I have to confess that – deep down – this makes me smile. The reason: I know that the real question to ask is “When will gold go on to set new highs?”

So let me cut right to the chase. This breakout run in gold prices will last.

The “Golden Staircase” tells us so.

After bottoming out about $250 an ounce about nine years ago, such key fundamental catalysts as increasing demand, lower supply, inflationary fears and a flight to safety have been driving the price of gold northward.

But gold is like any other financial asset in that prices don’t rise in a straight line – especially if they’re rising a long way. But they follow a clear and discernable pattern.

As asset prices rise, they often initially overshoot. Then they “correct” – fall back a bit. Then they “consolidate,” or trade sideways, usually for a period of six to 18 months, but sometimes for even longer.

It’s this period of sideways trading that creates the horizontal “step” in the “Golden Staircase” – a technical-analysis tool that lets us “see” the foundation for the next step up in the long-term uptrend in the price of gold.

The formation of the newest “step” in the staircase was started in mid-2007. That’s when the $1,000 price level was first breached. On Tuesday, Sept. 8, when gold prices eclipsed that key barrier on Tuesday, Sept. 8, it was the fifth time they’d attempted to do so.

Each of these attempts has helped define $1,000 as a ceiling.  But in a “Golden Staircase,” the ceiling eventually becomes a new floor.  So once the $1,000 price point is eclipsed in a decisive manner, it will become a key “support level” for gold prices.

You can also think of it as the top surface of a new step.

And that’s precisely the juncture where gold finds itself right now. [Editor's Note: Please see accompanying graphic: "Gold 'Steps' Toward New Highs"].

From a technical standpoint, the outlook for gold is bright, indeed. But the fundamental picture is even more bullish.

Barrick’s Bullish ‘Bought Deal’

Now, I realize it was probably pure coincidence that the world’s largest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX), announced it would raise $4 billion on the same day gold flirted with $1,000.  But the conspiracy theorist in me likes to believe otherwise.

For Barrick Chief Executive Officer Aaron W. Regent, this so-called “bought deal” was a conscious strategic move. Barrick has a reputation for wisely using hedges to its own advantage.  The strategy served the company well in its copper-production business. And when gold prices fell in the late 1990s, Barrick turned to this strategy again – and again benefited nicely.

Recently, however, Barrick’s bankers have been coaxing the company’s leaders to ditch the hedges in order. The reason: In an environment of rising gold prices, hedged bets dampen profits. Removing those hedges, by contrast, elevates profits. But it also elevates the company’s risk.

So when a company such as Barrick makes a strategic decision to raise equity capital in order to close a large portion of its infamous hedge-book, that’s a highly bullish sign for gold prices.

When Central Bankers Become Gold Buyers

A third Central Bank gold agreement has recently been ratified. And, interestingly, it’s a weaker version of its two predecessors.

New limits will allow for only 400 metric tons to be sold annually, down from 500 metric tons in the previous deal.  The deal is bullish on its face. And, even better, this more to it than meets the eye.

You see, the last 10 years of these agreements have seen some 4,000 metric tons unloaded into the market.  And even into the face of the $80-billion-selling headwind these divestitures created, gold has managed to stage a rise from $250 an ounce to the current $1,000.

And story gets better, still: According to the World Gold Council, the world’s central banks became overall net buyers of gold as of this year’s second quarter – the first time that’s happened since 2000.

China Goes For the Gold

In the post-financial crisis global economy, China is quickly becoming the proverbial “800-pound gorilla” – the player that has to be courted, but that can’t be tamed.

And now, in a signature move, China has decided to take a remarkable step, choosing to take control of its own gold.

Just this month, in fact, Hong Kong announced that it would bring all its gold bullion back home, recalling the reserves from depositories in London. Hong Kong has just completed construction of a high-security depository at the city’s Chek Lap Kok Airport (Hong Kong International Airport), and plans to market the facility as a safe storage option to other Asian central banks, commodity exchanges, precious metals refiners, commercial banks, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

This development can (and will) be spun in all sorts of ways, but what it really means is that China has lost confidence in the West.  After last fall’s near-meltdown of the global financial system – a financial cataclysm due almost entirely to major missteps by Western economic powers – China’s Beijing-based leaders want much greater control over its own assets.

And who can blame them?

China’s Ravenous Gold Appetite

At more than $2.3 trillion and counting, China’s foreign currency reserves have become the stuff of legend in recent years. But here’s the rest of that story, with apologies to the late Paul Harvey: According to a late August Financial Times report, “Beijing recently revealed that it had been secretly buying gold for years in order to diversify its foreign reserves, and has almost doubled its bullion holdings.”

China’s official gold reserves now run 1,054 metric tons. That means its holdings have doubled in just six years.

And when you consider the risk China faces on its $2.3 trillion in paper (foreign currency) reserves – much of them U.S. dollar denominated – it’s understandable that China has been ardently seeking shelter.  In a late-July special report for Money Morning called “The Three Triggers of the Global Gold Bubble,” I told readers:

“All it would take is a loss of faith in the greenback. It’s important to understand that dollars are nothing more than paper and ink, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.  In a year in which the budget deficit could easily top $2 trillion, this does not reassure me.

The dollar holds its value only as long as the greenback’s holders maintain their faith in the currency. The moment people decide they don’t want your dollars, they become worthless, or at least worth much less.  In that case, it will take a lot more dollars today to buy the same thing you bought with many fewer dollars only yesterday.”

For China, this is a very real concern. Especially when it comes to the Beijing’s concerns about the loose-credit stance of the U.S. Federal Reserve. China’s Cheng Siwei, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, recently told Great Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that “If [the Fed] keep[s] printing money to buy bonds, it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two, the dollar will fall hard. Most of our [Chinese] foreign reserves are in U.S. bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen and other currencies.”

In an exciting addendum, Siwei noted that while gold is solid alternative, “when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets.”

This statement tells us a lot. For instance, there’s definitely an upward price bias contained within gold’s recent price consolidation. And don’t expect gold’s price “floor” to fall too far below the $1,000-an-ounce level: China will almost certainly step in to scoop up all it can.

Meanwhile, it seems that China’s populace is catching on to the ideas of its central government.  In the just-mentioned FT article, the newspaper said “the rising tide of wealth among middle-class Chinese has made China the second-largest gold jewelery market in the world since 2007, behind only India.”  The article goes on to say “Total gold demand in China last year was nearly 400 [metric tons], up by 21% from 2007.”

The lesson here is clear: China’s growing appetite for gold is a powerful trend that will benefit gold investors for years – even decades – to come.

