Wholesale Inventories Spike Most In 2 Years As "Hollow Growth" Continues

We can only imagine the upward revisions to GDP that will occur due to the largest mal-investment-driven wholesale inventory build in over 2 years. The 1.4% MoM gain is over 4x the expectation and biggest beat since Q4 2011, when – just as now – a mid-year plunge was met by a rabid over-stocking only to see the crumble back into mid 2012. As we noted previously, 56% of economic "growth" this year was inventory accumulation (cough auto channel stuffing cough) and this print merely confirms "hollow growth" continues.

 

 

 

As we noted previously,

So how does inventory hoarding – that most hollow of "growth" components as it relies on future purchases by a consumer who has increasingly less purchasing power – look like historically? The chart below shows the quarterly change in the revised GDP series broken down by Inventory (yellow) and all other non-Inventory components comprising GDP (blue).

But where the scramble to accumulate inventory in hopes that it will be sold, profitably, sooner or later to buyers either domestic or foreign, is seen most vividly, is in the data from the past 4 quarters, or the trailing year starting in Q3 2012 and ending with the just released revised Q3 2013 number. The result is that of the $534 billion rise in nominal GDP in the past year, a whopping 56% of this is due to nothing else but inventory hoarding.

 

The problem with inventory hoarding, however, is that at some point it will have to be "unhoarded." Which is why expect many downward revisions to future GDP as this inventory overhang has to be destocked.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/rQuUsIqbZZM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Wholesale Inventories Spike Most In 2 Years As “Hollow Growth” Continues

We can only imagine the upward revisions to GDP that will occur due to the largest mal-investment-driven wholesale inventory build in over 2 years. The 1.4% MoM gain is over 4x the expectation and biggest beat since Q4 2011, when – just as now – a mid-year plunge was met by a rabid over-stocking only to see the crumble back into mid 2012. As we noted previously, 56% of economic "growth" this year was inventory accumulation (cough auto channel stuffing cough) and this print merely confirms "hollow growth" continues.

 

 

 

As we noted previously,

So how does inventory hoarding – that most hollow of "growth" components as it relies on future purchases by a consumer who has increasingly less purchasing power – look like historically? The chart below shows the quarterly change in the revised GDP series broken down by Inventory (yellow) and all other non-Inventory components comprising GDP (blue).

But where the scramble to accumulate inventory in hopes that it will be sold, profitably, sooner or later to buyers either domestic or foreign, is seen most vividly, is in the data from the past 4 quarters, or the trailing year starting in Q3 2012 and ending with the just released revised Q3 2013 number. The result is that of the $534 billion rise in nominal GDP in the past year, a whopping 56% of this is due to nothing else but inventory hoarding.

 

The problem with inventory hoarding, however, is that at some point it will have to be "unhoarded." Which is why expect many downward revisions to future GDP as this inventory overhang has to be destocked.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/rQuUsIqbZZM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Fed Unveils "Self-Regulated" Volcker Rule

And so it is done (as we detailed here)… and due to be put in place as of April1st 2014 (rather ironically). The 100-plus-pages of rules and regulations prohibit two activities of banking entities: (i) engaging in proprietary trading; and (ii) owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with a hedge fund or private equity fund. But the kicker…

requires banking entities to establish an internal compliance program designed to help ensure and monitor compliance with the prohibitions and restrictions of the statute and the final rule.

Great! Because self-regulation worked so well in the past for the financial services industry.

