Monday, July 14, 2014 - Clearing Up Outstanding Issues

Clearing Up Outstanding Issues

by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 111 = 17,055
SPX + 9 = 1977
NAS + 24 = 4440
10 YR YLD + .03 = 2.55%
OIL + .22 = 101.05
GOLD – 32 = 1307.80
SILV - .54 = 21.00

The Dow Industrial Average hit an intraday high of 17,088, but couldn’t close above the old closing high of 17,074 from July 2.

I woke up this morning and checked the Euro markets; the headline read: Global Stocks mostly higher as Portuguese debt concerns ease. Banco Espirito Santo’s parent company sold part of its stake in the bank to pay off short-term debt, so everything is cool. Portuguese bond prices popped. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

Just to refresh your memory, Banco Espirito Santo is 25% owned by Espirito Financial Group, which is in turn 49% owned by Espirito Santos Irmaoes, which in turn is wholly owned by Rioforte investments, which in turn is wholly owned by Espirito Santo international. What’s the point of owning a bank if you can’t make loans to yourself; and that’s what happened, until last week, when Espirito Santo International, the parent company failed to make a payment on short-term debt. The collective companies under the Espirito Santo umbrella have borrowed several billion from the bank, and then the bank made about 8 billion euros in loans to Angola, and that has a non-performance rate approaching 90%. And I know you’re wondering why you should be concerned about loans to Angola, and it’s because everything in finance is leveraged. No loan lives in isolation.

Panic ensued. The fear was that creditors and/or depositors might be on the hook in the event of a shortfall; no one could be certain because of a lack of transparency. But the bank says they have a cushion; the parent company sold a few assets to come current on the loan. Hopefully, I’ve cleared up the transparency issue. Regulators say there’s nothing to worry about and they should know because they didn’t see this coming in the first place, and so there’s nothing to worry about; the situation in Portugal is contained, and global stocks moved higher.

Here in the US, we know a thing or two about banks behaving badly. Today, as expected, Citgroup agreed to pay $7 billion to settle civil claims the bank misled investors about toxic mortgage backed securities leading up to the 2008 crash. Citigroup admitted it was aware that "significant percentages" of sample loans did not comply with underwriting guidelines but the bank pooled them into securities anyway. In one 2007 deal, a Citigroup trader told colleagues in an email he had reviewed a due diligence report on the poorest quality loans, and that they "should start praying." Many of the loans listed unreasonable borrower incomes or home values below the original appraisals, the trader wrote, saying he "would not be surprised if half of these loans went down." Citigroup still securitized loans from the pool. Quite simply, they knew the mortgage backed securities were full of bad loans, they lied about it to make the sale.

Under the agreement, Citi will pay $4.5 billion in cash and provide $2.5 billion in aid to low-income tenants and struggling homeowners; details of terms of the help and how many will benefit are not yet known, but there’s no indication people they will go back to help make people whole. Some homeowners with Citi mortgages could see the amount of their loans reduced, or could have their interest rates reduced. There will also be down payment and closing cost assistance to future homebuyers. But none of that starts until 2018. I don’t know why.

Last year Citi settled with the FHFA for $250 million. The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had sued the bank over soured mortgage securities sold to the taxpayer-owned entities. The cash portion consists of a record $4 billion civil payment to the Justice Department, double JPMorgan’s penalty in November, and $500 million to resolve claims from five state attorneys general and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

And there is a little gift for Citi; the state AG and FDIC payments would be deductible, along with any costs Citigroup actually incurs in relation to consumer relief, which could be less than the $2.5 billion amount of relief in the settlement.

As part of the settlement, Citigroup “will take a charge of approximately $3.8 billion pre-tax in the second quarter of 2014." Second-quarter earnings results were also posted this morning, and if you exclude the multi-billion dollar settlement, Citi beat expectations. The settlement wipes out the quarter’s earnings, but if you look the other way, it was a kick ass quarter for earnings. Citigroup exceeded Wall Street expectations in the second quarter with adjusted earnings of $1.24 a share. On that basis, analysts had been expecting Citigroup would earn $1.05 a share. Citi posted a 15% drop in trading revenue. Investment banking revenue rose 16% from a year ago. Mortgage originations were down.

This is a civil settlement, not a criminal settlement. Attorney General Eric Holder at a press conference said: “Citi settlement doesn’t absolve bank, employees from criminal charges.” Of course nobody expects the Department of Justice to pursue criminal charges. Citi is also under investigation for possible fraud and money laundering in its Mexican unit. And if you look at all the wrongdoing, you might come to the conclusion that this is just a corrupt organization.

If you’re wondering where the next subprime meltdown will occur, well you can pick from a wide selection of possibilities. Markets seem to be considering only a very narrow spectrum of potential outcomes. They have become convinced that monetary conditions will remain easy for a very long time, and may be taking more assurance than central banks wish to give. Debt ratios in the developed economies have risen by 20 percentage points to 275% of GDP, since the Lehman crisis. Credit spreads have fallen to wafer-thin levels. Companies are borrowing heavily to buy back their own shares, and 40% of syndicated loans are to sub-investment grade borrowers, a higher ratio than in 2007, with fewer protections from loss.

The Bank of International Settlements, the central bank for the central bankers of the world, warned it is annual report two weeks ago that equity markets had become "euphoric". Volatility has dropped to an historic low. European equities have risen 15% in a year despite near zero growth and a 3% fall in expected earnings. The cyclically-adjusted price earnings ratio of the S&P 500 index in the US reached 25 in May, six points above its half-century average. Overall, it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets’ buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally.

Some of you might pick the student loan market, with over $1 trillion in outstanding loans and growing. The deeply indebted college graduate has become a stock character in the national conversation: the art history major with $50,000 in debt, the underemployed barista with $75,000, the struggling poet with $100,000. That’s not really typical of student loan debt. Only 7 percent of young-adult households with education debt have $50,000 or more of it. By contrast, 58 percent of such households have less than $10,000 in debt, and an additional 18 percent have between $10,000 and $20,000.

That’s not to say student loan debt is not a concern, it is, and it is growing. In 2010, 36 percent of households with people between the ages of 20 and 40 had education debt, up from 14 percent in 1989. The median amount of debt, among those with debt, more than doubled, to $8,500 from $3,517, after adjusting for inflation. Student loan debt is a problem, but it isn’t a new problem, it’s just a trillion dollar problem now, but it hasn’t imploded in the past 2 decades and there doesn’t seem to be an immediate catalyst.