Warning: The IMF Is Now The World’s Central Bank

This fundamental bullish sign for gold is perhaps also the most ominous for the world’s financial well-being.

In an August maneuver that somehow stayed off the radar screens of most global investors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Board of Governors “voted” to create new “money” in the form of Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs.

As Money Morning told readers back in April, SDRs have been a unit of account used by the IMF since 1967, and denominated in a basket of currencies, including the dollar, pound, yen, and euro.

But now they’ve become a convertible asset.  China, Russia, and Brazil will begin purchasing SDR bonds later this year, with China’s share starting at a whopping $50 billion.

As Bloomberg News reported, “the allocation … will not increase the fund’s pool of money available for lending [but] will provide members with an additional method to obtain hard currencies.”

And that’s scary, because the implications are enormous.

The IMF has become the world’s central bank.

The IMF can create SDR debt instruments out of thin air, without having hard assets to back them.  The IMF’s own Web site explains the basic process, noting that “SDR allocations provide each member with a costless asset.”

Sorry, but I have to ask.  What in the world is a “costless asset?” How can you “create” an asset that has no cost to either produce or acquire? And if it costs nothing to create, how can it have any real value?

It’s outrageous. And it would even be comical – laughable, even – if the implications weren’t so dangerous.

The IMF no longer has to depend on borrowing – much less on contributed assets – to increase the funds it has available to lend.

So a new international fiat currency has just been created and added to the long list of national fiat currencies already in use.  Like most of its brethren, this “currency too an this one, too, can be expanded at will by a handful of un-elected officials. And, as one writer recently stated, “hyper-inflation is the terminal stage of any fiat currency.”

Consider yourselves forewarned. Worldwide inflation is now a bigger threat than ever. Expect the IMF to embark on its own monetary printing spree. A tidal wave of inflation could be headed our way.

Folks, this is going to get ugly.

The Next Bubble?

I have said in the past, that gold could very well be the next bubble.

Now, it seems, that idea is gaining acceptance.

In a recent interview with Canada’s BNN (Business News Network), Canada’s serious business program, Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research (NYSE: MHP), said that “if we end up with concerns about the U.S. dollar, we could probably end up with a bubble in gold prices.”

I rest my case.

How to Play Your ‘Golden’ Opportunity

So what can you do to protect yourself?  Well, it seems that even former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan knew the answer to that question.  In May 1999, while testifying before the U.S. House Banking Committee, Greenspan actually said that “gold will always remain the ultimate form of payment in the world.”

That’s one piece of Greenspan-given advice that I believe investors should take.

As the price of gold advances, gold-miners will be the “go to” stocks to play. They will benefit from leverage as the yellow metal advances in price.

To measure the health of gold stocks, an often-used proxy is the Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI), a weighted benchmark composed of 15 of the world’s largest gold-and-silver mining companies. However, the HUI only includes those companies who don’t hedge their gold production beyond 1.5 years. That was done on purpose. The index was designed to provide significant exposure to near-term movements in gold prices. In an environment of rising gold prices, these stocks tend to be much more profitable.

To then gauge whether gold stocks are a relative bargain, we look to the HUI-to-gold  relationship.  By dividing the HUI “price” by the price of gold (HUI/gold price), we get a ratio that’s a very useful value indicator.

From mid-2003 until mid-2008, this ratio held around the 0.50 range, meaning the HUI bought about 0.50 ounces of gold.

In last fall’s stock panic, we saw this relationship insanely stretched to 0.20.  In late October 2008, the HUI only bought 0.20 ounces of gold.  That was totally irrational and unsustainable.

Gold stocks were trading at levels not seen in nearly two decades.  Extremes like this simply cannot last.

Today, we’ve seen that gap close as I had predicted in January.  To see how the HUI-to-gold relationship looks now, check out the graphic below.

This chart provides a ratio that tells us the “buying power” that gold stocks have to buy gold. The ratio had improved from the 0.20 ratio of last fall and was recently as 0.42. Expect that to continue to shift toward the 0.50 level. In fact, it will most likely overshoot, running up to 0.65, before settling back to the historical norm in the 0.50 neighborhood.

The message here is that spectacular gains are still in store for gold and silver stocks.

The biggest bang-for-buck still lies with the junior gold sector.  The best proxy for this is the S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index (CDNX), otherwise known as the Toronto Venture Exchange. It consists of about 75% resource stocks.

The CDNX has been steadily carving new highs almost uninterrupted since March, now posting a whopping 80% gain since its December 2008 low.  That’s an impressive performance. Remember, this is an index.

The players in this sector promising the best returns are the junior gold-and-silver companies either already producing, or with near-term production.

In the next 12 months, some will likely throw off returns of in the multiple hundreds of a percent, or even multiple thousands of a percent. Major miners really need them to replace depleted production and to grow their reserves. So many will be takeover candidates.

And with gold breaking and sustaining the $1,000 barrier, junior gold and silver miners are the place to be for explosive returns.  Just hold onto your hat.

Source: The ‘Golden Staircase’ Points to Record Prices for Gold

Everyone also knows that some of the key culprits behind this financial mess were the credit-rating firms like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, which assigned top-tier “AAA” ratings to investments that were actually backed by subprime mortgages and other toxic debt.

Whether it was collusion or incompetence almost didn’t matter: The firms claimed that the credit ratings they issued were constitutionally protected free speech. With this First Amendment shield, S&P, Moody’s and others said they were protected from lawsuits or other liabilities.

But that’s about to change.

A federal court judge in New York last week stripped the ratings firms of that defense, a decision that could expose the companies to billions of dollars worth of liabilities from investors who were burned by the faulty ratings.

Let’s legal case involved three specific firms – two firms that rated collateralized debt securities, and an investment bank that sold the debt. Those three companies were:

• Standard & Poor’s, which is owned by The McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc. (NYSE: MHP).
• The Moody’s Investor’s Service unit of Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO), which is 19% owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B).
• And Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

This particular case had been brought against Moody’s and S&P by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank PJSC and Washington State’s King County. The case involved losses suffered from an investment in a structured investment vehicle (SIV) called Cheyne Finance. Although the debt securities Cheyne issued were backed in part by subprime mortgages, they received ratings as high as “AAA.”

In return for the high rating, the companies received higher-than-normal fees.

The $5.86 billion Cheyne Finance SIV went bankrupt in August 2007. The plaintiffs claimed fraud. The suit is seeking class-action status on behalf of investors who were burned when Cheyne was forced to dump securities it had issued between October 2004 and October 2007.