Via Reuters,

  • FEDERAL RESERVE EXTENDS VOLCKER RULE COMPLIANCE PERIOD TO JULY 2015 FROM JULY 2014 – FINAL VOLCKER RULE DOCUMENT
  • RULE WOULD ALLOW HEDGING ACTIVITY THAT MITIGATES "SPECIFIC, IDENTIFIABLE RISKS OF INDIVIDUAL OR AGGREGATED POSITIONS" HELD BY THE BANK – REGULATORS
  • BANKS COULD ENGAGE IN PROPRIETARY TRADING OF US GOVERNMENT DEBT AND, IN MORE LIMITED CIRCUMSTANCES, FOREIGN OBLIGATIONS UNDER VOLCKER RULE
  • VOLCKER RULE ALSO BANS BANKS FROM OWNING AND SPONSORING "COVERED" HEDGE FUNDS AND PRIVATE EQUITY FUNDS – REGULATORS
  • REGULATORS SAY FINAL RULE DEFINES "COVERED FUNDS" MORE NARROWLY THAN PROPOSAL WITH REGARD TO FOREIGN FUNDS AND COMMODITY POOLS
  • U.S. REGULATORS SAY MOST COMMUNITY BANKS HAVE LITTLE OR NO INVOLVEMENT IN PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES, WOULD NOT HAVE TO COMPLY WITH RULES

 

Who will be most affected?

 

Some excellent color from Bloomberg,

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “speculation” in 31 words. The key ones are “risk of a large loss.” When Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, proposed banning speculation by federally insured banks to reduce risk to the world economy, he did it in one paragraph. Four years later, the nation’s regulators are poised to vote on Volcker’s proposal. The rule now runs close to 100 pages, with hundreds more in supporting material — and no one is quite sure how it would be enforced. It’s a lesson in how complicated simplifying Wall Street can be.

 

The Situation

 

The idea became law in the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010, but turning it into regulations has been slowed by a lobbying onslaught. Already many banks have shut down or spun off the desks they used for trading that was clearly solely for their own account, what’s known as proprietary trading. Banks do other kinds of trading that can also make them money, or loses it: Some of the trades are to help clients, and others are to reduce the risks of their own lending or trading. Figuring out which trades fall into which category isn’t always easy, and deciding how much risk is too much for which kind of transaction may be even harder. On these issues, how regulators decide to enforce the rules may be as important as the rules themselves, particularly as responsibility will be split between five agencies set to announce the final rule on Tuesday. They have very different agendas: Some are primarily concerned with keeping markets working smoothly, while others worry mostly about keeping banks from blowing themselves up.

 

The Background

 

After the Great Depression, Congress created federal deposit insurance to prevent runs at commercial banks. In return, the banks had to concentrate on making loans and leave the fancy stuff to investment banks. That dividing line blurred in the ’90s and was erased entirely in 1999 when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed at the behest of banks like Citigroup that promptly grew big trading operations. The financial crisis of 2008 had its seeds in bad mortgages, but what brought banks to the brink, Volcker noted when he proposed his idea, wasn’t bad loans but the exotic trades they had made around them. The six largest U.S. banks made $15.6 billion in trading profits during 13 of the 18 quarters that spanned mid-2006 to 2010. They racked up bigger losses during the five remaining quarters when their bets turned sour. Even after the meltdown and unpopular taxpayer bailouts, taking a step back toward Glass-Steagall met Wall Street resistance. That’s why when President Barack Obama adopted the idea he wrapped it in Volcker’s name, in the hope that the towering stature of the man who tamed 1970s inflation would lend it greater weight.

 

The Argument

 

Banks continue to insist that it’s impossible to distinguish between prop trades and what banks call market making — the steady stream of buying, selling and holding they do so their customers can always buy what they want to buy and sell what they want to sell. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, said that every trader would need a psychologist and a lawyer by his side to make sure he wasn’t breaking the rule. Some regulators have grown wary of trades banks say they’re making to offset specific risks since JPMorgan Chase’s $6 billion London Whale losses, which Senate investigators saw as closer to gambling than to hedging the bank’s other bets. Volcker has said the rule could accommodate both kinds of trades and still stay fairly simple. “It’s like pornography,” Volcker said of prop trades. “You know it when you see it.”  Instead of blanket bans, however, regulators sought to define each situation and carve out a string of exemptions, which is how the rule grew and grew. A small but growing number of bipartisan voices in Washington say they may push for a more radical simplification — bringing back Glass-Steagall.

