Evening Headlines
Bloomberg:
- JPMorgan(JPM) Leads CMBS Sale as Offerings Revive: Credit Markets. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is poised to sell the largest offering of commercial mortgage-backed securities this year as Wall Street seeks to chip away at property debt financed before values plummeted on shopping centers, hotels and offices. The top-ranked 10-year portion of the offering may yield 155 basis points, or 1.55 percentage points, more than the benchmark swaps rate, according to a person familiar with the transaction. That compares with a spread of about 305 basis points on comparable bonds issued prior to 2008, when underwriting standards were more lenient, JPMorgan data show.
- Drinks Are Free as Bartenders Fill Punchbowl: William Pesek. It has been 13 years since the Bank of Japan was freed from the clutches of politicians. What has it done since? Cut interest rates to zero and left them there. If that’s your definition of “independence” then it’s different from mine. Sure, the BOJ managed to boost rates here and there -- even getting them as high as 0.5 percent. It has since relented. This week, it bowed anew to politicians’ demands to lower its 0.1 percent benchmark toward zero. Japan doesn’t cut rates. It shaves them. This predicament puts Japan at the center of a dangerous trend: the death of central-bank independence. The ramifications for credit markets will be huge.
- House Republicans Wary of Fed Asset Purchase Plan, Garrett Says. New Jersey Representative Scott Garrett said House Republicans are concerned that another round of large-scale bond purchases by the Federal Reserve could fan an asset bubble or validate more deficit spending by Congress. “I have concerns,” said Garrett, a Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the Fed. “A substantial number of my Republican colleagues would have concerns with the Fed taking this action.” U.S. central bankers have kept their benchmark lending rate near zero for almost two years, and may be preparing for another round of bond purchases to boost growth. In March, they finished $1.7 trillion in purchases of Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, and housing agency bonds. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that “much more accommodation” is needed to get the economy back to full employment and stable prices. “We could just be seeing the Fed just repeating its process of creating another bubble,” Garrett said in a telephone interview today. “Economists would indicate that they are already potentially starting out there in certain commodities.” Commodities rose to the highest in almost two years on speculation central banks around the world will provide additional monetary stimulus. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also said the Federal Reserve’s policy of cutting interest rates to a record low has had repercussions worldwide, including currency misalignments and the risk of asset price bubbles. “Fed policy was supposed to reignite the American economy, but it’s not doing that,” Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “The flood of liquidity is going abroad and causing problems all over the world.” Garrett said Republicans are also concerned that additional Fed action would provide a backstop for deficit spending. “You don’t have to get spending under control if you know that the Fed is always there to buy up every Treasury,” Garrett said. “This just facilitates the reckless behavior that the Congress has been on for the last several years.”
- Trichet Exit Path Blocked as Banks Stay Hooked on ECB Funds: Euro Credit. European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet staked his reputation on propping up banks with cheap cash during the financial crisis. Now credit markets won’t let him take away that support. Near-record borrowing costs for nations across the euro region’s periphery are making it harder for the ECB to wean commercial banks off the lifeline it introduced two years. The extra yield that investors demand to hold Irish and Portuguese debt over Germany’s rose last week to 454 basis points and 441 basis points respectively. Spain’s spread hit a two-month high. The risk for the ECB is that it gets pulled deeper into helping the banking systems of the most indebted nations in the 16-member euro bloc. Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said Sept. 6 that addiction to ECB liquidity is “a problem” that “needs to be tackled.” Complicating the ECB’s task is that interbank lending rates have risen, tightening credit conditions and making access to market funding more expensive for banks. “The ECB is trapped and the exit door is blocked,” said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “The state of credit markets is going to force them to stay in crisis mode for longer than some of them would like.”
- AIG's Real Numbers Still Shrouded in Secrecy: Jonathan Weil. American International Group Inc., the bailed-out insurance company, says it’s poised to emerge as a “financially strong, independent company” once it repays the U.S. government. That claim might be more credible if AIG started showing a truer picture of its financial condition.
- Murdoch Says Public School 'Failure Factories' Imperil U.S. Middle Class. News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch called for an overhaul of the U.S. education system to preserve the middle class and prevent the country from slipping further behind the rest of the world. “The failure rates of our public schools represent a tragic waste of human capital that is making America less competitive,” Murdoch said today at a Media Institute awards dinner in Washington, according to the prepared text of his remarks. “Upward mobility in America is in jeopardy unless we fix our public schools.” Murdoch, an Australian native who became a U.S. citizen in 1985, said it’s imperative the U.S. measure its performance against the world and provide parents with more data about teacher performance to give them choice among schools. “Our middle-class way of life may disappear” if another generation goes through the current education system, he said. “In plain English, we trap the children who need an education most in failure factories,” said Murdoch, 79. Students who do graduate often do so with “worthless” degrees and others never learn the basic skills needed to provide for themselves, he said.