Since lawyers for the plaintiffs say the ruling could be applied to any deal involving SIVs, it could have a substantive impact. Before the financial crisis caused the value of these asset pools to plummet, experts estimate there were $350 billion to $400 billion worth of SIVs in existence.

“There certainly will be other cases filed – that’s the future impact of this decision,” San Diego attorney Patrick Daniels told The Wall Street Journal.

Moody’s and S&P had sought a dismissal, citing their First Amendment protections. But U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled on Sept. 2 that securities ratings that were distributed to a small group of investors don’t warrant the same First Amendment protections that are afforded to the widely circulated ratings of corporate bonds.

Judge Scheindlin acknowledged that ratings constituting “matters of public concern” are typically protected from liability. That’s especially true when the ratings are distributed to the general public. But it wasn’t the case here.

“Where a ratings agency has disseminated their ratings to a select group of investors rather than to the public at large, the ratings agency is not afforded the same protection,” Judge Scheindlin ruled.

The ruling will likely be appealed. And it could end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case spotlights the biggest problem with the business of rating securities: The ratings firms are paid by the issuers to rate them.

When you get right down to it, ratings firms are in business not to rate but to make money for themselves by rating issuers and their securities. The surprise isn’t that the obvious lack of objectivity fostered abuses in the credit-rating process – it’s that the problem took so long to come to a head. The complexity of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) only exacerbated the investor risk.

The decision received widespread media attention. But it’s only half the story.

And the media missed the other half.

In an ironic twist that transforms the credit-rating firms into legal sacrificial lambs, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has in recent weeks acknowledged its own failure to protect the public from the same ratings firms that the federal agency mandates that investors rely upon.

This admission – combined with the legal assault on the constitutional protections ratings firms are used to hiding behind – could threaten the ratings firms’ very existence. It not only will further fuel investor ire, it could also provide litigants with additional needed legal ammunition. The ratings involve tens of billions – if not hundreds of billions – of dollars of failed securities.

A series of internal reviews by the SEC – one reaching back to last year – has highlighted some of the abuses.

About a year ago – in July 2008, to be exact – the SEC concluded a 10-month examination of the ratings industry that uncovered “poor disclosure practices and procedures guiding the analysis of mortgage-related debt and insufficient attention paid to managing conflicts of interest.”

According to the report, there was an obvious degree of knowledge and complicity in playing the ratings game.

E-mail exchanges between analysts at “unnamed” ratings firms back this up. In one, an analyst said the firm’s ratings model didn’t capture “half” of the deal’s risk, but said that the security “could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” In a Dec. 15, 2006 missive, a manager wrote that the ratings industry was creating “[an] even bigger monster – the CDO market.”

Confided the manager: “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”

In July of this year, in testimony to Congress, SEC Chairwoman Mary Shapiro said she supported proposals to impose liability standards that would make it easier for investors to sue credit ratings firms. That’s a bit ironic given that the SEC is charged with supervising the ratings firms.

According to the internal investigation conducted by the Office of Inspector General, the SEC failed to exercise its duties as the nation’s watchdog of the same credit ratings firms that many large investors are forced to trust.

By law, certain investors must rely on the ratings of a handful of companies, known as  “Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations,” or NRSROs. In many cases, the NRSROs determine what are “eligible” or “appropriate” investments. And it’s the SEC that determines who is, or who can be, an NRSRO.

For instance, most state insurance regulators say that insurance companies can only invest in assets that carry one of the top four credit ratings. And it’s the NRSROs that certify those ratings.

Similarly, money-market funds can only invest in the highest NRSRO-rated securities.

Countless institutions – public and private, domestic and international – rely on rules that determine what assets are acceptable investments. And that acceptability is determined by financial due diligence and the resulting credit ratings – as determined by SEC-certified rating agencies.

It’s not clear that any of this is really protecting investors, according to a Feb. 15, 2008 “Review & Outlook” piece in The Journal. Drexel University Finance Prof. Joseph Mason took a look at CDOs that were “Baa” (an investment grade rating) by Moody’s. His finding: They were 10 times more likely to default than equivalently rated corporate bonds.

In that same article, an S&P spokesperson was asked if they actually examined the mortgage debt that made up the investment pools that make up a CDO.

The spokesperson’s answer was not confidence-inspiring: “We are not auditors; we are not accounting firms.”

Source: The Credit Rating Firms Are Running Scared – It’s About Time

Investors can be excused if the word “October” is one that strikes fear into their hearts.

The trouble is, it’s actually September that deals investors the toughest monthly hands.

That’s September – as in the month that starts today (Tuesday).

After a rally that’s seen U.S. stocks surge 53% from their March lows (including 3.5% in August, alone), “investors are wondering if September will live up to its reputation as the month in which the S&P 500 posts its worst price performance and frequency of decline,” Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research (NYSE: MHP), told MarketWatch.com yesterday (Monday).

Since 1929, September is actually the worst-performing months for stocks, with the S&P 500 suffering an average decline of 1.3% (compared to an average monthly advance of 0.5%), Stovall said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average – the index that’s more closely followed by retail investors – tells a similar story. In fact, if you look at the Dow over the last 100, 50 and 20 years, September is the only month in which the average monthly performance has been negative, the Bespoke Investment Group concluded in a recent research report.

Over the past 100 years, the Dow has suffered an average decline of 0.96% in September, with a positive month 42% of the time. The average loss widened to 1.23% for the last 50 years and to 1.49% for the past 20.

Fall, in general, hasn’t been kind to investors: Of the 15 largest point declines in the Dow, six have come in October, four in September and two in November (See accompanying graphic).

Given that, investors “may have a reason to fear a setback in September,” Stovall told the news service. “We don’t know whether concerns over the upcoming [third-quarter] earnings reporting season will trigger this anticipated digestion of gains, or if further nervousness emanating from the Chinese stock market over the prospects of a slower-than-expected growth in GDP will cause U.S. equities to trim some of its recent advances, but September is as good a month as any in which to suffer a setback.

Stovall says that Standard & Poor’s investment committee believes that stocks are “are due for a period of consolidation” – Wall Street parlance for a potentially painful drop – before resuming their advance.

Not all Septembers are the same, however, Bespoke Investment’s recent shows. And this one could be particularly rocky.

When the Dow has a positive August, it does well in September more often than not. But when three specific market criteria are met, history shows that it’s best for investors to fasten their seatbelts, since they’re usually in for a rough September, Bespoke researchers found.

And – unfortunately – all three of those criteria have been met this year. Those three conditions are:

• The Dow is in positive territory year-to-date (+719.89 points, or 8.2%).
• The Dow is in positive territory during the past three months (+995.95 points, or 11.72%).
• The Dow is in positive territory in August (+324.67 points, or 3.54%).

