We spent the morning musing on the Maginot Line. The French built this elaborate line of fortifications along its border with Germany in the 1930s to thwart an invasion by its Great War enemy. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, Adolf Hitler’s armies simply bypassed the line and invaded France through neighbouring Belgium. The Maginot Line proved to be an elaborate dud.

As Nassim Taleb points out in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable:

The story of the Maginot Line shows how we are conditioned to be specific. The French, after the Great War, build a wall along the previous German invasion route to prevent reinvasion – Hitler just (almost) effortlessly went around it. The French had been excellent students of history; they just learned with too much precision. They were too practical and exceedingly focused for their own safety.

What does this have to do with investing? It’s a fair question. To our humble minds, the story of the Maginot Line illustrates that we humans tend to base our vision of the future on past events and have trouble imagining a future radically different from what has happened before. We are, if you like, sitting ducks: we build our defensive walls and then guard them jealously only to be blindsided at the crucial moment.

One of our central aims in Notes is to imagine futures unpalatable to the mainstream – futures that often seem impossible because of their lack of precedent in the past. It’s niche work. Most people don’t have the time or the inclination to wonder about what will come next. But to be a successful investor, you must first peer into distance and imagine the world that’s coming.

Today, we offer up a vision of a diminished America – an America weakened by decades of living beyond its means and almost entirely reliant on its foreign creditors. Some might say this future has already arrived. But here at Notes, we believe the country has further to fall. We’re short, if you like, on US hegemony.

Bond king Bill Gross is also concerned. He calls this diminished America “the new normal.”

Gross is better qualified than most to prognosticate on America’s fate. He runs the world’s biggest bond fund. So it’s his job to know where the US economy is heading. He’s also an honorary underground investor: he puts his money where his mouth is and he doesn’t pander to mainstream opinion.

In his latest monthly missive, Gross argues that the tipping point for the end of US economic dominance is easy to spot and is a matter of simple mathematics.

Private sector deleveraging, reregulation and reduced consumption all argue for a real growth rate in the US that requires a government checkbook for years to come just to keep its head above the 1% required to stabilize unemployment. Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations.

It’s a slow motion car crash, dear reader, and all we can do is sit and gawp. As Gross also points out, the US is already producing less wealth in proportion to the rest of the world. And less of its citizens are getting into the Forbes rich list as a result.

This does not come at a good time. America’s ability to borrow cheaply is dependent on its debt-to-GDP ratio, which at 13% is already at highs not seen since World War II. One way of improving this ratio is to grow GDP. But as Gross points out, this is becoming more and more difficult thanks to “private sector deleveraging, reregulation and reduced consumption.”  And all of this does not begin to take into account what Gross describes as the “pig in the python” demographic squeeze on resources on the way.

Private think tanks such as The Blackstone Group and even studies by government agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office, promise that Federal spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will collectively increase by 6% of GDP over the next 20 years, leading to even larger deficits unless taxes are increased proportionately. Collectively these three programs represent an approximate $40 trillion liability that will have to be paid. If not, you can add that present value figure to the current $10 trillion deficit and reach a 300% of GDP figure – a number that resembles Latin American economies such as Argentina and Brazil over the past century.

What Gross understands better than most is that we do not live in a world without consequences. This is the beauty of the bond markets: they provide (welcome) limits to the “something for nothing” culture that has gripped the US for far too long.

The big question, of course, and the one Team Obama would like to dodge for as long as humanly possible, is who is going to buy America’s tsunami of debt?

Broadly speaking, the problem is twofold. On the supply side, the US Treasury is set to issue roughly four times last year’s amount of bonds – an estimated gross issuance of $3 trillion. On the demand side, America can no longer rely on the current account/trade deficit to fund borrowings. As Gross points out, with this figure down to about $500 billion this year, China and other surplus nations simply won’t have the spare cash to fund Washington’s spending requirements.

There are only two possible outcomes to this supply-demand dislocation. The first is that the yield curve steepens. As we argued in yesterday’s Notes, there is enormous pressure right now on long-dated US Treasury yields. Yields are rising fast. And if this trend continues unabated, any “green shoots” will be choked off by the weeds of rising mortgage rates and corporate rates.

The second possible outcome is that the Fed steps into the breach and continues to buy back US Treasurys. This is horribly inflationary, as the money the Fed uses to pay for US debt is of the freshly printed variety. The Chinese are already getting nervous at the swelling of the Fed’s balance sheet. Should this trend continue private and sovereign holders of dollar-denominated debt will increasingly look to diversify out of their dollar assets, selling US Treasurys in the process.

The picture is a grim one. But the illusion of something for nothing is strong, and Team Obama shows no signs of quailing in front of this precipitous debt pile.

We read with horror in USA Today that one in six dollars of Americans’ income comes in the form of a federal or state check or voucher. This is the highest level of state-funded personal income since records began in 1929.

“In all,” reports the paper, “government spending on benefits will top $2 trillion in 2009 — an average of $17,000 provided to each US household, federal data show. Benefits rose at a 19% annual rate in the first quarter compared to the last three months of 2008.”

We don’t expect a return to balanced budgets anytime soon.