 

Volcker Main


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KO3ENw7xsEM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Fed Unveils “Self-Regulated” Volcker Rule

And so it is done (as we detailed here)… and due to be put in place as of April1st 2014 (rather ironically). The 100-plus-pages of rules and regulations prohibit two activities of banking entities: (i) engaging in proprietary trading; and (ii) owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with a hedge fund or private equity fund. But the kicker…

requires banking entities to establish an internal compliance program designed to help ensure and monitor compliance with the prohibitions and restrictions of the statute and the final rule.

Great! Because self-regulation worked so well in the past for the financial services industry.

Via Reuters,

  • FEDERAL RESERVE EXTENDS VOLCKER RULE COMPLIANCE PERIOD TO JULY 2015 FROM JULY 2014 – FINAL VOLCKER RULE DOCUMENT
  • RULE WOULD ALLOW HEDGING ACTIVITY THAT MITIGATES "SPECIFIC, IDENTIFIABLE RISKS OF INDIVIDUAL OR AGGREGATED POSITIONS" HELD BY THE BANK – REGULATORS
  • BANKS COULD ENGAGE IN PROPRIETARY TRADING OF US GOVERNMENT DEBT AND, IN MORE LIMITED CIRCUMSTANCES, FOREIGN OBLIGATIONS UNDER VOLCKER RULE
  • VOLCKER RULE ALSO BANS BANKS FROM OWNING AND SPONSORING "COVERED" HEDGE FUNDS AND PRIVATE EQUITY FUNDS – REGULATORS
  • REGULATORS SAY FINAL RULE DEFINES "COVERED FUNDS" MORE NARROWLY THAN PROPOSAL WITH REGARD TO FOREIGN FUNDS AND COMMODITY POOLS
  • U.S. REGULATORS SAY MOST COMMUNITY BANKS HAVE LITTLE OR NO INVOLVEMENT IN PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES, WOULD NOT HAVE TO COMPLY WITH RULES

 

Who will be most affected?

 

Some excellent color from Bloomberg,

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “speculation” in 31 words. The key ones are “risk of a large loss.” When Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, proposed banning speculation by federally insured banks to reduce risk to the world economy, he did it in one paragraph. Four years later, the nation’s regulators are poised to vote on Volcker’s proposal. The rule now runs close to 100 pages, with hundreds more in supporting material — and no one is quite sure how it would be enforced. It’s a lesson in how complicated simplifying Wall Street can be.

 

The Situation

 

The idea became law in the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010, but turning it into regulations has been slowed by a lobbying onslaught. Already many banks have shut down or spun off the desks they used for trading that was clearly solely for their own account, what’s known as proprietary trading. Banks do other kinds of trading that can also make them money, or loses it: Some of the trades are to help clients, and others are to reduce the risks of their own lending or trading. Figuring out which trades fall into which category isn’t always easy, and deciding how much risk is too much for which kind of transaction may be even harder. On these issues, how regulators decide to enforce the rules may be as important as the rules themselves, particularly as responsibility will be split between five agencies set to announce the final rule on Tuesday. They have very different agendas: Some are primarily concerned with keeping markets working smoothly, while others worry mostly about keeping banks from blowing themselves up.

 

The Background

 

After the Great Depression, Congress created federal deposit insurance to prevent runs at commercial banks. In return, the banks had to concentrate on making loans and leave the fancy stuff to investment banks. That dividing line blurred in the ’90s and was erased entirely in 1999 when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed at the behest of banks like Citigroup that promptly grew big trading operations. The financial crisis of 2008 had its seeds in bad mortgages, but what brought banks to the brink, Volcker noted when he proposed his idea, wasn’t bad loans but the exotic trades they had made around them. The six largest U.S. banks made $15.6 billion in trading profits during 13 of the 18 quarters that spanned mid-2006 to 2010. They racked up bigger losses during the five remaining quarters when their bets turned sour. Even after the meltdown and unpopular taxpayer bailouts, taking a step back toward Glass-Steagall met Wall Street resistance. That’s why when President Barack Obama adopted the idea he wrapped it in Volcker’s name, in the hope that the towering stature of the man who tamed 1970s inflation would lend it greater weight.