Of the 17 times in the past when the Dow has boasted a positive return in all three of those time periods, the index has averaged a 1.73% decline for September, with positive returns for the month just three times. And those three months were each about 20 years apart.

Mark Arbeter, S&P’s chief technical strategist, told MarketWatch that the S&P could fall all the way down to 940 – an 8% decline from the close yesterday (Monday) – before continuing its advance to a fresh recovery high.

Indeed, S&P’s Stovall said that “while past performance is no guarantee of future results, history hints that September certainly has the reputation.”

Not everyone is so bearish, however.

Michael Darda, MKM Partners’ chief economist, this week told Barron’s that the stock market’s strong performance “perhaps [is] telling us that the idea of a painfully slow U.S. and global economic recovery is just plain wrong.”

And even if there is a pullback, it could be both shallow and temporary – because of the huge cache of cash on the sidelines. While it’s true that a record $327 billion in cash has flowed out of money-market mutual funds since March 11, that still leaves $3.58 trillion – down from the high of $3.92 trillion, but equal to 34% of the U.S. stock market’s total capitalization, Mizuho Securities Co. Ltd. Chief Investment Strategist Carmine Grigoli told Barron’s.

In 2002, when the last bull-market run began, money market cash equaled 29% of the stock market’s total capitalization. And it’s nearly double the 19% ratio that was present at the 2007 stock market peak, Grigoli told the closely watched Dow Jones (Nasdaq: NWSA) investment weekly.

And back then, the U.S. central bank wasn’t holding the benchmark Fed Funds rate at a historic low of roughly 0%.

Because cash earns almost nothing today, “as financial conditions improve and fear subsides, sideline cash is drawn into higher-risk instruments such as bonds and stocks,” Grigoli told Barron’s. That’s why we’re in “the early stages of a liquidity-driven bull market that could take stock prices substantially higher.”

After we navigate September, that is.

Source: Forget About October – September is the Worst Month for U.S. Stocks

If you need a place to live and want to own a house, why not? Prices in some areas are fairly reasonable. But if you’re speculating, our guess is that you’ll get a better deal if you wait.

Why? For the many reasons we have given you in these Daily Reckonings. House prices may be firming in some areas – that’s what the Case-Shiller numbers seem to show. But nationwide, they are probably headed down for quite a while longer.

Herewith, four reasons why:

First, as you know, this is a depression. It will probably be long. And deep. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the stock market or reading the news. The Dow went up another 114 points yesterday. Oil rose to $71. And the dollar – anticipating inflation – fell to $1.44 per euro.

But that’s what bounces are supposed to look like. They look good enough so that people mistake them for the real thing… and get suckered into more losses.

Depressions drag down asset prices. Typically, prices become much more reasonable. And then they reach UNREASONABLE levels. House prices have become reasonable. Now they will become unreasonably cheap…

Second, waves of resets and foreclosures are still washing over the housing market. As Barry Ritholz told us in Vancouver, we’re only half way through the foreclosure process. There are more than 18 million empty houses in America. A news report yesterday told of a 32-storey apartment building in Florida with only one lonely tenant.

And still coming up are more refinancings… more drowning homeowners … and more people giving up on homeownership altogether. The bubble era created new households at the rate of 1.2 million per year. Practically every one of them wanted to get in on the housing boom. Now, there are only 500,000 new households per year. And few of them still believe that housing is the route to wealth. At the current rate, it will take many years to fill up all America’s empty houses.

Third, incomes are falling. Property crashed because people with average incomes could no longer afford to buy the average house. Now, they can afford even less. Ken Rogoff estimates that the consumer needs 6-8 years to pay his debts down to a more reasonable level. Part of that deleveraging process will mean getting rid of heavy mortgage debt – one way or another.

Fourth, there are too many houses that are too big… and in the wrong places.. Big houses were a status symbol in the bubble years. Now they’re a symbol of extravagance and error. Plus, they’re expensive to own. People will want to dump them – even if they can afford them. There was far too much building in the outlying suburbs of the sand states too – Arizona, Nevada, California and Florida. Those houses may have to be abandoned as people are forced to move closer to where the work is.

There are also a couple of more technical reasons why the Case-Shiller numbers may be erring on the bright side: seasonal adjustments and a changing mix of houses sold. But our guess is that real house prices – adjusted for inflation – will continue going down for many more years.

You want to see deflation? Go to Tokyo City in London. The restaurant chain says it is going to give its food away for free. Customers will pay for drinks plus 2 pounds 50 pence for service.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo itself prices are falling – again. The Japanese have had on-again, off-again deflation for the last 20 years… ever since their stock market crashed in 1989.

Hey, what’s the matter with those Japanese? Don’t they know about stimulus?

Hold on there, pilgrim. What the Japanese don’t know about stimulus ain’t worth knowing. They’ve stimulated their economy so much that their government debt now measures 200% of GDP. And what did they get for all that stimulus? Did it get their economy moving?

Are you kidding? Now, the latest news tells us that they also have the highest jobless rate in 6 years. And the latest figures show the inflation rate NEGATIVE. In fact, never has the inflation rate been lower.

*** Nissan announced an electric car. Shares soared.

*** Jobless benefits are running out for 1.5 million unemployed Americans, says a New York Times report.

*** And here a commentary by David Pauly on what Wall Street is doing about low earnings – lying!

“Stock analysts continue to promote corporate earnings lies, insisting that net income isn’t really what investors need to know… .

“In analyst speak, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) wasn’t hit with a $1.45 billion fine from the European Union in the second quarter for anticompetitive practices.

“After setting aside funds to cover the fine, which Intel is appealing, the semiconductor-maker had a quarterly loss of $398 million, or 7 cents a share. Disregarding the fine altogether, analysts maintain the company earned 18 cents a share, beating their average estimate of 8 cents.

“As Wall Street tells it, the employee stock options Google Inc. granted in the second quarter didn’t cost its shareholders $293 million.
“Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), according to generally accepted accounting principles, earned $1.48 billion, or $4.66 a share, in the period. Not enough for Wall Street, which prefers to say the company earned $5.36 a share, leaving out the cost of stock options.

“Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA.B), an entertainment company, this week reported second-quarter net income of $277 million, or 46 cents a share. Analysts had estimated profit as if money Viacom paid out in severance in the period wasn’t the real thing. On that basis, Viacom earned 49 cents a share, beating the average estimate by 1 cent.

“Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), a rival of Viacom for entertainment dollars, said it earned $519 million, or 43 cents a share, in the quarter. Analysts insist Time Warner earned 45 cents, excluding, according to Bloomberg data, costs related to litigation and asset sales. Lawyers must work for nothing.

“By similar Wall Street reckoning, the expense of cutting jobs and selling an asset that reduced McGraw-Hill Cos. (NYSE:MHP) second quarter earnings per share by 10 percent was immaterial.

“Analysts also say investors should ignore $129 million that Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT), maker of small airplanes, helicopters and golf carts, charged against net income in the latest quarter. Included was the cost of shutting a plant for an eight-seat jet Textron decided not to build.

“General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE), which makes jet engines and electric power equipment and has a financial services arm, had a second- quarter profit of 24 cents a share. GE and the analysts emphasized earnings from continuing operations, which at 26 cents a share, exceeded their estimate by 2 cents. A $194 million loss from discarded businesses was discarded.”

And so on… and so on…

*** “As You Like It” was as we liked it – lively, bawdy, and raucous. It is not Shakespeare’s finest play – or so the critics say. But it has some marvelous dialogue. “All the world is a stage… ” is the most memorable.

Our hostess had set up a stage on the lawn and put out a hundred or so chairs for guests. But by the time we sat down it had begun to rain. The chairs were wet. A Frenchman gallantly wiped off Elizabeth’s chair. Your editor sat down in a puddle… and the play began…

The rain continued throughout the performance. Some spectators – perhaps those who listened to the weather forecast – came equipped with parkas and anoraks. We had an umbrella, which we held over our heads throughout the performance.

Despite the drippy conditions in the bleachers, a good time was had by all. The English actors who performed the play were real pros. They enlivened the set with music and acrobatics, moving the story forward 4 centuries to the days of Peace & Love and strawberry fields forever. We never quite got the connection… but it seemed to work, somehow.

After the play was over, we retired to a stone barn for soup and dessert. There, we met neighbors whom we only see once a year – in August. Among them was a dear Daily Reckoning reader.

“I’m glad I bought gold when I did,” he said. “It was $600 or so at the time. So I made a gain on the gold. But the important thing was that I wasn’t caught in that sell-off in stocks last year.

“What do you think gold is going to do now?”

“Probably, it will go down,” we replied.

“So, you’re selling your gold?”

“No… we’re holding on… It’s too risky to sell it.”

*** “Of course, that’s the big question,” Elizabeth began on the drive home.

“What’s the big question?”

“About whether the world is just a stage. It’s really a question of free will. About whether we do things because we think them through ourselves, or whether we just play our roles.

“I suppose it’s related to the ‘Great Man’ theory of history… the idea that people actually determine history, rather than play their parts in it… ”

“It’s probably like all the great questions… that is, both true and untrue at the same time. I mean, Louis 14th couldn’t have been Louis 14th if there hadn’t been a Louis 13th… and if France hadn’t been the leading country of Europe… and if it hadn’t been the peak of the monarchic age.

“And Rommel couldn’t have led a Blitzkrieg in WWII if the tank hadn’t been invented in WWI… .

“In both cases, it appears that Shakespeare was right… that the roles were already there, just waiting for someone to play them… ”

“Yes, but I wonder if that is true… or as completely true as it looks. The fellow who took over from Lenin didn’t have to be a monster, did he?”

“I don’t know. If he hadn’t been so ruthless some other guy probably would have purged him out… sent him to the gulag. Once a revolution gets started, the most violent and ruthless groups seem to take over. So, I guess you could say that even there… the role must be played… ”

“Does that apply to our personal lives, too? Are we just playing roles? You are pretending to be my husband. I am pretending to be your wife. We are pretending to love each other. Is that all there is to it?”

“No… no… that’s very different… ”

“How so?”

“I don’t know… but when I say I love you, it comes out of my soul like smoke from a sacred volcano… ”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know… I just like the sound of it… ”

Source: More Empty Houses in America

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) reports tomorrow (Tuesday), while JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) reports Thursday, and Citigroup Inc (C) reports on Friday.

While the chief executives of several of the largest U.S. banks were quick to announce favorable showings for the first two months of the year, analysts are concerned that the strong showings may not have carried over into March, and that the performances of some of these money-centered banks may disappoint.

Contradictions hit the financials last week as diverse reports about Morgan Stanley (MS) and Wells Fargo brought even more confusion to a sector that cannot seem to stay out of the daily headlines. On one hand, analysts expect Morgan Stanley to write down an additional $1.2 billion worth of bonds; subsequently, the firm may suffer its second straight quarterly loss.

On the other hand, Wells Fargo expects earnings to far surpass Wall Street’s projections as its Wachovia Corp. acquisition has enhanced its mortgage-lending capabilities at a time when rates are at historic lows and when the U.S. housing market is showing some signs – be they ever so slight – of rebounding [Indeed, a Money Morning report from just last week made this same point].

Bear in mind that since the financials have led the charge in equities during the past five weeks, investors may be looking for any excuse to take some recent profits.  Intel Corp. (INTC), which reports tomorrow, Google Inc (GOOG), which reports Thursday and General Electric Corp. (GE), which reports Friday, figure to be crucial announcements.

The March inflation gauges highlight the economic calendar, and economists hope that price pressures remain far off of their radar screens.  The retail sales data should lend a bit more insight into the current plight of the consumer.

Market Matters

Alcoa Corp. (AA) kicked off earnings season with more of whimper than a bang.  While the aluminum producing giant lost about $500 million during the quarter, the company expects to benefit from the infrastructure programs promoted in the economic stimulus package – key areas that could enhance demand for its products.  Bed Bath and Beyond Inc. (BBBY) reported better-than-expected quarterly results and even received a favorable analyst upgrade.

With the season set to kick off in a big way in the weeks to come, Thomson Reuters has called for a 37% drop in profits at Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline (though that prediction came before the Wells announcement).

Economically Speaking

A light week on the calendar still provided plenty of headlines on the economic home front last week.  Corporate executives painted a rather bleak picture of the short-term future for U.S. industry as the Business Roundtable issued a quarterly outlook that turned negative for the first time in its survey’s history.  The majority of those participating expect their companies to experience layoffs and reductions in business spending during the coming six months.

However, Roundtable Chairman Harold McGraw III, who is also the CEO of The McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc. (MHP), expressed confidence in the Obama administration’s ability to generate renewed business activity. McGraw said he also believes the economy may be close to a bottom.

