Category Archives: deflation

Hard Currency? Hardly. The Swiss Franc is the Euro.

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That’s what the market thinks anyway, and yours truly is feeling like a dope for not checking out some long term charts before trading dollars for Francs last spring. Here they both are against the dollar via CurrencyShares ETFs (Euro in red, Franc in blue):

Click for larger view. Source: Yahoo! Finance

Here’s a 10-year shot (courtesy of Index Mundi. Ignore the spikes, must be a data feed error):

The market can barely tell them apart. From ’02 to ’07 the Euro dashed up about 50 US cents, but it only gained 20 Swiss cents, since the Franc was rallying too. Now that the European economy has turned and lower rates loom, a great reversal may be underway. But Switzerland never ran very hot, its real estate only appreciated by low single digit compound rates, and its bond rates have been puny for years, so there is no gap to be closed with the dollar. On the contrary, dollar rates have fallen to meet those of the Franc, so one would expect the scales to tip the other way.

So much for rewarding the prudent. Americans bring ruination on themselves but the ensuing deflation drives a powerful rally in their inherently worthless and ultimately doomed script. It will be very interesting to see how far this goes. Sentiment is still very anti-dollar, so we could easily get back to parity with the Euro in 2-5 years.

So here I have fallen victim to the rule that the market inflicts the maximum pain on the maximum number. In my haste to get out of a horribly flawed currency, I ran to the Franc on its reputation as the paper that has best held its value in the decades since the end of gold convertibility. I like the Swiss, and I still think they play the fiat game better than anyone, but currencies are all just slips of paper in the winds of public opinion, and public opinion doesn’t often follow the ‘fundamentals’ of financial analysis. It has its own natural patterns, which are not so easily formulated as interest rate differentials and purchasing power parity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Woods? Treasury market isn’t buying it.

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30-year treasury yields in blue, S&P 500 in red:

Click image for sharper view. Source: Yahoo! Finance

Talk about a non-confirmation. Treasuries rallied on Monday when stocks tanked, but they have failed to sell off since then as stocks have rebounded. Treasuries remain solidly in their 26-year bull market, and I suspect that we will soon enter the crazy phase when a bull runs far outside of fundamentals (in this case the solvency of the creditor).

Pretty Chart of the Day: Gold in Various Currencies

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Thanks to Lance Lewis at Minyanville for this image:

Mr. Lewis is an inflationist and gold bull, and his sentiments here pretty much sum up the mainstream rationale of that species: “Gold’s bull market isn’t just a weak-dollar phenomenon. It’s a function of inflation, just as oil and other commodities.”

To which I reply, gold’s bear market isn’t just a strong-dollar phenomenon. It’s a function of deflation, just as oil and other commodities. This applies in all currencies, as the credit crunch is global, just like the bear markets in stocks and real estate.

Now we know what the strong dollar policy is

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Paulson meant that he was waiting for the US-lead depression to catch up with the rest of the world and bring down rates in Pounds, Euros, Yen and Australian dollars. He’s a genius after all. It’s working:

Source: http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_DX

Even gold, that running vote of confidence in paper money, has backed well off the disconcerting 4-digit level:

Source: Kitco.com

How could people suddenly have such a preference for the dollar again? Don’t they know that it, like the Constitution, is just a goddamned piece of paper? Well, Paulson won’t admit this part of the policy, but you may have heard lately about people and companies going broke. Broke means no money (such as dollars). Since dollars accounted for a huge share of the bad loans made in the bubble, the implosion of that debt is akin to a shortage of dollars.

The dollars were never really there, just debt, but when you get a loan, it sure feels and works like money. And when it comes time to pay it back, money is what you need. Right now, nobody seems to have much of it, so those who do are getting the sense that they should hang onto it. That means a slower velocity of money (the pace with which it changes hands), which is deflationary by even by mainstream economists’ definition (M V = P Q).

So, who wants to guess how much longer Peter Schiff can hold out with his inflation case?

“The common stock is now a call option”

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John Hussman tonight is particularly nervous about the stock market’s near-term prospects, and he has this to report after reading Fannie Mae’s 10Q:

With regard to Fannie Mae’s report, the most interesting figure wasn’t the reported $2.3 billion loss, but rather the much larger deterioration in the reported fair value of Fannie’s balance sheet. We can observe what’s going on by comparing Table 32 of Fannie Mae’s Q2 2008 10Q filing with the same table in Fannie Mae’s Q1 2008 10Q filing.

As of June 30, 2008, the fair value of Fannie Mae’s common equity (that is, the book value available to common shareholders) was -$5.39 billion, compared with a March 31 fair value of -$2.07 billion. What’s notable here is that this deterioration (-$3.32 billion) was even larger than the -$2.30 billion loss that Fannie reported to investors, which was itself about four times higher than the loss analysts had estimated. Note that balance sheet losses are excluded from earnings. Financial stocks tend to be reasonably valued when they trade at tangible book value, but simply put, Fannie Mae has no tangible book value. The common stock is now a call option.

Even if we include the fair value of preferred equity, we find that on a fair value basis, Fannie Mae is operating at a gross leverage multiple of 72.7 (total assets comprised primarily of mortgage loans, divided by shareholder equity). In other words, a slight 1.4% deterioration in the value of Fannie’s book of assets will wipe out all of the remaining shareholder equity. This makes Long Term Capital Management look like a conservative strategy.