How about a bubble in energy? Ambrose Evans- Pritchard writes: Data from Bank of America show that oil and gas investment in the US has soared to $200 billion a year. It has reached 20% of total US private fixed investment, the same share as home building. This has never happened before in US history, even during the Second World War when oil production was a strategic imperative.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global investment in fossil fuel supply doubled in real terms to $900 billion from 2000 to 2008 as the boom gathered pace. It has since stabilized at a very high plateau, near $950 billion last year. Output from conventional fields peaked in 2005. Not a single large project has come on stream at a break-even cost below $80 a barrel for almost three years….

There are, of course, other candidates for the bubble prize of the current economic cycle, now into its 22nd quarter and facing the headwinds of US monetary tightening. China’s housing boom has echoes of the Tokyo blow-off in 1989, and is four times more stretched than US subprime in 2006, based on price-to-income…Emerging markets have racked up $2 trillion in foreign currency debt since 2008. They are a much larger animal than they were during the East Asia crisis of the late 1990s, so any crisis would do more damage.

Yet the sheer scale of “stranded assets” and potential write-offs in the fossil industry raises eyebrows. IHS Global Insight said the average return on oil and gas exploration in North America has fallen to 8.6%, lower than in 2001 when oil was trading at $27 a barrel. What happens if oil falls back towards $80 as Libya ends force majeure at its oil hubs and Iran rejoins the world economy?

And that’s before we get to another threat to fossil fuel investments that Evans-Pritchard mentions: that governments might get serious about climate change and impose meaningful restrictions, like hefty carbon taxes. Right now, that seems like a tail risk, but the crisis just past was a tail event as well. And much higher energy prices resulting from restriction on fossil fuel production would slow down economic activity markedly, which again could blow back to leveraged investors in unexpected ways.

Wednesday, July 09, 2014 - Waiting for Liftoff

Waiting for Liftoff
by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 78 = 16,985

SPX + 9 = 1972
NAS + 27 = 4419
10 YR YLD - .02 = 2.54%
OIL – 1.46 = 101.94
GOLD + 7.00 = 1327.60
SILV + .08 = 21.10

The Federal Reserve released the minutes of the most recent FOMC policy meeting from June 17-18.

The Fed is going to take away the punchbowl. As of October, no more punchbowl. That’s it, QE is drying up. I think we all knew that was coming. And then after the Fed stops buying Treasuries and mortgage backed securities, they will get around to probably raising their target on interest rates, but rates would remain near zero for a “considerable time” (probably the spring of 2015) after the Fed halts its program of bond purchases.

According to the minutes, there continues to be division over when the Fed should stop reinvesting proceeds of the $4.2 trillion in assets it purchased to support financial markets. Ending reinvestment will put the central bank's balance sheet on a declining path, and some members argue that should not take place until interest rates have been increased. Fed officials also agreed that the rate of interest on excess reserves would play a “central role” in moving rates higher when the time comes.

And this is a fluid timeline for all this; it is partly dependent on “liftoff”; that’s the new word from the Fed – liftoff. At some point, the economy will slip the surly bonds of earth and wheel, soar, and swing high in the sunlit silence, and do a hundred things we haven’t dreamed of for such a long, long time. Someday, we’ll have liftoff.

The market players looked at the minutes and pulling away the punchbowl, while painful, was an indication of economic strength. Fed officials expressed overall confidence that moderate economic growth will continue and unemployment and inflation will gradually move towards the central bank's targets. A couple of participants noted that consumer spending had been supported importantly by gains in household net worth while income gains had been held back by only modest increases in wages. So, an important element in the economic outlook was a pickup in income, from higher wages as well as ongoing employment gains that would be expected to support a sustained rise in consumer spending. Which is correct in theory; we just haven’t seen the pickup in income.

At the press conference after the June meeting, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said that recent inflation readings were “noisy.” According to the minutes, the Fed staff was not concerned with inflation despite some recent higher readings. Although the Fed staff revised its inflation forecast up “a little” in the near term, the medium term projection was revised down slightly.

Yesterday I talked about an anomaly in the jobs number from Thursday. How could we have negative 2.9% GDP in the first quarter while we were adding all those jobs? I concluded that the problem was that productivity was declining.

New data was released this morning showing US productivity growth was the worst since the recession. The data from the Labor Department looks at multifactor productivity, and it includes the impact of capital, new machines, investment in technology, and such. The measure of capital services input grew 1.9%, which is the best showing since 2008, but that is more a reflection of the bounce from the 1st quarter, and still far from the pre-recession levels that were consistently above 3%. So, the data in this morning’s report is consistent with an economy coming out of a recession but nowhere near its pre-recession rate of growth. Bottom line is that productivity needs to increase if the economy is going to get better.

One of the concerns for Fed monetary policy is inflation, which isn’t a problem right now and when we have seen a problem in the past 20 years of so, the Fed has been able to tamp it down. The problems with inflation right now are tied to energy and food prices. Food prices are largely tied to weather, and we have seen some nasty weather, and the Fed can’t control the weather. Extreme weather will be an ongoing problem, and rising food prices will be an ongoing challenge, but for now, it’s a short term inflation problem.

Energy prices are largely tied to geopolitical problems in the Middle East. Iraq, Israel, Syria, and other problems could explode out of control at any given moment, but we’ve seen crude oil prices dropping for 9 sessions. The problem in Iraq may very well result in the country splitting apart, but the southern regions, which produce and export the most oil, will likely continue exporting oil. So, the oil traders don’t seem concerned about Iraq divided in 3 parts. Meanwhile, Ukraine hasn’t unfolded as Putin planned. Kiev did not roll over. Sanctions are painful. Putin doesn’t look like he wants to escalate the fight; at least not today.

Meanwhile, the US is more or less on track to pass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of crude oil within the next 5 years. Domestic crude output is increasing but the increase is coming from shale and shale is notoriously tricky and expensive to extract. The US will continue to extract more shale oil but certain projects, even mega-projects, have been abandoned because of the expense. We know that there are huge reserves in the US, but it doesn’t always pay to pump it; so the increase in output may not be as strong as hoped. For now, prices are high and oil extraction is soaring at shale formations from Texas to North Dakota as companies split apart rocks using high-pressure liquid, or fracking. The result is that now Oklahoma has more earthquakes than California, and we are less dependent on foreign oil.

The United States has just become the world’s biggest oil producer, at least when you consider crude oil plus natural gas together. The US has been the top global nat gas producer for the past 4 years, but a new report from Bank of America says that in the first six months of this year the US overtook Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the top producer of petroleum product, that is oil and natural gas and the liquids that are separated from nat gas.

Annual investment in oil and gas in the US is at a record $200 billion, reaching 20% of the country’s total private fixed-structure spending for the first time, but it will take some time for that investment to work its way through the rest of the economy. We now produce about 11 million barrels a day of crude oil and we consume about 18.5 million barrels a day. So despite the boom, we still import oil and we are still dependent on OPEC. If we converted from oil and gasoline to nat gas, starting running more cars on compressed natural gas, we could become energy independent in short order.