On the other hand, minutes from the latest U.S. Federal Open Market Committee policymaking meeting that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and friends revised their expectations (to the downside) for the economic recovery. While they anticipate that gross domestic product (GDP) will flatten (from its current contraction state) by the end of the year, unemployment is expected to continue its downward spiral well into 2010.

Though initial claims for unemployment benefits surprisingly fell last week, they remain at very high levels, and total claims (those looking for jobs over extended periods) jumped to a record high. While the trade deficit narrowed to its lowest level since November 1999, the improvement is more indicative of the sluggish economy and the reduced global demand for any and all goods and services.

Retailers posted their results of March sales and the numbers were mixed at best.  While Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT) had long been the one “steady Eddie” during this economic downturn, the world’s largest retailer reported March sales that missed expectations (though the company does expect its quarterly results to be strong, thanks to a stellar February).  Stores that target teens like Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF), Aeropostale Inc. (ARO) and American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) each posted disappointing numbers, though analysts point out that Easter (and many spring breaks) fall later in the 2009 calendar (April 12 this year versus March 23 a year ago) and most holiday shoppers are waiting until the last minute these days.

Still, more than 50% of those retailers reporting beat Wall Street expectations, and some even issued favorable guidance for the quarter as a whole.  Of note, The TJX Cos. Inc. (TJX) (TJ Maxx and Marshalls) and Penney Co. Inc. (JCP) both posted better-than-expected sales results and increased their outlooks for the three-month period.

Weekly Economic Calendar

Source:  As Earnings Season Heats Up, U.S. Banks Will Make or Break the Stock-Market Rally

The sheer fraud and greed of rating agency analysts and executives is staggering. That no one has gone to jail, and none of the agencies have been shut down is a travesty of justice on an infinitely larger scale than Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Until depositors, bankers and investors regain confidence in the quality of ratings we rely upon to measure financial stability and creditworthiness, the tremors that underlie the credit crisis will drag on indefinitely.

Letter and number ratings – such as AAA, Aa1, BBB and Caa1 – are financial shorthand for the due diligence supposedly done by rating agencies after they’ve examined an issuer or a security’s financial structure, and evaluated the likelihood of its being able to pay interest and principal at maturity. Investors rely on the objectivity and fiduciary responsibility of the rating agencies to publish fair, accurate and uncompromised assessments.

By law, certain investors must rely on the ratings of a handful of Securities and Exchange Commission designated “Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations” (NRSROs). For example, most state insurance regulators require that only assets rated in the top four ratings categories by NRSROs are eligible investments. Similarly, money market funds can only invest in securities with the highest NRSRO ratings. In fact, innumerable institutions – public and private, and domestic and international – mandate asset quality levels predicated on the major rating agencies’ due diligence.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, Moody’s Investors Service (MCO) and Fitch Ratings Inc. are all SEC-designated NRSROs. They are the largest, best-known and most-profitable ratings firms in the tiny, $5 billion-a-year universe of ratings firms. S&P is a part of The McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc. (MHP), while Fitch is a subsidiary of France’s Fimalac SA.

Moody’s was spun out of financial publisher Dun & Bradstreet Corp. (DNB) as a public company in 2000. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A, BRK.B), apparently having spotted a diamond in the rough, bought into D&B before the divestiture, and ended up with a hefty 19% stake in Moody’s after the spin-off was completed.

The problem with the business of rating the issuers of securities, and rating the securities they issue – such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized mortgage-backed obligations – is that the rating agencies are paid by the issuers to rate them. Objectivity aside, ratings firms are in business not to rate but to make money for themselves by rating issuers and their securities. It’s like all the contestants in the Miss World pageant paying the judges with country funds … who’s not going to be judged beautiful?

What was even more problematic in the scheme of the ratings business model was that analysts didn’t understand how to analyze and rate the very complex cash flow structures of these new collateralized mortgage-backed securities. Not wanting to lose business to their competitors, who were all in the same boat, they used the same rating model structures that they used to rate corporate bonds, though the two different securities had nothing in common.

It was like asking your local car mechanic to certify your Citation V jet – just before you take off for a transatlantic flight to London. God help you if there’s a problem.

And there were problems. Lots of them. According to a Feb. 15 “Review & Outlook” piece in The Wall Street Journal, Joseph Mason, professor of finance at Drexel University, studied collateralized debt obligations rated “Baa” by Moody’s and determined that they were 10 times more likely to default than equivalently rated corporate bonds. The article went on to say that an S&P spokesperson, when asked if they actually examined the underlying mortgages in the pools, answered: “We are not auditors; we are not accounting firms.”

While S&P – and to a lesser degree, Fitch – were just playing the game, Moody’s actually ran away with the ball. An eye-popping and brilliant April 11 Journal article by Aaron Lucchetti exposed the unseemly underbelly of Moody’s greed. What stood out the most in the article was Moody’s willingness – under the direction of Brian Clarkson, who joined the firm in 1991 and became president and chief operating officer – to bend over backwards to accommodate issuers of mortgage-backed and structured finance paper. Clarkson was willing to switch analysts if clients complained, which several did, including Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR: CS), UBS AG (UBS), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS).

Under Clarkson, Moody’s expanded and grabbed a huge piece of the deal-ratings-market pie. By 2006, the company was rating $9 out of every $10 raised in mortgage securities. For all of that year, the firm’s structured finance group generated more than $881 million in revenue, about 43% of Moody’s revenue. And in 2007 it was estimated that the firm rated 94% of the approximately $190 billion in mortgage and structured-finance CDOs floated during the year.

But there was some concern, including some from insiders. Former Moody’s analyst Mark Froeba told The Journal that “there was never an explicit directive to subordinate rating quality to market share. There was, rather, a palpable erosion of institutional support for rating analysis that threatened market share.” In the same article, former Moody’s executive Paul Stevenson was quoted as saying that “the most recent problem is that the rating process became a negotiation.”

Clarkson, the Moody’s president and COO, didn’t do too badly negotiating his compensation, either. In 2006 he made $3.8 million, while the firm’s chief executive officer, Raymond McDaniel, made $8.2 million. Clarkson “retired” under pressure this past May and McDaniel, the CEO, added the title of president to his mantle.

Eventually, the always-late-to-the-dance SEC awoke to the realization that it was supposed to be watching the watchers – the ratings agencies. While hundreds of billions of dollars around the world was invested in Wall Street’s pay-to-play version of Illinois gubernatorial politics, many heartbroken and flat-out-broke investors discovered that what the rating agencies had determined to be “AAA” rated securities were not the princely investment-grade securities those three letters said they were, but were toxic Amazon frogs instead. Of course, that calls for an investigation. And so it was.