 

The Argument

 

Banks continue to insist that it’s impossible to distinguish between prop trades and what banks call market making — the steady stream of buying, selling and holding they do so their customers can always buy what they want to buy and sell what they want to sell. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, said that every trader would need a psychologist and a lawyer by his side to make sure he wasn’t breaking the rule. Some regulators have grown wary of trades banks say they’re making to offset specific risks since JPMorgan Chase’s $6 billion London Whale losses, which Senate investigators saw as closer to gambling than to hedging the bank’s other bets. Volcker has said the rule could accommodate both kinds of trades and still stay fairly simple. “It’s like pornography,” Volcker said of prop trades. “You know it when you see it.”  Instead of blanket bans, however, regulators sought to define each situation and carve out a string of exemptions, which is how the rule grew and grew. A small but growing number of bipartisan voices in Washington say they may push for a more radical simplification — bringing back Glass-Steagall.

 

Volcker Main


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/KO3ENw7xsEM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

The Pain In Spain Is Mainly… Everywhere

Despite the ratings agencies (Moody’s Dec 5th and S&P Nov 22nd) seemingly premature raising of the outlook for the nation’s sovereign credit rating (from negative to stable), economic hardship in Spain looks likely to continue as loan defaults surge and the unemployment rate remains the second highest in the EU.

 

25% of Working Population to Stay Unemployed

The IMF predicts Spain’s unemployment rate will remain at 25 percent or higher until 2018 even after the nation exited its recession in the third quarter. Spanish households’ average income fell to 23,123 euros per year in 2012, compared with 25,556 euros in 2008, the National Statistics Institute said on Nov. 20. That leaves 22.2 percent of the population at risk of poverty, according to Eurostat.

Bad Debts at Record High

Record bad loans may restrain the economic recovery. Spanish banks’ bad debt as a proportion of total lending rose to a record 12.68 percent in September, according to Bank of Spain data that began in 1962. Missed payments on mortgages are rising and defaults as a proportion of total mortgages jumped to 5.2 percent in the second quarter from 3.2 percent a year earlier.

House Prices May Fall Further

Banks are likely to remain under pressure as real estate values fall. House prices are down 28.2 percent from their peak. Fewer than 15,000 mortgages were granted in September, compared with about 129,000 at the September 2005 peak, according to the National Statistics Institute, pointing to more price declines. House prices may drop a further 13 percent by the end of 2014, S&P forecasts.

Corruption Levels Rise Most in Europe

Spain’s levels of perceived corruption rose the most in Europe last year, Transparency International’s annual rankings show. Spain fell six points to 59, ranking it 40th in the world. Only Syria fell by more. The so-called gray economy represents 18.6 percent of GDP according to analysis by Friedrich Schneider for the Institute of Economic Affairs. That is equivalent to about 183 billion euros.

But apart from that… it’s all good in Spain…

 

Source: Bloomberg Briefs


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Tqfm0X0t_FQ/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Paul Volcker, Dodd-Frank and the Cult of Personality

Look in my eyes, what do you see?

The cult of personality 

I know your anger, I know your dreams 

I’ve been everything you want to be 

I’m the cult of personality 

Like Mussolini and Kennedy 

I’m the cult of personality 

The cult of personality 

The cult of personality 

“Cult of Personality”

Living Color/ Muzzy Skillings, Corey Glover, Vernon Reid, Will Calhoun

 

The implementation of the new regulatory stricture on big banks known as the “Volcker Rule” after former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker (1979-1987) is nearing completion today.  The New York Times reports: “Five years after the financial crisis, federal regulators are poised to approve the so-called Volcker Rule, the keystone of the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulation since the Depression. The rule, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, imposes some requirements that are tougher than the banks had hoped. 

http://tinyurl.com/musbv5l

Like the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt, the Volcker Rule is a monument, a memorial to Chairman Volcker erected by an American populace and media whose collective memory is somewhat shorter than that of the average hamster. The Times reports that Volcker “proposed limits on banks’ activities when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve.”  Really?  This is odd because the Paul Volcker that I know has always and everywhere been the friendly enabler of the depredations of the big banks.   We discussed this in the February 2012 post on Zero Hedge, “The Trouble with the Volcker Rule.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/trouble-volcker-rule

I called Volcker “the father of too big to fail” in my 2010 book, “Inflated: How Money & Debt Built the American Dream,” but frankly watching the American media fawn over Chairman Volcker today suggests that this description was too generous.  Just as FDR is remembered for his famous statement that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and not for actively making the terrible deflation and banking crisis of 1932 far worse, Volcker is lionized as the great inflation fighter and financial reformer for fixing problems that he himself caused.  