The other side of the equation remains conservation and not just a switch to nat gas but a switch to renewable energy. You think green energy is too expensive? Tosh; tosh and falderal. Global energy markets are reaching a tipping point. For the first time, a large fraction of the world's fossil fuels could be replaced at a lower cost by clean energy, with today's renewable technologies and prices. And virtually no further investments in fossil fuels make long-term economic sense because higher fossil fuel prices over their useful life will be exorbitant.

Barclay's Bank recently downgraded the entire US utility sector in fear that it would not respond to the disruptive challenge of distributed solar. The Barclays credit team believes that, over the next few years, the “confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and residential-scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo.” The new government in India is cutting fossil fuel subsidies and promising to provide rooftop solar for 400 million homes. Conservation is another important element. Profitable building retrofits would cut fossil fuel used for heating and cooling by 20%, and displace another 15% of fossil fuel electricity demand.

International oil companies are hitting the wall on the price they will pay for big new oil projects. There is plenty of oil in Ohio but BP, in its last quarterly report, announced it would halt development of the Utica shale fields. Along with BP, Chevron, Shell, Total, Statoil, and Exxon have all cancelled or delayed mega projects or even sold off major investments in US oil projects

The latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance projection suggests that 2/3 of incremental global power generation over the next fifteen years will come from renewables. Declines in coal use in developed economies will be sharp enough to cut the global share of fossil fuels from 64% today to only 44% in 2030.

Electricity currently provides only 1% of global transportation energy; EV's and rail could today replace the first 15% of the oil used by cars and trucks at with an internal rate of return higher than 15%. Fossil fuels generate 63% of the world's power, renewables less than 5%, but 1/3 of fossil electricity now costs more than competing wind and solar. And that doesn’t even begin to factor in the externalities associated with fossil fuels.

A couple of quick notes as we wrap up. Citigroup is reportedly close to paying about $7 billion to resolve a probe into whether it defrauded investors on billions of dollars’ worth of mortgage securities in the run-up to the financial crisis. A majority of the settlement is expected to be in cash, but the figure also includes several billion dollars in help to struggling borrowers. An announcement of the settlement between the bank and the Department of Justice could come as early as next week.

This bit of economic data came in late this afternoon. The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service shows the Phoenix market saw overall sales in June drop 11% year over year; now back to the lowest sales since 2008. Non-cash sales were up 6% year over year, but cash sales were down 40%; so it looks like investors are moving on. Active inventory is up 43% year over year and at the highest level for June since 2011. So, sales are down, inventory is very high, and cash is scarce.

When do we start QE4?

Friday, June 13th, 2014 - Infallible Source Predicts Economic Collapse!

Infallible Source Predicts Economic Collapse!
by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 41 = 16,775
SPX + 6 = 1936
NAS + 13 = 4310
10 YRYLD + .02 = 2.60%
OIL + .38 = 106.91
GOLD + 2.80 = 1276.90
SILV + .15 = 19.77

For the week, the Dow was down 0.9%, the S&P fell 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq was down 0.25%. The week's decline was the first after three weeks of consecutive gains on the S&P 500. For the year, the broad market index is up about 4.8%. So, it was a rough week, but a good Friday the 13^th.

The Producer Price Index measures prices at the wholesale level; the PPI was down 0.2% in May. The decline was driven lower by cheaper food and gas, and follows two months of strong gains. In the past 12 months, producer prices have risen 2%, matching the Federal Reserve's inflation target. That's down from an annual gain of 2.1% in April. Excluding the volatile food, energy and profit margin categories, (for all you people who don’t eat food or drive in cars) core producer prices were unchanged in May. Inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, has been mostly below 2% for the past two years.

Of course, that might change, at least for people who eat and drive cars. The price of oil has jumped the past few days, now standing at $106.91 a barrel, mainly on fears of a civil war in Iraq. The International Energy Agency played down fears over the possible loss of oil exports from Iraq in its monthly Oil Market Report, writing: "Concerning as the latest events in Iraq may be, they might not for now, if the conflict does not spread further, put additional Iraqi oil supplies immediately at risk." Oil futures in New York rose 4.1% this week.

A very nasty group of rebels known as ISIS is closing in on Baghdad. ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, and they are made of Sunnis. The government of Iraq is controlled by Shi’ites. ISIS has taken over the second largest city of Mosul; they have surrounded the largest oil refinery in the country, and they are moving to the capitol of Baghdad. So far, the Iraqi soldiers have been running away, but today a message from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the highest religious authority for Shi'ites in Iraq, said people should unite to fight back.

In an interesting twist, before ISIS started ramping up the fight in Iraq, they were fighting in Syria, against the government of Bashar al Assad.

President Obama told reporters at the White House he would not send US troops back into combat in Iraq but had asked his national security team to prepare "a range of other options" to help Iraqi security forces. He specifically did not rule out the use of military action, which might include the possibility of air attacks to slow the rebel advance.

Pope Francis says the global economic system is near collapse. In an interview with la Vanguardia, the Pope said he was especially concerned about youth unemployment, and he denounced the influence of war and the military on the global economy, saying: “We discard a whole generation to maintain an economic system that no longer endures, a system that to survive has to make war, as the big empires have always done. Since we cannot wage the Third World War, we make regional wars. And what does that mean? That we make and sell arms. And with that the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies -- the big world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money -- are obviously cleaned up."

The pope said there was enough food to feed all the world's hungry, and people’s needs should be at the heart of the economic system.

Following the elections in the European Union, France issued a report on debt, which contained several key findings, including the idea that the rise in the state’s debt in the past decades cannot be explained by an increase in public spending. The report also says that no one actually knows who holds the French debt. And the big conclusion of the report is that some 60% of the French public debt is illegitimate. An illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests, and not the wellbeing of the people. Therefore the French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it.

Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital have agreed to pay a combined $121 million to settle a lawsuit that accused them and other firms of colluding to drive down the prices of takeovers before the financial crisis, according to a court filing on Wednesday. The deal, if approved by the court, would bring closure for Goldman and Bain of a seven-year-old lawsuit filed by former shareholders of the acquired companies, who claimed that private equity firms teaming up to do deals were partners in an illegal conspiracy to reduce competition.

The settlement deal also raises the stakes for the remaining defendants, which include some of private equity’s biggest firms. The Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, TPG Capital, Silver Lake and the Carlyle Group are scheduled to head to trial in November. Now the $121 million dollar settlement is fairly small, but now that Goldman and Bains have broken ranks with the other defendants, the lawyers for the plaintiffs may gain additional bargaining power. The plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars in damages, but because of the mechanics of antitrust law, the defendants could be liable for a multiple of that amount if they lose at trial.