- Pakistan Urges On Taliban. Members of Pakistan's spy agency are pressing Taliban field commanders to fight the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, some U.S. officials and Afghan militants say, a development that undercuts a key element of the Pentagon's strategy for ending the war. The explosive accusation is the strongest yet in a series of U.S. criticisms of Pakistan, and shows a deteriorating relationship with an essential ally in the Afghan campaign. The U.S. has provided billions of dollars in military and development aid to Pakistan for its support.
- The Mutual Fund in the 'Flash Crash'. Waddell & Reed's $27 Billion Asset Strategy Portfolio, Part of a New Breed, Acts Like a Hedge Fund. In the quest to find the culprit in the May 6 "flash crash," regulators have pointed the finger at a little-known mutual fund based in a nondescript office park outside Kansas City. But the fund in question—the $27 billion Asset Strategy Fund—is no average mutual fund. Run by Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., the fund is bigger than most hedge funds and, by some measures, acts like one. It is part of a rapidly growing breed of U.S. mutual funds that can trade in almost anything they want, including hedging during times of trouble.
- Fed Officials Mull Inflation as a Fix. The Federal Reserve spent the past three decades getting inflation low and keeping it there. But as the U.S. economy struggles and flirts with the prospect of deflation, some central bank officials are publicly broaching a controversial idea: lifting inflation above the Fed's informal target. The rationale is that getting inflation up even temporarily would push "real" interest rates—nominal rates minus inflation—down, encouraging consumers and businesses to save less and to spend or invest more. Both inside and outside the Fed, though, such an approach is controversial. It could undermine the anti-inflation credibility the Fed won three decades ago by raising interest rates to double-digits to beat back late-1970s price surges. "It's a big mistake," said Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University, a central bank historian. "Higher inflation is not going to solve our problem. Any gain from that experience would be temporary," adding that the economy would suffer later. Others warn that pushing inflation higher than the target could create public confusion and risk fueling financial bubbles and market instability. They say Fed policy already is weakening the dollar and as a result prompting a gold and commodity boom. "The Fed is treading upon a mine-laden path that has never been tip-toed through in this country," said Andrew Busch, a currency strategist at BMO Capital Markets.
- ObamaCare and the Election. American politics is turning right because Democratic leaders tried to govern from the hard ideological left, even over the objections of their own rank and file and the larger public. The question for Republicans is whether they will have the political fortitude to clean up the mess they may soon inherit. Nowhere is this task more urgent than in the health markets. The costs of ObamaCare are already coming due, but these are merely teasers compared to the damage to come to the dynamism of U.S. medicine, the competitiveness of U.S. enterprise and the federal fisc. Republicans have staunchly and rightly opposed this agenda, but on the whole they aren't exploiting the issue as well as they could in this election year.
CNBC:
Business Insider:
- Parker-Spitzer's Disappointing Launch Already Has at Least One Industry Exec Predicting That CNN Will Kill It.
- David Goldman Explains Why Quantitative Easing Is Backfiring Badly.
- Tim Geithner Says There's An Old IMF Rule He Can Invoke to Punish China Over the Yuan.
- A Q&A Roadmap to European Austerity. SocGen's Daniel Fermon as penned a must read presentation titled "All you ever wanted to know about European austerity plans... but were afraid to ask" which answers pretty much all open questions about the European plan to streamline its economy, and strengthen its currency.
- Canceling Dubai Property Deals Nearly Impossible. “It’s really a disaster, the situation in Dubai,” said Silvia Turrin, a real estate agent who bought into the property, 29 Boulevard, and has been unable to get her money out. “It’s not like in Western countries — it’s very difficult to exit here if there’s a problem. And we’ll never get our money back, but now we’re stuck dealing with this hole.”
- Internet Explorer Usage Falls Below 50%. For more than a decade, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has been the predominant tool the world uses to connect to the Web, but that's no longer true, according to a Web analytics firm. StatCounter, which tracks Internet data, said that IE's share of the browser market fell to 49.9% in September. More people still use IE than any other single browser, but the combined market share of non-Microsoft browsers now outpaces IE.
- Ohio Accuses Ally of 'Fraudulent' Foreclosures. Ally Financial and its subsidiary GMAC Mortgage are being sued by the Ohio Attorney General for allegedly submitting fraudulent documents in hundreds of foreclosure cases across the state.
- POLL: Dislike of Healthcare Law Crosses Party Lines, 1 in 4 Dems Want Repeal. Healthcare reform is hurting the reelection chances of freshman Democrats in the House, according to The Hill/ANGA poll. A majority of voters in key battleground districts favor repeal of the legislative overhaul Congress passed this year. President Obama predicted in the spring that the new law would become popular as people learned more about it. But the poll shows Republicans strongly oppose it, independents are wary of it and a surprising number of Democrats also want it overturned. Republicans have vowed to repeal the law if they take control of Congress, and the findings of Mark Penn, who led Penn Schoen Berland’s polling team, show that healthcare is a major issue for voters this year. When asked if they wanted the legislation repealed, 56 percent of voters in the surveyed districts said yes. “Only Democrats were opposed to repeal (23 percent to 64 percent),” Penn said. “Undecided voters wanted the healthcare law repealed by 49 percent to 27 percent.” In each district, a majority of those surveyed said they want the controversial law gone.