The Volcker aura begins with the heroic battle against inflation in the late 1970s.  Who can forget the image of Tall Paul standing before Congress, mumbling in barely intelligible tones about the need for high interest rates to wage the fight against inflation.  By his own words, Volcker became a “practical monetarist” when the situation required it, adopting the latest style in policy to fit the political situation.

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/02/how_paul_volcke.html

But how many people recall that it was Volcker, then a young Treasury official, who engineered the closing of the gold window by President Nixon?  By breaking the formal price link between the dollar and gold that had governed the post-WWII monetary world, Volcker and then Treasury Secretary John Connally loosed the US Treasury from the bounds of earth.  As James Rickards notes in his new book, “The Death of Money,” the decision to abandon the gold standard by Volcker set in motion a decade of uncertainty and economic malaise that led to wage and price controls.  The closing of the gold window more than four decades ago set the stage for the madness of zero interest rates and “quantitative easing” that we see today from the Federal Open Market Committee.  Yet no one in the media ever questions Volcker about this reckless act.  

When it comes to the big banks, the cult of personality surrounding Chairman Volcker is even more deluded and bizarre.  When the Times talks about Chairman Volcker wanting to impose greater restraints on the largest banks, was this before or after he proposed the government bailout of Penn Square Bank?  Along with his sidekick William Issac, who was then the Chairman of the FDIC in the 1980s, Volcker advocated allowing the largest banks to use off balance sheet Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) to increase leverage and profits.  As with the closing of the gold window in 1971, Volcker was the enabler of a problem that would cause enormous damage to the US markets.  Yet no one in the media knows the financial history of the US well enough to call him out on decisions and positions that are easily visible in the public record.    

In all of the 450 pages of “Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence,” William Silber never mentions the fact that former Chairman Volcker set into motion the process at the Fed that would eventually encourage bank entry into areas such as off-balance-sheet financial vehicles and over-the-counter derivatives.  After the debt crisis of the 1980s, Fed officials led by Volcker began to understand that the core operations of the big banks were unprofitable.  Banks argued that the need to loosen regulatory restrictions such as Glass-Steagall was driven by the need for global competitiveness, but in fact they big bank were destroying investor capital.  Along with Volcker, another key enabler of this period of financial deregulation, Rodgin Cohen, chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, likewise receives almost no critical attention from the media as he argues that repealing Glass Steagall had no impact on the 2007 financial crisis. 

http://tinyurl.com/mb5vy2c

Later on, of course, Volcker would argue that the banks needed more capital to prevent the bad acts that led to the accumulation of some $60 trillion in toxic waste by 2007.  But for some reason, nobody in the financial media is able to ask Volcker just why it was that he believed back in the 1980s that large banks could manage the financial, legal and reputational risk of off-balance sheet financial vehicles that were completely unsupported by capital.  

In 1982, under the chairmanship of William Isaac, the FDIC issued a “policy statement” that state chartered non-Federal Reserve member banks could establish subsidiaries to underwrite and deal in securities.   Also in 1982 the OCC, under Comptroller C. Todd Conover, approved the mutual fund company Dreyfus Corporation and the retailer Sears establishing “nonbank bank” subsidiaries t
hat were not covered by the Bank Holding Company Act.  While the Federal Reserve Board under Volcker did ask Congress to overrule both the FDIC’s and the OCC’s actions, the Fed quietly supported the idea that banks should have broader securities powers and use SIVs to increase their effective leverage.  