A 10-month “examination” by the SEC, concluded in July, uncovered, believe it or not, “poor disclosure practices and procedures guiding the analysis of mortgage-related debt and insufficient attention paid to managing conflicts of interest.” Brilliant!

According to the report, which included as exhibits several e-mail exchanges between analysts at unnamed ratings firms, there was an obvious degree of knowledge and complicity in playing the ratings game. In one exchange, an analyst said that their ratings model didn’t capture “half” of the deal’s risk but that “it could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” And in another even more famous exchange dated Dec. 15, 2006, a manager wrote that the firms continued to create an “even bigger monster – the CDO market. Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.”

Have any heads rolled? No. Have any fines been levied or any firms closed down? No. The SEC apparently went back to sleep, having since been intermittently aroused by the failure of The Bear Stearns Cos., the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (OTC: LEHMQ), the nationalization of American International Group Inc.(AIG), and a few other minor nap-interrupting events, including the bailout of Citigroup Inc. (C). I’m only sorry that the Commission’s disjointed hibernation should once again be interrupted by the petty crime of a simple Ponzi scheme artist. Well, maybe now they can finally get some rest. For the sake of our future, someone please disband this band of sleeping fools.

Shortly after the July examination was made public, in an acknowledgement that it might be under unwarranted attack, S&P announced that it was considering ways to take volatility and stability into account in its ratings. But, in a simultaneous burst of clarity, S&P suggested that it feared that a more disciplined and functional ratings model would make it harder for issuers to raise capital. Only days later, in fact, S&P went on the offensive, calling SEC proposals to boost disclosure and mitigate internal conflicts of interest too costly for the ratings businesses. Among the proposals that were pushed back was one to require a separate ratings structure and ranking system for structured products.

Fast-forward to Dec. 3, and the unveiling of the SEC’s latest proposed rules changes. While the toothless wonder folded up like a pup tent once again on all substantive changes that would have created a more transparent and honest playing field, it did manage to sneak in some suggestions, including those that said:

• The rating agencies can’t rate debt they help structure.
• Analysts can’t participate in fee negotiations.
• Analysts can’t be given gifts worth more than $25.
• Analysts must disclose a random 10% sampling of their ratings within six months.
• The ratings agencies must maintain a history of complaints against analysts.
• And that the agencies must record when an analyst’s rating for structured debt differs from a quantitative model.

Calling these proposed rules changes baby steps is like calling the Grand Canyon a ditch.

Because Wall Street didn’t like the idea, what got dropped from the proposed changes were rules to create different structures for rating different products. And the most egregious of the dropped rules was a proposal that ratings firms make public all underlying information they use in making their ratings. Which is exactly the transparency needed.

There is an overwhelming heaviness to the credit crisis that bears on our economic future. It is the inordinate weight of established, self-serving power brokers driving dump trucks full of ill-gotten gains over any clarion call for transparency. The underlying currency of capital markets must be clearly and objectively rated instruments, whose value is determined by free markets. Until confidence is restored in the producers, products and the purveyors of financial services, thirsty investors are unlikely to partake of any new punch.

Source: Fraud and Greed of Trusted Rating Agencies Helped Spread the Credit Crisis

This from Money Morning:

The U.S. housing market is already being pounded by the “perfect storm.” And the outlook for the New Year is for the stormy weather to continue – and probably to get worse.

As if a locked-up credit market and tidal waves of foreclosures weren’t already enough, we’re now watching unemployment climb and consumer confidence plunge.

But even when the housing market is taking on water, there are ways to stay afloat. Indeed, investors nimble enough to maneuver can even make money.

The watchword on this market, though, is caution.  If an investor decides to test the waters, beware of the extraordinary financial undertow.

Here’s a look at what’s happening now, and what the implications there are for investors in the New Year.

Rising Unemployment Feeds into Sinking Demand

The grim reality is that skyrocketing unemployment is a major threat to the recovery of the U.S. housing market.  And consumers shackled with record levels of debt are unlikely to ride to the rescue this time.

Since this recession is expected to be long and deep, economists are projecting high rates of unemployment. And the latest statistics released by the U.S. Labor Department show the crucial jobs market deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid pace.

The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to a 14-year high of 6.5% in October as another 240,000 jobs were cut – an uptick from 6.1% in September and the 10th month in a row the jobless rate has risen. Most forecasts are calling for unemployment to spike as high as 8.5%, which would be the worst showing since 1980.

So far this year, a staggering 1.2 million jobs have disappeared. More than half the decrease occurred in the past three months alone, Money Morning reported in its “Outlook 2009” series economic forecast story. Even worse: A year ago, job cuts were concentrated in the financial-services and homebuilding sectors. Now they’re rising across the board; virtually every part of the economy is feeling the squeeze.

For instance:

• U.S. automaker Chrysler Corp., one of Detroit’s wheezing “Big Three,” is laying off 25% of its white-collar work force of 18,500.
• Appliance maker Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) recently announced it would cut 5,000 jobs to cope with declining sales.
• Worldwide shipping giant DHL, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post AG, is laying off 9,500 people, and threatening to close its U.S. distribution center.
• Onetime Internet search giant Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) plans to let 1,100 workers go – on top of the 1,000 already jettisoned in January – the result of several botched merger attempts.
• Ailing banking giant Citigroup Inc. (C) heaped more bad news on the financial sector, announcing whopping 50,000 layoffs in the next 12 months.

Layoffs of this magnitude are more than a mere shot across the bow of the housing market – they’re actually a direct hit amid ship. People who are unemployed cannot buy homes. Period. But even consumers who are afraid that they might be joining the jobless ranks are loath to take on the added risk – making them unlikely candidates to buy a new home.

Foreclosures Still Rising

As unemployment climbs, foreclosures will continue to multiply. That only exacerbates an already unappealing combination – more houses being dumped onto the market even as the pool of potential buyers grows increasingly smaller.

RealtyTrac Inc. reported that more than 81,000 homes were foreclosed on in September – 71% increase from the same period just a year ago. For 2008, foreclosures rose to a record 765,558.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see foreclosures increase as the economy slows down,” said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president of marketing. “The people living paycheck to paycheck are at risk if they lose their jobs. It will cause more people to lose their homes.”

And while foreclosure volumes are outpacing projections, the cumulative losses by banks on bad mortgages may have yet to hit their books.  Since loan losses don’t get recorded until the property is sold, it’s likely there’s a lot of bank-owned inventory that hasn’t been unloaded – meaning there may be more foreclosures out there investors don’t yet know about.

“We are in uncharted waters,” said Brian Bethune, an economist at research firm Global Insight (IHS).