What other ways are there to hold on to your wealth in this “new normal”? It’s another fair question, and one that has been preoccupying us here at Notes for some time.

According to Gross, “staying rich in this future world will require strategies that reflect this altered vision of global economic growth and delevered financial markets.” Here’s what he advises:

Bond investors should therefore confine maturities to the front end of yield curves where continuing low yields and downside price protection is more probable. Holders of dollars should diversify their own baskets before central banks and sovereign wealth funds ultimately do the same. All investors should expect considerably lower rates of return than what they grew accustomed to only a few years ago. ]]> http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/bong-king-gross-says-ditch-the-dollar-before-its-too-late/17569/feed 0 http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/buy-commodities-and-oil-in-particular/2819 http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/buy-commodities-and-oil-in-particular/2819#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:21:11 +0000 Frank Hemsley http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/buy-commodities-and-oil-in-particular/2819 Apparently, there’s just no stopping stocks. They just keep on trucking higher as investors forget about the recent troubles in the financial sector and focus on Merrill Lynch’s note that ‘credit markets may be “past their worst”’.

Meantime, oil feels even more bullish… like everything is conspiring to drive this commodity higher. May futures for West Texan Crude are up another two dollars as I write to $108 and change – and the momentum seems to be building.

I’ll have more on that in a moment, as Garry White explains just why this market is on fire… and how you could profit.

Beat the stampede: tune in at 10am tomorrow for your chance to join Time Trader…

But first, I’ve got some important news…

For those not familiar with the concept of limits, it basically works like this. No trader or fund is allowed to own more than a specific amount of a commodity traded on the futures exchange. This limit varies from commodity to commodity and exchange to exchange. The point is to keep one group from manipulating the price of a commodity, as the Hunts did with silver in the early 80s.

The loophole is one where large investment banks can sell a “swap” for a specific commodity like corn and then hedge their position in the futures markets. There is no limit on the amount of the commodity that can be hedged. So, a fund can accumulate sizeable positions far in excess of what they could do directly by working with an investment bank. In essence, the swap is a derivative issued by a bank which acts just like a futures trade, but it is with the bank as guarantor and not an exchange. Swaps are not regulated as such. And up until now, the banks were seen as legitimate hedgers so there were no limits on what they could buy in the futures markets.

This works for very large commodity index funds which try to mirror a particular commodity index and need to be able to buy very large positions in excess of the normal limits (and there are scores of them), and for the banks that make the commissions and profits on the swaps. Remember, the fund gets a management fee, so growing the size of the fund grows their fees.

These indexes typically have about 26 commodities, with the largest allocation to oil, but almost anything that is traded has some small portion of the allocation. As I noted last week, there are some who believe this is working to drive up the price of commodities beyond the simply supply and demand principles. Whether or not you believe this to be the case, the CFTC is looking at the loophole.

The key word in the announcement yesterday was the word “classification.” Right now the banks are classified as hedgers and as such have no limits. But they are not really hedging the actual physical commodity as a farmer or General Mills might do, but the hedge is their financial position.

If the CFTC decides to look through them to the funds, and they did use the word transparency in their announcement, they could decide to change the classification of the banks from hedgers to speculators. While I do no think that might make a difference in the long run, in the short run it could make commodities volatile in the extreme, and exert downward pressure up and down the price curve, depending on how they would decide to unwind the commodity index funds.

For what its worth, I advised my daughter to get out of the commodity fund she was in for the time being. When the regulators are in the room, anything could happen. And they are getting intense pressure from Congress to change the rules. My bet is that the train has left the station and it is but a matter of time until position limits are put in place for commodity funds, including commodity ETFs. Is that a good thing? I think not, but that matters not one whit. The hand writing is on he wall.

Does this mean I am not a long term commodity bull? No, I remain bullish on a host of commodities over the long term from a supply and demand perspective. It is just that you might want to consider whether to stand aside for a time while the congressional elephant is stampeding around the room. Maybe it is a non-event and someone figures out a way to unwind the positions slowly and over time. Maybe the grandfather the current funds at the size they are today. Who knows? As I said, when the regulators are under pressure to do something, I want to know what the new rules will be before I play in the game.

Source: Swapping out Commodities 

Platinum pushed as high as $2230 in Hong Kong, but sank through to New York, then traded sideways to end at $2164/oz., down $37. Overnight, platinum has been flat.

While silver was lower to the mid-point of the London session, it rallied from there, making its way nearly back to the break-even point, and closing at $17.96/oz., down just 2 cents. Overnight, silver has been trending higher.
(Click here for charts)

As might have been expected, there was profit-taking in the precious metals yesterday after their recent runup.

But the damage wasn’t large, especially considering that the usual market movers, oil and the dollar, both went against them, with the former backing off and the latter staging a modest rally.

In fact, some analysts were making the case that both the dollar’s rise and gold’s fall were technical in nature.

Technician Zachary Oxman, of Wisdom Financial, believes that, “Until we cross and close above the $940 level, we’ll remain range-bound between $900 and $940.”

Nick Ruggiero, a trader at Eagle Futures Inc. in New York, noted gold’s recent link to oil and said, “You’ve got to be cautious because when you do get a big sell-off in oil, all commodities are going to get hit hard.”