By 1987, just as Volcker’s term was ending, the Fed approved regulations allowing bank holding companies to underwrite and deal in residential mortgage-backed securities, municipal revenue bonds, and commercial paper. Glass–Steagall’s Section 20 prohibited a bank from affiliating with a firm “primarily engaged” in underwriting and dealing in securities.  Half a century later, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Countrywide and other banks would fail because of acts of financial fraud related to underwriting bad securities, securities which were “sold” to SIVs that were in fact controlled by the sponsoring banks.  These transaction violated the dictum established by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1925 that failure to release control over an asset that was ostensibly being sold was “fraud on its face.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/christopher-whalen/2011/05/17/putting-trust-bac…

When we look at the Volcker Rule being approved by the Fed today, what is apparent is that the key issues which caused the subprime crisis – securities fraud and off-balance-sheet financial vehicles of banks — remain unaddressed.  The Volcker Rule places limits on the principal trading activities of large banks, essentially sequestering the bank’s capital from the market, but does nothing to reign in the creation of bad assets by banks for sale to customers.  One could argue that the Volcker Rule is a canard, a diversion to prevent the public from focusing on the real problem, namely financial fraud by the officers and directors of the largest banks.  Since principal trading had little or nothing to do with the crisis, it seems reasonable to ask why we are even bothering with the Volcker Rule. Nobody in the media ever asks this question.  

The answer, sadly, goes back to the point about monuments.  The Volcker Rule is a monument to Paul Volcker the man.  It is a memorial to the idea that members of the media and the public, in their ignorance and naïveté, want to believe in, but the proposal does little to address the true causes of the subprime financial crisis.  Just as the Sarbanes-Oxley law was a monument to my friend Charles Bowsher, the former Arthur Anderson partner and head of the General Accounting Office (1981-1996), the Volcker Rule is a pyramid erected to honor Volcker the man, Volcker the idea, but has nothing to do with financial reform.  Like the quote from FDR, the cult of personality which surrounds Paul Volcker illustrates the superficial and puerile nature of American society when it comes to matters of economics and finance.  

Sarbanes Oxley, which was enacted in the wake of the securities fraud perpetrated by Enron and Worldcom (using off-balance sheet vehicles, please note) did nothing to address the issue of financial fraud using SIVs.   Likewise, the Volcker Rule limits the trading by banks for their own account, but does absolutely nothing to prevent banks from engaging in wanton acts of securities fraud against their customers.  Indeed, by limiting the ability of banks to deploy capital in the financial markets, the Volcker Rule arguably limits market liquidity and creates the circumstances for future financial contagion.   

Just look at the rout in the bond market after the June 19, 2013 press conference by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and you start to appreciate how the implementation of the Volcker Rule has added volatility and instability to the US markets.   One must wonder whether even Volcker himself understands how his eponymous rule will really impact financial institutions and markets in the months and years ahead.  But such is life in a democracy.  As the last line of the Living Color song “Cult of Personality” reminds us, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Kr0TI2l7Ouc/story01.htm rcwhalen

Caption Contest: Obama Meets Castro

As the world mourns the death of Nelson Mandela; following his oration, it seems President Obama has taken the opportunity to seek advice from world leaders on better managing his nation…

 

President Obama meets Cuba’s Raul Castro…


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/5UzBSogvZFY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

GM Appoints First Female CEO As Mary Barra Replaces Dan Akerson

GM has named Mary Barra to succeed Dan Akerson as CEO, making her the first female CEO in global auto industry:

  • *GM SAID TO NAME BARRA AS FIRST FEMALE CEO, SUCCEEDING AKERSON
  • *GM’S AKERSON SAID TO STEP DOWN IN JANUARY

 

 

 

 

Mary Barra was named Senior Vice President, Global Product Development effective February 1, 2011, responsible for the design, engineering, program management and quality of General Motors vehicles around the world. On August 1, 2013, she assumed responsibility for GM’s Global Purchasing and Supply Chain organization and was named Executive Vice President, Global Product Development & Global Purchasing and Supply Chain. She is a member of the GM Executive Operations Committee and serves on the Adam Opel AG Supervisory Board.

Barra had previously been Vice President, Global Human Resources.

