Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
6 of the top 8 metro areas with the largest home price crash in 2022 were in California, according to Redfin.
Sadly, I lived in three of these metro areas (Austin TX, San Jose CA and Phoenix AZ), although I wouldn’t confuse correlation with causation.
The trend for home price growth (blue line) is definitely on the downturn as The Fed removes its ample stimulus (green line).
Here is California governor Gavin (Nancy Pelosi’s nephew) Newsome screaming about crashing California home prices.
The numbers coming out today are not good. November numbers were 1) US Industrial Production was down -0.2% MoM, 2) manufacturing production is down -0.6%, 3) retail sales advanced down -0.6% (most in 11 months) and …
The Empire State Manufacturing outlook was down -11.2% and the Philadelphia Fed (or Phed) business outlook was down -13.8% in November.
And with all this bad news, global equity markets are dropping like a paralyzed falcon.
But at least Biden traded a dangerous international arms dealer for WBNA star Brittney Griner. Possilby the worst trade in history after the Chicago Cubs traded future Hall of Famer Lou Brock for sore-arm pitcher Ernie Broglio. Griner is Ernie Broglio.
Apparently, despite the denials from the Biden Administration, someone at Bureau of Labor Statistics or someone in Congress or the Federal Reserve or the Biden Admininstration itself likely tipped the wink on the soft CPI report on Tuesday.
Treasuries were well on the front-foot in the lead up to the below-estimate November CPO print, as a surge of buying took place seconds before the official 8:30 am New York release time. Over a 60 second period before the data, 13,518 March 10-year futures traded as the contract moved from 114-04+ up to 114-22. Gains were then extended up to 115-11 session highs once the data was released.
On the equity side, stock futures suddenly spiked more than 1%. Trading in Treasury futures surged, pushing benchmark yields lower by about 4 basis points. Those are major moves in such a short period of time — bigger than full-session swings on some days. And they should get scrutinized by regulators, long-time market observers say, even if a leak is only one of several possible explanations for why traders suddenly started buying right before the report was published.
Remember that current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was accused of leaking information to a NY hedge fund ahead of the Fed Open Market Committee meeting? And then we have the Wolf of Wall Street.
I wonder if the REAL Wolf of Wall Street did this?
Is inflation “gone in November”? Nope. Slowing, yes, but at 7.1% YoY and core inflation at 6.0% YoY, it is still considerably higher than The Fed’s target of 2%.
And the American middle class and low wage workers are still suffering with REAL average hourly earnings growth at -1.9% YoY.
The biggest losers in the inflation report for November? Food at home up 12% YoY, Fuel Oil up 65.7% YoY and “shelter” up 7.1% YoY. I call this the household bundle … of pain.
On the jobs report, the 10-year US Treasury yield fell nearly 20 basis points. Mortgage rates should follow downwards tomorrow.
Fun week ahead. US inflation numbers are out on Tuesday (forecast? CPI YoY = 7.3%, Core CPI YoY = 6.1%) and The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate decision is on Wendesday.
So, where are we sitting on Monday?
First, the US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve has been inverted (a precursor to recession) for 116 straight days). Second, the likelihood of recession in 2023 is 100%. Third, with the forecast of core inflation at a still numbing 6.1%, The Fed seems dead set on raising their target rate by 50 basis points to 4.50% on Wednesday.
dddd
So, as The Fed debates recession versus fighting inflation (partly caused by The Fed), we have Kevin Malone from The Office debating Angela versus double-fudge brownies:
“I hear Angela’s party will have double fudge brownies. But it will also have Angela. Double fudge.. Angela.. double fudge….. Angela. Hmm..” I am betting on risking a recession by raising the Fed’s target rate by 50 basis points.
Blackrock has a grim presentation on investing in 2023. Particularly with regards to The Federal Reserve and their ability to stave-off a recession (comin’ at you!).
Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. They are deliberately causing recessions by overtightening policy to try to rein in inflation. That makes recession foretold. We see central banks eventually backing off from rate hikes as the economic damage becomes reality. We expect inflation to cool but stay persistently higher than central bank targets of 2%.
For some investors, this year’s rout in high-flying technology stocks is more than a bear market: It’s the end of an era for a handful of giant companies such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
Those companies — known along with Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. as the FAANGs — led the move to a digital world and helped power a 13-year bull run. And FAANG drawdown have reached over $3 trillion.
FAANGs (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix) are getting clobbered in 2022.
Typically, when The Fed prints too much money, such as 10% or higher (red line), inflation follows. Particularly when The Fed prints at 25% YoY in Q4 2020, it was followed by the highest inflation rate in 40 years. But if M2 Money continues to slow, inflation will likely slow, but not to The Fed’s target of 2%.
Despite what Minneapolis Fed’s Neal Kashkari said about The Fed having infinite printing resourses, The Fed is going to fight inflation THAT THEY HELPED CAUSE. Biden’s energy policies (did you see that Elon Musk has a car that uses plentiful hydrogen?), and excessive Federal spending by Biden/Pelosi/Schumer, are culprits in creating the supply chain problems facing America. BUT after the 25% surge in M2 Money in 2020 and 2021, we saw M2 Money VELOCITY crash and burn to its lowest level in history. Which means the “bang for the buck” for printing more money is negligible.
Of course, big tech firms got caught influencing the 2020 Presidential election (see Musk’s release of Twitter files) and engaged in restriction of the 1st Amendment (Freedom of Speech). How much will that impact FAANG stocks going foward?