And how much does the paper gold market influence the metal’s price? Plenty, contends Jim Sinclair of jsmineset.com.

“It would be bullish to shut down the US market for gold,” Sinclair writes, “because then you would have a thin market with a positive Euro bent on gold and a more positive global market would be created.

“No access for major traders will be denied, that you can be sure of. I would love to see US trading stopped in paper gold. That would be good for $150 on the upside after less than 24 hours. The poor COT would not be able to create the influence on the global market they do with the aid of the US paper market cabal.”

Source: Gold Corrects, Following Oil

I notice that the price ratios between the time spans of differing gold lease rates have been remarkably well behaved lately, almost as if they were locked together in precise bands. I think that this is interesting as hell, although I have no idea what it means, if indeed it means anything, which it probably doesn’t, although I will say that those guys setting up spreads (to take advantage of volatility) in gold have gotten financially killed, which I figure in turn benefited the guys who are short all that gold, as that is who I figure is on the other side of the trade when you and I are trying to make a quick buck with some fancy day-trading of options and futures and, of course, the spreads, and they manage to clean us out pretty regularly, the lying, cheating, thieving bastards.

But being naturally suspicious and cynical, I obviously regard that this is just part of the plan on the part of 1.) The guys who are short gold, whose total short position is in the range of billions and trillions and quadrillions and zillions and gajillions of dollars for all I know, and the 2.) Central banks who foolishly lent out the nation’s gold, at diddly interest rates, as their part of the scheme, and now the Fed has essentially sold (although they call it “leased”) half of all our nation’s gold, which I seem to recall is the estimate of the Gold Anti-Trust Action committee, who are probably best qualified to know (other than the government or Fed, who know for sure, but both of which refuse to even talk about it!).

In fact, Bill Murphy of GATA says, “The Gold Cartel is running out of available central bank gold to meet surging demand for physical gold. It is the opinion of the GATA camp that the central banks only have half the gold they say they have in their vaults – not the commonly bandied about 30,000 tonne number, but less than 15,000 tonnes.”

He notes that there were many powerful people with many powerful friends who had many powerful reasons to keep the price of gold down, such as how “the gold price suppression scheme was the cornerstone of Secretary Treasury Robert Rubin’s ’strong dollar’ policy”, and “Treasury Secretary Paulson, a key member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (popularly known as the Plunge Protection Team)” who chillingly said, “The United States will do what it takes to calm markets”, which they think will be demonstrated by the price of gold not rising, because ordinarily it would be shooting to the freaking moon in response to economic conditions like today, and people would be alarmed, and perhaps singing the latest hit song by the Rocking Mogambo Quintet (RMQ) that has the famous line, “Look at gold shoot to the moon! The Mogambo was right! We’re freaking doomed!”

Now, if you are like me, then you already suspect that all of these people are crooks and back-stabbing, traitorous thieves anyway, and all I want is just to make a lot of money so that I can move into a nice house in a gated community that has armed guards, a nice golf course and completely surrounded by sleazy strip clubs and pizza parlors where you can get any kind of pizza you ever heard of at discount prices.

Fortunately, everything except the cheaper prices is entirely possible as a result of all of this government meddling in the gold market (as they are advised to do so by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, who had to eliminate the 15% inflation of the ’70s and who thinks that gold soaring to $850 an ounce “looked bad” and undermined his efforts to stop runaway inflation), and Mr. Murphy thinks that this means that “Fortunes have been made and there are more fortunes to come”, and that may people think that gold prices “will go up 3 to 5 times again from present levels.”

And as to the notion that the Fed has sold half of our nation’s gold, I think that is being generous as hell, as I see no reason why the Fed would stop at only half, sort of like when I am starving and I sit down with a whole delicious pizza in front of me, and my wife thinks I am just going to eat half and leave the other half for her, and then she acts all surprised when I see no reason to stop at half, either!

So, assuming they still have some gold to sell into the market to keep the price down, you may have an opportunity to buy more gold cheaply for a while longer yet! Whee!

And don’t get me started on how you can still buy silver so cheaply, as it will elicit another, yet bigger, squeal of glee from me along the lines of “Wheeeee!”, wherein you notice that I used a few extra letters to indicate much higher amounts of glee, which only proves how deadly serious I am!

P.S. To get The Daily Reckoning sent directly to your inbox, sign up for our free email newsletter, or if you prefer to use RSS, subscribe to the Daily Reckoning RSS feed.

Editor’s Note: Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter – an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.

All of this points to me having a potentially fantastic day. But I’m going to hold off all judgement until the market closes.

After all, Marketwatch just reported that Washington Mutual lined up $7 billion in loans. And that’s sure to make their $1.1 billion Q1 loss seem like nothing (at least to the illogical investors).

Let’s hope that the market acts rationally today and actually moves back down. There’s nothing out there that could fuel a market rally. And in my opinion, a recession hasn’t even been fully priced in yet.

So let’s get efficient, stupid markets! And price in the very big and real risk of recession!

Or else i’m going to make fistfulls of cash as you adjust.

On second thought, market, take some time to adjust!