

The San Diego Chargers, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Seattle
Seahawks are among the teams that acknowledged searches (though
it’s not clear if those teams were being singled out for specific
reasons). The pretext for the searches is the alleged painkiller
abuse at the heart of the class-action lawsuit.

The DEA’s investigative interest in the NFL is partly based on
the agency’s conviction that lackadaisical prescribing practices
creates addicts. McMahon, who played from 1982 to 1996, said in the
lawsuit that he received “hundreds, if not thousands” of injections
and pills from NFL doctors and trainers, including Percocet,
Toradol, Novocaine, amphetamines, sleeping pills and muscle
relaxers. He said he became so hooked on pain meds that at one
point he took 100 Percocets a month.

There’s this,
too:

An
investigation of NFL medical practices by The Washington
Post last year documented
painkiller abuse in the league. In a Post
survey of more than 500 retired players, one in four said he
felt pressure from team doctors to take medication he was
uncomfortable with. Players told The Post that they swallowed
prescriptions on an almost daily basis, frequently without
documentation.


Read the whole thing here.

Given the physical punishment that is at the very center of the
game at all levels, it’s worth asking whether we’ve reached peak
football. Between this sort of action and growing
questions about concussions and traumatic brain injuries, it’s
totally plausible that football, despite its immense popularity,
has a time-limited future.

Last year, Reason TV sat down with Gregg Easterbrook to talk
about his book The King of Sports and football’s imperiled
future.

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Matt Welch on the Loss of Financial Privacy

Financial anonymity as we know it was invented in
Geneva, Switzerland, in the 16th century, by Protestant Reformation
leader John Calvin. In converting his pretty mountain lake town
into a refuge for Europeans fleeing marauding Catholic governments,
Calvin loosened papal restrictions on lending at interest and
embraced individual privacy as a means of self-defense against a
predatory state. But now, writes Reason editor in chief
Matt Welch, American politicians are systemically destroying the
right to confidential banking.

View this article.

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And The Market Breaks (For The 2nd Time Today)

The NYSE ‘broke’ from 930 to 950ET (levitating stocks after the plunge) and now it appears the exchange is having issues again as BATS declares self-help against NYSE…

  • *BATS: ROUTING TO NYSE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED AS OF 10:38:43 ET

The market has been open 73 minutes and been broken for half that time!




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Is This Why Stocks Surged At The Open?

As stocks opened significantly lower in the US day session, the NYSE ‘broke’. Instantly, stocks levitated back to almost green on the day… and NYSE ‘unbroke’ – after which stocks tumbled again (only to be rescued by Draghi)….

 

From the NYSE:

We experienced an issue disseminating quotes and trades to the SIP in a limited number of symbols at 9:30. As of approximately 9:50, we were able to correct the issue and are publishing normally.

And that means only one thing!!




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European Bond Risk Plunges As Draghi Hints At Sovereign QE (Again)

Seriously!! Draghi utters a few words – all of which we have seen and heard a thousand times before:

  • *DRAGHI SAYS ECB WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES, WITHIN ITS MANDATE
  • *DRAGHI SAYS EXPANDED PURCHASE PROGRAM COULD INCLUDE GOVT BONDS

and EURUSD, European stocks and bonds get uber-excited…

European bond spreads tumbled…

 

EURUSD sliding back under 1.25

 

And stocks surged…

 

 

Charts:Bloomberg




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Draghi Replays “Whatever It Takes” As ECB Buys Only EUR3bn In 6th Week Of Bond Purchases

After 6 weeks of the ECB’s (3rd) Covered Bond Purchase Program, the cumulative buys amount to a mere EUR 10.485 billion. It appears they are limited (by collateral availability and market liquidity.. and dealers unwillingness to sell) to around EUR3 billion per week – around the same amount The Fed’s QE3 would suck up in 1-2 days of POMO. At this rate, it’s a long way to go to reach the $1 trillion goal. Is it any wonder that Mario Draghi once again used the ‘w’ word – uttering ECB will do “whatever it takes” (cough within its mandate).

  • *DRAGHI SAYS ECB WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES, WITHIN ITS MANDATE

 

 

So just 6 more years of buying to reach $1 trillion?

It seems Draghi is getting desperate:

  • *DRAGHI SAYS EXPANDED PURCHASE PROGRAM COULD INCLUDE GOVT BONDS




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