- Hillary Clinton's World Eyes 2016, Not Vice President. The new round of speculation that Hillary Clinton could replace Joe Biden as President Barack Obama’s running mate in 2012 misses the point. Clinton doesn’t want to be vice president. But, her old advisers say, she may still want to be president.
- Samsung Faces Weak Outlook on Flat Screens, TVs. Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS), the world's largest memory chip maker, disappointed markets with weak earnings guidance, halting its second straight quarter of record results, due to plunging prices of flat screens and TVs. The South Korean electronics powerhouse is braced for a tough outlook as a sputtering world economy has hit demand for TVs and computers and exacerbated steep price falls of components such as chips and flat screens.
- The Rise and Rise of Correlation. From New York to Hong Kong, investors, dealers, analysts and academics are puzzled. For months, they have been struggling to explain an investment phenomenon that has defined this year’s sharp swings in financial markets. Now they may have an answer. Like fish swimming in shoals, shares in the world’s largest companies have see-sawn in lockstep as investors have bought heavily only to head for the exits later. This indiscriminate buying and selling, also called “risk-on, risk-off” trading, has characterised the sharp swings in equity markets during the summer sell-off and later rally that has this week sent Wall Street to near five-month highs. The implications could be important for investors. “It isn’t just a problem for traders looking to make rhyme or reason out of market moves,” says Nicholas Colas, ConvergEx Group chief market strategist. “Rather it is a deeply corrosive issue that diminishes the value of investing altogether.” Some commentators and so-called “value” investors, who seek out undervalued stocks, have gone as far as to declare stock-picking dead. As one US fund manager says: “We spend all this time picking stocks and then everything rises and falls at the same time. It is a nightmare.” Most active fund managers add so-called “alpha”, or risk-adjusted returns, by focusing on earnings fundamentals and relative valuations. But rising correlation means that their work has gone unrewarded – stock moves have tended to be driven by sentiment about the direction of the global economy and little else. “Correlation is a massive problem at the moment,” says Keith Skeoch, chief executive of Standard Life Investments “The markets are telling you ‘we are still swinging between two very fat tails of long-run returns: either going down like a stone or up like a rocket’.” Now a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US has shed light on the phenomenon. In the paper, Jeffrey Wurgler, finance professor at New York University, reveals how the impact of the simple inclusion of stocks in indices markedly affects their performance so that they move in tandem with other index members irrespective of differences in their earnings or relative valuations. Mr Wurgler’s findings support theories that the growing popularity of index-linked investing, measured in the trillions of dollars, and the growth of “high-frequency trading”, which allows traders to buy and sell shares and derivatives in fractions of a second, may in part be responsible for increased correlation. Increasingly, analysts have pointed to the potential influence of indexation and popularity of index-based products, in particular futures and exchange-traded funds, ETFs, as a cause of increased correlation in recent years.
- Sunbelt Workers See No Sign of Recovery. The US recovery began more than a year ago but it has brought little comfort to workers in California and Florida. They are losing jobs as fast as they did at the height of the recession.
- Wen Warns Against Renminbi Pressure. Forcing Beijing to revalue its currency would lead to a “disaster for the world”, Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, has warned amid increasing tensions over efforts by governments and central banks to hold down their exchange rates. Speaking in Brussels, Mr Wen hit back at international criticism of China’s currency policy, saying that acceding to demands for a faster rise in the renminbi could cause social unrest in China. “Do not work to pressurise us on the renminbi rate,” Mr Wen said, departing from prepared remarks. He said Chinese export companies had very small profit margins, which could be wiped out by actions such as the currency import tariffs the US Congress is threatening to impose. “Many of our exporting companies would have to close down, migrant workers would have to return to their villages,” Mr Wen said. “If China saw social and economic turbulence, then it would be a disaster for the world.”
- None of Note
- Asian equity indices are -.25% to +.50% on average.
- Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 109.0 +1.0 basis point.
- Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 99.0 -6.5 basis points.
- S&P 500 futures unch.
- NASDAQ 100 futures +.04%.
Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (PEP)/1.22
- (ISCA)/.26
- (AA)/.05
- (MU)/.40
8:30 am EST
- Initial Jobless Claims are estimated to rise to 455K versus 453K the prior week.
- Continuing Claims are estimated to fall to 4450K versus 4457K prior.
- ICSC Chain Store Sales for September are estimated to rise +2.9% versus a +3.2% gain in August.
- Consumer Credit for August is estimated at -$3.5 Billion versus -$3.6 Billion in July.
- None of note
- The Fed's Fisher speaking, Fed's Hoenig speaking, weekly EIA natural gas inventory report and the (QLGC) analyst meeting could also impact trading today.
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