The Justice Department has asked Citigroup for more than $10 billion to settle a probe into the bank’s sale of mortgage-backed bonds before the 2008 financial crisis. Prosecutors broke off talks with Citigroup earlier this week and are preparing to sue the bank after it offered less than $4 billion ($1 billion cash and the rest in consumer relief) to resolve the matter. The Justice Department could file a lawsuit as early as next week.

The department is taking a similar approach with Bank of America. Prosecutors also halted talks with the bank June 9 after it offered to pay more than $12 billion, short of the department’s $17 billion request. And then there is the outstanding case against BNP Paribas, where prosecutors are believed to be calling for more than $10 billion in fines for money laundering and sanctions violations. And this all follows on the heels of the Credit Suisse $2.6 billion fine and criminal guilty plea in a tax evasion case. No word whether prosecutors are looking at criminal charges against BofA or Citigroup. What we are seeing is that the fines are getting larger, but somehow with billions of dollars of penalties and multiple billions of dollars of wrongdoing, nobody ever goes to jail.

If you wonder why the prisons aren't filled with banksters, just follow the money from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. Earlier this week we saw one of Wall Street's favorite politicians of the decade, Eric Cantor, destroyed by a random teabagger who railed against him endlessly for pushing through Bush's TARP bailout of the big banks. Just this cycle, the financial sector had contributed $1,396,450 to Cantor's campaign coffers. And Cantor was just one of the politicians getting their wallets fluffed by Wall Street, a quick list of Wall Street favorites includes John Boehner, Spencer Bachus, Jeb Hensarling, and Democrats including Charlie Rangel, and Heny Stoyer. We have finally found one thing in Washington that is bipartisan – bribery, or should I say campaign finance…no, it’s bribery.

Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will let other companies use its inventions under an open-source-inspired agenda at the company. Here’s how Musk put it in a blog post:”Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

Tesla has hundreds of approved patents, and many pending applications, for all manner of inventions tied to electric-vehicle technology. Tesla pioneered innovations that lowered the cost and increased the safety of battery packs. Its cars recharge much faster than others on the market, thanks to connector, software, and power-management advances. Now this public company will offer these smarts up to its rivals and ask nothing but goodwill in return.

And while it sounds like a radical idea, it might be a very smart business move. One thing that is required for electric cars is charging stations, as ubiquitous as gas stations. And even though Tesla has patents on battery technology, and they have some of the best batteries around with longer range and faster recharging, they still need to improve the technology. And Musk apparently isn’t concerned with the competition, saying: “You want to be innovating so fast that you invalidate your prior patents, in terms of what really matters. It’s the velocity of innovation that matters.”

Here’s an amazing statistic, compliments of a Tweet from Bill Gates. From 1901 to 2000, the United States built millions of miles of roads and interstate highways, plus Hoover Dam, plus many other damns, plus an incredible number of building; and during that 100 year period, we used 4.5 gigatons of concrete. In the past 3 ½ years, China has been on a building boom that has consumed 6.6 gigatons of concrete.

Wednesday, June 04, 2014 - An Airtight Defense

An Airtight Defense
by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 15 = 16,737
SPX + 3 = 1927 (record close)
NAS + 17 = 4251
10 YR YLD + .01 = 2.60%
OIL - .27 = 102.39
GOLD – 1.30 = 1244.60
SILV - .01 = 18.90

Eight times a year the Federal Reserve gathers economic updates from the 12 districts and publishes the information about two weeks before its FOMC meetings. The data is published in a beige folder, and that is why it is called the Beige Book, although it might actually refer to the writing style. Anyway, economic activity expanded all across the country, with most districts reporting moderate or modest growth. Consumer spending expanded across almost all districts. Tourism was another bright spot and manufacturing activity expanded across the country. Home sales were described as “mixed across the country” even as home prices continue to rise. Labor markets were described as steady. Inflation was tame, with a slight exception for higher food prices in some areas.

In other words, when the Fed meets in a couple of weeks, there won’t be any big changes in monetary policy.

The Institute for Supply Management said its services index rose to 56.3%, its highest level since August, from 55.2% in April. That’s the number and they’re sticking with it.

The US trade deficit grew to $47 billion in April, up from $44 billion in March. Exports slowed in April, down slightly to $193 billion. Imports, meanwhile, surged by nearly $3 billion to $237 billion, mainly driven by increased spending in consumer goods and cars.

A new survey from the MacArthur Foundation finds 70% of Americans still feel a housing crisis remains today and the worst is yet to come; that’s down from 77% a year ago, but still it doesn’t look like there’s much confidence in a housing recovery. Half the respondents think housing represents a good long term investment, while 43% says that’s not the case; two-thirds say it’s harder to build wealth through home ownership than 20 or 30 years ago. Over half of Americans, 52%, have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years.

In line with the survey on housing, a new poll from CNN and ORC International finds 59% of adults think the American Dream has become impossible for most to achieve, up from 54% in a poll conducted in 2006. What’s more, 63% of those surveyed believe most children in the US will grow up to be worse off than their parents. While most Americans say they’re better off than the prior generation, they also feel gains in living standards are grinding to a halt. One problem is that the survey didn’t define exactly what the American Dream is supposed to be.

ADP, the payroll processing firm, issues a monthly payroll report ahead of the Labor Department each month. The ADP report is not always an accurate predictor of the government report but it is still closely watched for any hints. ADP says the economy added 179,000 private sector jobs in May; that’s significantly below the consensus estimate of 200,000 to 215,000 jobs for the Friday jobs report.

According to the latest revisions from the Labor Department, productivity in the first quarter declined at a 3.2% annual rate, the worst in six years, as workers spent more time on the job producing fewer goods during an unusually stormy weather.

A new research study published today from the Economic Policy Institute shows a sharp disconnect in the late 1970s between the overall productivity of the US economy and wage gains for the average worker. Normally, when workers make more things during a work day, they get paid more for that day’s work. From 1948 to 1979, both hourly wages and productivity roughly doubled. But from 1979 to 2013, productivity rose 65% while average hourly compensation rose just 8%; those at the bottom and middle of the income ladder saw little of those gains.

Wages for everyone at or below the 30th percentile of the income distribution have essentially been flat, while wages for the poorest 10% of workers have fallen during that time period. At all income levels, women earn less on average than men do.  Most wage growth has flowed to the top 1% of earners, posting a 153% increase in wages. Since wages for the lowest income group have fallen while wages at the highest income group have grown, income inequality has also increased.  Piketty was right.

The S&P 500 index hit another record high close today, and even at that it’s just up about 5% year to date. The best performing market year to date is in Dubai; posting a 56% return since the start of the year and posting a 117% return for the past 12 months. The strongest S&P 500 subsectors this year include oil & gas equipment and services, which is up 17%; oil & gas exploration and production, up 15%; real estate investment trusts, up 15%; natural gas utilities, up 21%; and electric utilities, which have risen 14%, largely on the back of some big mergers.