She has also served as GM Vice President, Global Manufacturing Engineering; Plant Manager, Detroit Hamtramck Assembly; Executive Director of Competitive Operations Engineering; and has held several engineering and staff positions.
 
In 1990, Barra graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business after receiving a GM fellowship in 1988.

Barra began her career with GM in 1980 as a General Motors Institute (Kettering University) co-op student at the Pontiac Motor Division. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering.

She serves on the General Dynamics and Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute Board of Directors.  Barra is also a member of the Kettering University Board of Trustees and is GM’s Key Executive for Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley.

Barra is married with two children and was born December 24, 1961.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/2-4uw9Umehs/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Steve Liesman: "Get Ready, Here It Comes: A December Taper"

Yesterday, we pointed out that according to the latest Bloomberg survey of economists, roughly 70% of respondents now believe that a taper is coming in either December or January, further accentuated by the recent flipflopping of Fed “bellwether” James Bullard who after holding out for a much delayed reduction in the Fed’s monthly flow, admitted that the “probability of a taper had risen “. Today, some additional thoughts on what now seems the consensus from Credit Suisse: “With the labor market looking to be on a more sustained recovery trend following a late summer set-back we think tapering is now virtually inevitable with the decision between a Dec or Jan taper a virtual toss-up that may come down to Fed perceptions of market liquidity in the latter part of December.” And just to add fuel to the flame here comes CNBC’s own staff “Fed expert” Steve Liesman with “get ready, here it comes: A December taper.

It increasingly appears that tapering is coming at the Fed’s meeting next week.

 

While forecasting the central bank’s moves has been an uncertain proposition for most of the past several months—with the conventional wisdom having it wrong in June and September—several of the Fed’s own financial tests for reducing its asset purchases look to have been met as it heads into the Dec. 17 meeting. Those include confidence in the outlook, an easing of fiscal drag and uncertainty, and what the Fed sees as more appropriate interest rates.

And while the market has been beyond complacent, and is confident that “this time is different”, all it will take for a “tightening of financial conditions” is for one big seller to decide the time has come to take profits, and to ruin the Fed’s latest carefully laid plan to make it seem that Tapering (which the Fed will not tire of repeating is not tightening even though even the Fed has now admitted it is the Flow and not the Stock) is priced in, and make a mockery of all “consensus” forecasts yet again.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Lm46ntJ1NTg/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Steve Liesman: “Get Ready, Here It Comes: A December Taper”

Yesterday, we pointed out that according to the latest Bloomberg survey of economists, roughly 70% of respondents now believe that a taper is coming in either December or January, further accentuated by the recent flipflopping of Fed “bellwether” James Bullard who after holding out for a much delayed reduction in the Fed’s monthly flow, admitted that the “probability of a taper had risen “. Today, some additional thoughts on what now seems the consensus from Credit Suisse: “With the labor market looking to be on a more sustained recovery trend following a late summer set-back we think tapering is now virtually inevitable with the decision between a Dec or Jan taper a virtual toss-up that may come down to Fed perceptions of market liquidity in the latter part of December.” And just to add fuel to the flame here comes CNBC’s own staff “Fed expert” Steve Liesman with “get ready, here it comes: A December taper.

It increasingly appears that tapering is coming at the Fed’s meeting next week.

 

While forecasting the central bank’s moves has been an uncertain proposition for most of the past several months—with the conventional wisdom having it wrong in June and September—several of the Fed’s own financial tests for reducing its asset purchases look to have been met as it heads into the Dec. 17 meeting. Those include confidence in the outlook, an easing of fiscal drag and uncertainty, and what the Fed sees as more appropriate interest rates.

And while the market has been beyond complacent, and is confident that “this time is different”, all it will take for a “tightening of financial conditions” is for one big seller to decide the time has come to take profits, and to ruin the Fed’s latest carefully laid plan to make it seem that Tapering (which the Fed will not tire of repeating is not tightening even though even the Fed has now admitted it is the Flow and not the Stock) is priced in, and make a mockery of all “consensus” forecasts yet again.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Lm46ntJ1NTg/story01.htm Tyler Durden