Making the waters even rougher was the decision by Standard & Poor’s Inc. (MHP) to cut the ratings on $34.1 billion of “Alt-A” residential loan packages that had been issued in 2006 and 2007.  Alt-A mortgages are those written with little or no documentation, i.e., without proof of income or assets. Even worse, S&P put an additional $351.7 billion of Alt-A securities up for possible review reflecting the rating company’s “belief that further declines in home sales will depress prices further and push loss severities higher than we had previously assumed.”

On top of all that, record numbers of borrowers are already “underwater,” or “upside down” on their mortgages, making it more attractive for them to default by simply walking away, than to hang around and drown.

About 18% of homes nationwide are now “upside down,” according to a report from First American CoreLogic.  Almost two-thirds of those homes are in just seven states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio. In Mountain House, Calif., an unincorporated planned housing community located in the foothills of the Diablo mountain range, the housing crisis right now has nearly 90% of the homeowners owing more on their houses than they are worth – the highest percentage in the country, The New York Times reported on Nov. 10. The average homeowner is underwater by $122,000, the newspaper said.

Other areas are suffering almost as much: In Nevada, alone, borrowers owed a whopping 89% of the value of their homes.

Despite such dramatic anecdotes, this housing slump is nationwide in nature. It’s more severe than any other such downturn since World War II, mostly because of the risky lending practices that inflated the real-estate bubble in the first place.

The Downdraft in Housing Prices

Meanwhile, while unemployment rises, the downward spiral in housing prices is gaining momentum.

“The No.1 thing that drives housing values is incomes,” said Todd Sinai, an associate professor of real estate at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “When incomes fall, demand for housing falls.”

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index of home prices plunged 16.6% in August from the year before, following a 16.3% drop in July. The index has fallen every month since January 2007 (See accompanying chart, “Plummeting Prices.”).

Prices were lower in all 20 of the major cities the index covers, with Phoenix and Las Vegas down nearly 31% from last year.

Nationwide home prices have fallen 20.3% since peaking in June 2006.

And the skid isn’t over.

According to Fitch Ratings Inc., U.S. home prices will fall another 8% to 10% before they show signs of stabilizing.  According to a Fitch forecast, the peak-to-trough price decline will be 30%.
And still one other reliable indicator of housing prices seems to confirm that, in many cities, home prices still have further to fall.

According to analysis by Moody’s Investors Service (MCO), Miami houses are right now priced at about 22 times annual rental income – versus an average of just 15 over the past two decades. This suggests that a home currently priced at $350,000 is actually worth only $238,600 – meaning the price would have to drop 32% to reach the fair-value point.

Congressional Missteps

In an effort to help more than 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure, Congress came up with the “Hope for Homeowners” program.  Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom, federal lawmakers designed a program that is almost certain to fail.

The program supposedly makes as much as $300 billion available to at-risk borrowers, enabling them to refinance into a 30-year, fixed-rate loan insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

The biggest mistake Congress made was to make this program strictly voluntary for participating banks, experts say.

Just as bad: In an effort to make the program more affordable for beleaguered homeowners, it also requires the lenders to write the value of the home down to 90% of its current market value. So in a downtrodden market like Phoenix, if a lender holds a $400,000 mortgage on a home currently appraised at $300,000, the bank would have to settle for a new mortgage worth only $270,000.

Needless to say, the response has been underwhelming.  After four weeks, a whopping 79 people had applied for the program.

Not to be deterred, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) is proposing another package, which would extend the terms of at-risk loans from 30 years to 40 years, with interest rates as low as 3.0%.  Housing payments for delinquent borrowers could not exceed 38% of gross monthly income.

In order to sweeten the pot for lenders, the government would share as much as 50% of the losses if a borrower ended up in default anyway.  In addition, the FDIC would pay servicers who process these new mortgages a fee of $1,000 for each re-worked loan.

FDIC officials estimate that this anti-foreclosure program would cost $24.4 billion, and would prevent 1.5 million of the 2.2 million at-risk homes from falling into foreclosure.

But that also means the taxpayer will be on the hook for half the value of 700,000 mortgages that do fail.

Can you say “fuzzy math?”

Homebuilders on the Ropes

You can probably guess where this leaves the nation’s homebuilders – gasping for air.

D.R. Horton Inc. (DHI), one of the nation’s biggest homebuilders, just wrote down $1.1 billion in land, deposits and inventory in the third quarter, as sales fell by half. The Ft. Worth, Tex.-based company expects to post a fourth-quarter net loss of between $800 million and $900 million, 18 times more than it lost in the fourth quarter a year ago.

Other builders are in similar shape. Pulte Homes Inc. (PHM) and The Ryland Group Inc. (RYL) just reported quarterly losses of $280.4 million and $65.7 million, respectively.

Even Toll Bros. Inc. (TOL), which caters to the high-end buyer, said fourth-quarter revenue fell 41% from the same period last year.

The Forecast for 2009: More Pain Before Any Gain

No matter what happens in the U.S. housing market, until a large inventory reduction takes place, housing prices will not stabilize.

In a recent Forbes magazine column, A. Gary Shilling, president of an economic consulting firm of the same name, said the worst is yet to come. Says Schilling: “Excess inventory, the mortal enemy of prices, now amounts to 1.8 million homes, which is a huge number relative to the net demand (new families minus departures due to deaths and moves to nursing homes) which is only 1.5 million a year.”

And one of the architects of the U.S. housing debacle – former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan – is also downbeat: “At a minimum, stabilization of home prices is still many months in the future,” Greenspan said in an October speech.

The question that needs to be answered, then, is this: In the current atmosphere, does anyone believe we actually need homebuilders to add even one new home to the market?

Some pundits claim this may be a golden opportunity to short U.S. homebuilders. Even though they’re already down 80% from their highs, the deadly combination of skyrocketing unemployment, deflating prices and tight credit continue to spell further pain for the industry.

Short sellers would obviously look at any of the companies mentioned above. They might also consider iShares US Home Construction (ITB), the prominent exchange traded fund (ETF) for the group. However, any such move would have to be made with extreme caution.

The reason: All bets are off if the new Barack Obama Administration implements a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures. There’s also the possibility that Obama will be able to shepherd through any one or more of the proposed mortgage guarantee programs now on the table.

Those kinds of moves could provide a boost to homebuilders and leave short sellers in the grips of an uncomfortable squeeze – just like the millions of homeowners saddled with mortgages they can no longer pay.

Source: New Year U.S. Housing Market Forecast: No Gain, More Pain