The top performing stocks in the S&P year to date include: Forest Labs, up 60%, a takeover target; Nabors Industries, a contract oil driller based in Bermuda is up 54% year to date; Electronic Arts, the video game developer is up 51%; Keurig Green Mountain has returned 50% this year, this is the coffee company that makes those little single serve containers of coffee; Newfield Exploration, an oil and gas exploration and development company out of Texas is up 49% since the start of the year; Delta Airlines is up 47% after rejoining the S&P 500 index; and Pepco, the Washington DC based utility is up 47% YTD, after agreeing to be acquired by Exelon. Probably nobody picked those stocks as the top performers at the start of the year.

After the close of trade today, comes word that Sprint is nearing an agreement price to acquire T-Mobile for about $40 a share, or around $32 billion, a 17% premium to the closing price today. There will be regulators to deal with. An announcement and an actual deal are still down the road. If you are unhappy with the service and price you pay for your mobile phone, this won’t help.

A federal appeals court has overturned a decision by Judge Jed Rakoff to reject a federal settlement deal with Citigroup. Judge Rakoff had considered the Citigroup-SEC settlement to be little more than a slap on the wrist. The original case accused Citigroup of duping investors into buying tainted CDO’s, Collateralized Debt Obligations. The bank agreed to pay $285 million to settle the civil fraud case, without admitting wrongdoing.

Judge Rakoff called the fine “pocket change” for the bank and said the settlement deprived the public “of ever knowing the truth in a matter of obvious public importance.” And now the court of appeals decision is going to rein in judicial discretion even more. The ruling essentially says that a judges job is not to search for the truth.  One small victory for Judge Rakoff: the SEC last year reversed its longstanding yet unofficial policy of allowing companies to neither “admit nor deny wrongdoing,” signaling that it would force admissions in particularly egregious cases.

If only the SEC had the backbone to pursue a particularly egregious case.

The G-7 or Group of 7 is meeting today and tomorrow; it used to be the G8 until Putin invaded Crimea, and so Russia was kicked out of the clubhouse. A draft of the G7 communique calls on Russia to "accelerate withdrawal of military forces from the eastern border with Ukraine" and "exercise its influence among armed separatists to lay down their weapons".

More important is how Europe will deal with energy security as the continent relies on Russia for about a third of its oil and gas, a fact that gives Putin considerable leverage over the EU. The G7 draft communique says: "The use of energy supplies as a means of political coercion or as a threat to security is unacceptable." Euro leaders say they are committed to diversifying energy sources away from Russia, but it won’t happen overnight. Complacency on the energy front seems like a really big mistake.

As the G7 meeting wraps up, the various leaders will head to France on Friday to mark the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Normandy. Putin will be there. No negotiations or diplomatic level talks are planned but it should make for some interesting photo ops.

And before the D-Day anniversary there will be an uncomfortable dinner between President Obama and French President Hollande, who will make the case that the French bank, BNP Paribas should not be fined $10 billion for money laundering. Naturally, this has BNP clients nervous about what all this means for business, and the upper echelons of BNP management nervous about how their employees might respond to questions about money laundering.

Once upon a time BNP thought they could beat the rap. BNP showed prosecutors a memo that the bank thought would explain and possibly mitigate the conduct. The memo, drafted around 2004 by an outside law firm, essentially authorized the bank to process certain transactions for Sudan, as long as BNP’s employees in New York were not involved in the arrangement. BNP argued that it lacked the intent to commit a crime, saying that it followed the law firm’s directive. That legal argument, known as the “advice of counsel” defense, prompted prosecutors to pore over the single-page memo and weigh the bank’s argument. Ultimately the prosecutors concluded that the memo alleviated only a small fraction of the wrongdoing. Apparently hiring lawyers to tell you that you can do whatever you want turns out to be a little bit less than an airtight legal strategy.

Wednesday, May 14, 2013 - Crumbs and Curds

Crumbs and Curds

by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 101 = 16,613
SPX – 8 = 1888
NAS – 29 = 4100
10 YR YLD - .07 = 2.54%
OIL + .37 = 102.07
GOLD + 11.00 = 1306.70
SILV + .22 = 19.85

The days of milk and cookies can be fleeting; one day the world seems sweet and creamy, and the next day you’re left with nothing but crumbs and curds. The Russell 2000 index of small and mid-caps, dropped 1.6% falling below the 200 day moving average; since hitting a high in March the Russell is down 8.7%. The Dow Jones Internet Index has plunged 17% from a 13-year high in March.

There is a strong tendency among the Wall Street hype-sters to “buy the dip”, with the pitch being that if stocks plunge, it’s really just a buying opportunity if you are patient. What they don’t say is that it is almost impossible to be patient if you run out of capital, but putting that aside, the stocks will all come roaring back someday. Yea, I’m not going to tell you that. Some stocks will recover. Some stocks don’t come back.

Here’s a quote from a Citigroup analyst’s note to clients: “We believe the recent pullback represents a particular opportunity among large cap Internet stocks, with multiples having retraced to levels not seen for more than two years, with no/little change in fundamentals, and with investment profiles that sync well with what portfolio managers are seeking in today’s market.”

Among the favorite downtrodden internet stocks: Facebook, down 18% from its high; LinkedIn, down 43%; and AOL, down 31%, seriously I was surprised to learn that AOL still trades. I would have thought that anybody who lived through 1999 would have shunned AOL permanently. Did we learn nothing from the dot.com days? Certainly the Wall Street analysts learned nothing; they rode the market all the way down back in the day, all the time screaming “buy, buy, buy.” I’ll say the same thing I said back then, you can’t go broke taking a profit.

Treasury bonds rallied. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note touched 2.523% at one point, its lowest level since Oct. 31. While today’s move had all the markings of a short squeeze, the storyline is that the European Central Bank will pump more liquidity into the economy next month. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney signaled there is no rush to raise interest rates after the bank left its growth and inflation forecasts broadly steady in its latest inflation report. And Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said last week that the Fed would continue to keep interest rates near zero for a considerable period to support the economy and inflation remains low. Yellen is scheduled to speak tomorrow.

Today we had a report on inflation at the wholesale level. The Labor Department’s Producer Price Index, or PPI, increased 0.5% in March. The PPI was overhauled in January for the first time since 1978, largely to include services such as retail, health care and financial advice. Previously the index only looked at the price of goods: food, energy, housing and the like. That makes sense, but it has also lead to some wicked wild spikes and dips in the PPI. More likely the CPI, prices at the retail level, are more accurate, running in the range of 1.5% annualized rate.

There’s just something about the bond market that doesn’t feel right. Rates should not be dropping if the economic recovery is really underway. If the first quarter was a weather related aberration, and the second quarter is bouncing back, rates should not be dropping.

After ending 2013 at 3.03%, 10-year Treasury yields have declined 50 basis points year to date. Sovereign yields have collapsed throughout Europe and have generally fallen around the globe. What's behind the decline? Are there potential ramifications for stocks and the global economy? These are critical questions, especially considering the bullish consensus view of accelerating US and global growth.

The Ukraine crisis likely marks an unfortunate end to an era of global cooperation (of a sort) and a return to Cold War tensions and risks. Geopolitical risks exacerbate the vulnerabilities of financial market excesses. And the global central bankers’ response to the collapse of 2008 has resulted in trillions upon trillions of dollars of mispriced financial assets and ever greater leveraged speculation. When the Fed was pumping $85 billion a month into the markets - that was not de-leveraging. With QE winding down, there is impetus for the leveraged speculators to take more risk averse positions; toss in a geopolitical flare-up and greed transforms to fear.

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was speaking at a financial summit in Washington today and he said that current calculations of the federal government's budget deficit and fiscal outlook understate the risk of long-term trouble, because they do not take into account such "contingent liabilities" as the risk of a major Wall Street bank collapsing. Typically, deficit hawks invoke the phrase "contingent liabilities" to call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, arguing that official government accounting understates the long-term taxpayer costs of such programs. But Greenspan didn't make a hard pitch on entitlement cuts, focusing instead on the risk of bank bailouts.  

Bond prices are going up nonetheless because the big money is seeking a safe haven in a gathering storm.

Europe’s highest court Tuesday gave people the means to scrub their reputations online, issuing a ruling that could force Google and other search engines to delete references to old debts, long-ago arrests and other unflattering episodes. Embracing what has come to be called “the right to be forgotten,” the Court of Justice of the European Union said people should have some say over what information comes up when someone Googles them.

The decision was celebrated by some as a victory for privacy rights in an age when just about everything, good or bad, leaves a permanent electronic trace. Others warned it could interfere with the celebrated free flow of information online and lead to censorship. The ruling stemmed from a case out of Spain involving Google, but it applies to the entire 28-nation bloc of over 500 million people and all search engines in Europe, including Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing.

Google is already getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine. Europeans can submit take-down requests directly to Internet companies rather than to local authorities or publishers under the ruling. If a search engine elects not to remove the link, a person can seek redress from the courts.

The criteria for determining which take-down requests are legitimate is not completely clear from the decision. The ruling seems to give search engines more leeway to dismiss take-down requests for links to webpages about public figures, in which the information is deemed to be of public interest. But search engines may err on the side of caution and remove more links than necessary to avoid liability. Google has said it is disappointed with the ruling, which it noted differed dramatically from a non-binding opinion by the ECJ's court adviser last year. That opinion said deleting information from search results would interfere with freedom of expression.

Some limited forms of a “right to be forgotten” exist in the US and elsewhere, for example, in regard to crimes committed by minors or bankruptcy regulations, both of which usually require that records be expunged in some way.  And some things probably are better off forgotten.

In 1897 silver and gold dealers-slash-bankers in London began gathering each day to post their metals prices. They would meet in a basement and compare prices and then average prices and come up with something called the “fix”. There was a morning fix and an afternoon fix for both gold and silver. This became the price for precious metals. There has long been speculation that the bankers who set the fix might occasionally alter the prices to suit their own trades, in other words the fix was rigged and manipulated.

The basic price setting formula worked well for the bankers and it was adopted by the Libor and the Forex and the ISDA and others who liked the idea of controlling prices for a major market. Turns out the Libor and the Forex and other markets were indeed manipulated, and investigations are ongoing. And then the regulators got the bright idea that if all those markets were rigged, maybe the original, the gold and silver fix, maybe they were rigged. Investigations are underway. 

And so Deutsche Bank has decided they don’t want to be part of the London silver fix. They have announced they are resigning their post effective as of August 14, 2014. That leaves just two primary dealers to set prices for silver, HSBC and Bank of Nova Scotia; not enough to matter; and so the London Silver Fix will close down. The London Gold Fix will continue for now, but by the middle of August there will be no more London Silver Fix. And all of the banks that continue to trade in silver will have to find new ways to rig the market.

People used to think price manipulation in major markets never occurred. More evidence today, Bloomberg reports on a research paper that uncovered evidence that some traders got early news of Federal Reserve rate announcements and then traded on it during the Fed’s media lockup. The paper, covering September 1997 through June 2013, detected abnormally large price movements and imbalances in buy and sell orders that were “statistically significant and in the direction of the subsequent policy surprise.” The moves occurred during the window between when Fed announcements were supplied to the news media and when they were permitted to be released to the public.

The researchers calculate that the traders made off with somewhere between $14 million and $250 million in aggregate profits. A spokesperson says the Fed “enhanced its media release security procedures” last October “to better protect the information against premature release.”

Monday, April 14, 2014 - Blood Moon and More

Blood Moon and More

by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 146 = 16,173
SPX + 14 = 1830
NAS + 22 = 4022
10 YR YLD + .02 = 2.64%
OIL - .11 = 103.63
GOLD + 8.20 = 1327.60
SILV un = 20.07

Here’s what you can expect; the Earth will eclipse the moon tonight about 10:58PM pacific time, adjust according to your time zone. The eclipse will take some time, a few hours. The moon will shift color from orange to blood red to brown, again depending on you locale and the weather. It should be interesting.

The stock markets started the day in positive territory and as trading dragged on, the major indices moved lower on the very cusp of turning red, almost as if they were being eclipsed, and then positive again, right at 3:15 PM eastern time, everything just picked up. Now, you might think the markets are rigged. You might.

A group of traders has sued CME Group Inc, accusing the operator of the world's largest derivatives exchange of selling market data to high frequency traders, cheating other investors who lacked such access. The suit says the CME and its Chicago Board of Trade unit have been giving high-frequency traders early access to buy and sell orders.  They said this deprived other investors of the transparent, real-time data on futures and interest rate contracts that they thought they were getting, and were paying for.

Volume was down from Friday; that’s a nasty trend, lighter volume on up days, heavier volume on down days.

The economic calendar includes the March Consumer Price Index tomorrow; Wednesday brings an update on housing starts and building permits, plus the Federal Reserve will release its Beige Book; Friday, the markets are closed for Good Friday.

This morning the Commerce Department reported retail sales increased 1.1% last month; February’s sales numbers were revised higher to 0.7% from a previously reported 0.3%. An important subset of the report showed retail inventories, excluding automobiles, rose 0.2% in February. You will recall that businesses accumulated too much inventory in the fourth quarter of last year, and we have seen fewer orders as the businesses work through unsold goods and try to clear their shelves. That has left the inventory to sales ratio at its highest level since September 2009. Now, it looks like the buyers are back.

A separate report from the New York Fed showed people grew more confident in the labor market last month, with younger workers in particular seeing a greater chance of finding work should they lose their current job.

Earnings reporting season continues with Citigroup posting better than expected net income under of $3.9 billion, or $1.23 per share, from $3.8 billion, or $1.23 per share. Citi Holdings, which holds the bank's portfolio of troubled assets left over from the financial crisis, posted a loss of $292 million, down from $798 million a year earlier. For all of Citigroup, adjusted revenue dropped 2% to $20.1 billion. Citi still has problems with its Mexican unit, which is accused of making fraudulent loans. Also, Citi flunked the recent Fed stress tests for capital reserves. So, here we are nearly 6 years after the financial meltdown and Citi is still cleaning up its books, still exhibiting signs of structural damage, and unable to put money to productive purpose.

The Congressional Budget office says the deficit isn’t as bad as they thought. For the fiscal year 2014 ending September 30, CBO said, the deficit would fall to $492 billion from a $514 billion February estimate - and nearly a third lower than last year's $680 billion deficit. And CBO lowered its cumulative deficit forecast for fiscal years 2015 through 2024 by $286 billion, to a mere $7.6 trillion; the reason for the lower deficits, is that subsidies for health care costs will be less than previously guesstimated.

Deficits will reach a low point of $469 billion, or 2.6% of US gross domestic product, in fiscal 2015, then gradually start to rise, topping $1 trillion again in 2023 and 2024, a level that would be near 4% of GDP.

Last week the IMF and the World Bank held their Spring Meeting in Washington DC. Here’s a snippet from a panel discussion featuring Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans and Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter.

Charles Evans said: “In the U.S. monetary policy is using the standard transmission mechanism. We’re trying to reduce financing costs. Auto rates are down and the auto sector is way back compared to where it was. Housing is better. Mortgage rates are down. And if you have the ability to refinance, or get a mortgage – it’s tougher these days because of the standards - then you can do that. So it’s the standard transmission mechanism. And we are indeed trying to get inflation up because we’re below target. What comes with that is wage increases, also up to where they ought to be. Wages are a symptom of inflation – using a lagging indicator – and they’re down around 2 to 2.25% right now. When they’re at a steady growth part of the cycle they ought to be about 3.5% - 1.5% productivity and 2% inflation target. So getting everything up – and getting inflation up to where it is supposed to be is an important part of all of this. So that benefits everybody.”

Citigroup chief economist Willem Buiter responded: “Monetary policy works with asset prices. By boosting equities, raising bond prices, weakening the currency and that’s exactly how it has happened. Not very effectively, because we have poor man’s monetary policy. Which is what unconventional monetary policy is. But it’s all we have. I would have preferred to see some additional measures on the fiscal side, which could have mitigated some of the income distributional consequences…”

Over the weekend we saw the investment game plan detailed on Sunday morning talk shows. Did you catch it? The climate is changing; we can still fix it; it will require massive investment. According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, keeping global warming down to a level people can live with means cutting carbon emissions to "near zero" by the end of the century, even in an increasingly industrialized world. That may be doable, but it will take "substantial investments" in everything from planting more trees to replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon power sources like solar, wind and nuclear energy. The report clearly shows that the challenges to resolve the global common problem are huge, but also this report shows that there are some steps to resolve this issue.

And the longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes, and if we wait too long, the Earth and all of us who are too miserly to invest now, will cook.

Any hope will require more than tripling the share of electricity produced by renewable sources or nuclear power, along with refining the still-evolving technology of capturing carbon emissions and storing them underground. And it will take a coordinated global effort, likely including taxes on emissions. No direct price tag was attached to that scenario, but the IPCC authors indicate it would require "substantial investments," and more delays just drive up the expected cost. The impact could amount to shaving the projected average growth of the global economy by six-hundredths of a percentage point, from about 2% per year to 1.94%, over the coming century. The total global economy was about $72 trillion in 2012, according to World Bank figures.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who in February called the issue "the greatest challenge of our generation," said Sunday's report is an economic opportunity.

Kerry said in a written statement: "So many of the technologies that will help us fight climate change are far cheaper, more readily available, and better performing than they were when the last IPCC assessment was released less than a decade ago. These technologies can cut carbon pollution while growing economic opportunity at the same time. The global energy market represents a $6 trillion opportunity, with 6 billion users around the world."

Despite more than two decades of efforts to restrain carbon emissions, not only are emissions still going up, they're going up faster than ever. Though there's been an increased emphasis on generating power from renewable sources, the use of coal has gone up in the past 10 years.

The Washington Post and the Guardian captured coveted Pulitzer Prizes for public service for their revelations about the US government's massive surveillance programs. The newspapers' stories were based on thousands of secret documents obtained from Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who is living in Russia after fleeing the United States. The Post also won a Pulitzer this year for explanatory reporting. The New York Times won two Pulitzers, both for photography. No award was handed out for feature writing. The Boston Globe won for breaking news for its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. Reuters won an award for its coverage on the persecution of a Muslim minority in Myanmar who in efforts to flee often fall into the hands of brutal human-trafficking networks. The prize for investigative reporting went to The Center for Public Integrity for reports on how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease. The prize for explanatory reporting went to the Washington Post for work on the prevalence of food stamps in post-recession America. The prize for local reporting went to the Tampa Bay Times for an investigation into squalid housing conditions for the city's homeless population. The prize for national reporting went to The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for his examination of how wounded combat veterans are mistreated.

I know what you’re thinking; this is a shocking development. Who knew there were still newspapers?

Monday, April 07, 2014 - I Don’t Know, They Don’t Know

I Don’t Know, They Don’t Know

by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 166 = 16,245
SPX – 20 = 1845
NAS – 47 = 4079
10 YR YLD - .03 = 2.69%
OIL - .44 = 100.70
GOLD – 5.40 = 1297.90
SILV - .09 = 19.97

The biggest 3 day drop in the markets in about 2 months. All of the sudden we start hearing the Wall Street stock peddlers waxing enthusiastic about the prospects for a correction or a crash or whatever will scare you. Fear sells; with talk about a 1987-like stock market crash, geopolitical unrest in Ukraine and the risk of a debt crisis in China, investors are starting to get jittery. I don’t know, they don’t know.

The big pullback so far has been in the Nasdaq, and especially biotech stocks. As always, you want an exit plan in place before you ever get into a trade; and if you don’t have an exit plan, get one now. You don’t make money by letting profits slip through your fingers.

Earnings season gets underway this week. Expectations have been ratcheted down; at the start of the year, S&P 500 companies were projected to have grown earnings at 6.5%, now that estimate has slipped to 1.2%. We could see companies beat diminished expectations and start a fresh rally or miss expectations and the markets could get a bit ugly. The simple rule of thumb is that when the trailing P/E ratios hit 10, the S&P 500 is likely undervalued; when the P/E hits 20, the market is likely overvalued and that means the market is vulnerable to pullback. Guess where we are on the scale? Does that mean that stock prices are about to roll over and play dead? Not necessarily. All we have to do is add some earnings to the P/E ratio and …

The S&P 500 recently, as in last week, tested highs, even though fewer than 10% of its components were making new highs individually. Despite the fact that the S&P touched new high territory last week, the average stock in the big index is actually down 7%. Then, you can look at volume; down on up days; up on down days, like today. Toss in the presidential election cycle, toss in the old but true idea of “sell in May”, and there are plenty of reasons for caution.

The past couple of years have been easy; buy the dips; buy good names with momentum and ride that pony to profits. Easy. But easy doesn’t last forever. The momentum names look like they’re rolling over. Investors are rolling over into safer sectors. We’ve gone nearly 2 years without a correction of at least 10%, so it just seems like we’re due. So, while there may be value to be found, this does not seem like a good time to load up when high flyers dip. They may bounce back, but they don’t have to; there is no law that requires a bounce. When a momentum play turns, it tends to turn fast and furious.

This continues to be a tale of two markets. While the high flyers stall, the safety of bonds has been drawing bids, and yields have dipped over the past few days, despite the Fed's clear intention to pull back on Quantitative Easing and bond buying. The utility sector has been outperforming, which might be a signal of future volatility. Emerging markets have seen inflows; maybe this is the idea that the US has been the cleanest dirty shirt in the hamper, but the other shirts aren’t ready to be scrapped; call it a reversion to the mean.

Maybe it’s just time to pause and ask why US stocks have priced in so much optimism. Job growth continues but it is not robust and it is not enough to propel the economy to escape velocity; the taper is underway; fiscal policy remains a mess and there is little hope for stimulus from DC.

Corporate America is sitting on a mountain of cash, somewhere between $1.6 and $1.9 trillion, but it’s offshore; they’re afraid to touch it because they might have to pay tax. They could bring that money back home and put it to work, but that would require innovation and sweat and labor. Much of corporate leadership is short-sighted and lazy, and besides, the offshore cash is still good enough to secure a bonus.

One of the key signs of a true recovery is sufficient business confidence to start investing more into their own operations. Many companies have shied away from investing in the future growth of their companies. Too many companies have cut capital expenditure and even increased debt to boost dividends and increase share buybacks. If you’re waiting for capital expenditures to revive the economy, don’t hold your breath.

Larry Fink is the CEO of Blackrock, the largest money manager, he says: “Companies only have a finite amount of cash to invest. Whatever gets spent on buybacks and dividends is that much less available to be spent on investments in employees, research and development, and capital expenditure. It's basic arithmetic. When will the next round of capital investment begin in earnest? As soon as you figure out the answer to that question, you will have gained significant insight into the direction of the economy as well as the next phase of this stock-market rally.”

Meanwhile, let’s look at banks behaving badly. Private banking is a staple of the Swiss economy and for decades, as wealthy Americans concealed their assets through clandestine accounts, US regulators turned a blind eye.

In 2011, federal prosecutors indicted 7 Credit Suisse bankers for abetting tax evasion, but the investigation into Credit Suisse dragged on. The quirks of international law prolonged the inquiry, requiring Swiss courts to review Credit Suisse documents before releasing them to the Justice Department. Ultimately, the Justice Department gained access to many of the documents and interviewed bank employees.

And by the time the Senate subcommittee convened its hearing in February, the Justice Department was closing in on a case. Bracing for a settlement, the bank announced last week that it had set aside roughly $528 million for legal expenses. In addition to the Justice Department investigation, Credit Suisse paid $200 million to settle a case with the SEC in February. In a separate matter, in late March the bank agreed to an $885 million settlement to resolve claims that it sold questionable loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Apparently a slap on the wrist and a fine haven’t served as a deterrent.

Now, Benjamin Lawsky, New York State’s top financial regulator, has requested documents from Credit Suisse and is expected to demand additional records this week to try to determine if Credit Suisse lied to New York authorities about engineering tax shelters. In the Senate subcommittee hearings in February, Credit Suisse executives apologized for the misconduct and they also argued that the problems stopped in 2008 and were contained to a few low-level rogue bankers. The bank, which said it voluntarily adopted a number of controls against tax evasion, reported that there was no evidence that executive management knew of the problems.

Lawsky has also petitioned a Senate subcommittee for internal Credit Suisse documents.  The subcommittee questioned bank executives at a hearing in February, and produced a scathing report exposing “a classic case of bank secrecy.” In late March, the Senate agreed to release the internal Credit Suisse documents.

The escalating Credit Suisse probe, along with some recent shifts in international law, might also provide momentum to the government’s uneven effort to collect taxes and punish the banks involved. Typically the punishment has been a fine and a slap on the wrist, but that has drawn scrutiny from politicians lately, and so maybe this will be something more.

Meanwhile, federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation into a recent $400 million fraud involving Citigroup’s Mexican unit, one of a handful of government inquiries looming over Citi.

The investigation, overseen by the FBI and prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, is focusing in part on whether holes in the bank’s internal controls contributed to the fraud in Mexico. The question for investigators is whether Citigroup ignored warning signs, as other banks have been accused of doing in the context of money laundering.

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts have sent subpoenas to Citigroup, to examine whether the bank lacked proper safeguards against clients laundering money. Citi also faces a parallel civil investigation from the SEC. And it was just 2 weeks ago that Citi fell short in the Federal Reserve’s stress test. The Fed rejected Citi’s plan to increase its dividend based upon questions about the reliability of Citi’s financial projections.

And that brings us to the tale of Kenneth Lewis, the former chief of Bank of America. Back in 2008, as the global financial meltdown imploded, Bank of America rushed in to acquire Merrill Lynch. Lewis called it the “strategic opportunity of a lifetime” and he said the Fed did not pressure him into the deal. He later admitted he lied. Merrill Lynch was bleeding cash while paying huge bonuses. Bank of America required 2 bailouts from Treasury plus extraordinary lending from the Fed. It is a crime to knowingly deceive shareholders about the financial condition of your company.

Bank of America has paid several fines related to cases brought by various regulators, and there is still an outstanding suit, but the case of Kenneth Lewis wrapped up last week. Mr. Lewis agreed to pay $10 million, which was provided by Bank of America. He is barred from being an executive or director of a public company, but he already retired with a sizeable golden parachute. He did not have to admit or deny wrongdoing.