And yes, the US Treasury yield curve is inverted pointing to a recession in 2023.
And yes, apparently Biden was complicit in the Twitter fiasco.
Shotgun Joe! Shooting down freedom of speech.
Is inflation gone in November? Nope.
US producer prices rose in November by more than forecast, driven by services and underscoring the stickiness of inflationary pressures that supports Federal Reserve interest-rate increases into 2023.
The producer price index for final demand climbed 0.3% for a third month and was up 7.4% from a year earlier, Labor Department data showed Friday. The monthly gains for October and September were revised higher.
At the same time, the annual increase was the smallest in 18 months, extending a months-long easing and suggesting the central bank still has scope to pause its rate hikes next year as expected. Cooler demand at home and abroad has taken some stress off supply chains.
The data come just days before the release of the closely watched consumer price index, which is forecast to show inflation, while much too high, continues to decelerate.
While PPI is declining, it is still far above The Fed’s inflation rate of 2% (red line).
Watch out for energy prices when the sleeping giant (China) opens up again and demand for energy skyrockets. Meanwhile, Clueless Joe is merrily draining the US Strategic Petroleun Reserve.
Lastly, congratulations to former Cleveland Brown QB Baker Mayfield for winning with the LA Rams against the Las Vegas Raiders with a stunning 99 yard drive for a TD at the end of the game.
Unlike Archie Bell and the Drells, this tighten-up is about The Federal Reserve tightening-up its monetary policy.
On December 31, 2021, the US Treasury yield curve (10Y-2Y) stood at +77.4 basis points, generally a good omen.
Then markets woke up. And not in a woke way.
As The Fed tightens to tamp down on inflation in 2022, we are seeing a pattern. The US Treasury 10Y=2Y yield curve has sunk to -82 basis points, a -206% decline.
In addition to the inversion of the US Treasury yield curve we have witnessed M2 Money growth declining -90%, the S&P 50) index down -17.5%, Bitcoin down -64.2% and gold down only -2.3%.
But we now have to worry about Project Cedar, a seemingly innocent project to replace the US Dollar. A new digital currency would allow Washington DC to monitor your purchases and behavior. And perhaps create a Social Credit Score like in China measuring how well you conform to Biden’s notion of a utopian, green society.
And the US yield curve has been inverted for 109 straight days.
The Fed has signaled the terminal rate will likely be around 5% — we think an upper bound of 5% — reached in early 2023. To get there, the central bank will likely raise rates by 50 basis points at its December 2022 meeting, followed by two more 25-bp hikes in 2023. We then see it holding at 5% throughout the year. Markets have priced in a similar amount of tightening.
Controlling inflation comes at a cost to growth. Yield curves have inverted. A Bloomberg Economics model shows a 100% probability of recession starting by August 2023. Take that — like all model forecasts — with a grain of salt. But the basic view that aggressive Fed tightening will very likely tip the economy into a downturn is correct.
While various measures of impending US recession show a good chance of a 2023 recession, Powell’s preferred measure of the yield curve shows only a 30% chance.
We project a 0.9% GDP contraction in 2H 2023, driven by an investment downturn as firms pare inventories amid a downshift in consumption. Residential investment will also contract with real interest rates likely to rise steadily throughout 2023 as nominal rates stay high and inflation moderates.
Resilient consumption should help put a floor under demand.
Households have enough of a cash buffer — extra savings built up over the course of the pandemic, rising COLAs for Social Security recipients, ongoing state and local government stimulus and solid 2022 wage income growth — to sustain consumption during the recession. Our base case is for real spending to grow at a quarterly annualized pace of about 0.5% in 2023, with strength concentrated in services.
By one measure, households may still have $1.3 trillion in the coffers, based on flows within the personal income report through September. At the current rate of drawdown, that’s enough to last around 15 months, or through the end of 2023. Funds may dry up faster as job losses mount and the unemployed fall back on their savings.
The labor market remained exceptionally tight into the end of 2022. We expect it to soften significantly next year, with the unemployment rate rising to 4.5% by the end of 2023. The pace of hiring will slow markedly as support from catch-up hiring dissipates and the effects of restrictive monetary policy settle in. We estimate only 20%-30% of total employment is still in sectors experiencing labor shortages, implying demand for labor is falling fast.
Extreme circumstances — the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — have made a recession more likely than not. Extreme circumstances can change, and so can policy makers’ response Whether the US can stick a soft landing depends substantially on how external conditions develop and how the Fed responds.
Not our base case, but we can envision a scenario in which the central bank opts to ease rates in 2023, boosting the chances of a soft landing.
One way that could happen is inflation falling faster than expected. Currently, our baseline is for headline CPI to drop to 3.5% and the core to 3.8% by the end of 2023. The most important assumption there is that energy prices remain flat next year from 2022.
In an alternative scenario, inflation fall faster as China maintains Covid controls and growth stumbles. A Bloomberg Economics model attributes the recent fall in oil prices entirely to a drop in demand — mainly from China. If China’s growth falls off the cliff, perhaps amid a sharp rise in Covid cases and resumed lockdowns, commodity prices could tumble sharply.
A warm winter in Europe and the US could also keep energy prices in check. Lower demand from Europe for US liquefied natural gas would help stem the increase in domestic electricity prices.
In that scenario, US energy prices could fall 20% in 2023 and headline inflation may drop to 2% by the end of the year. Lower gasoline prices would work to soften inflation expectations, easing pressure on the Fed to hold rates at higher level. A rate cut could then come in 2H 2023, raising the possibility of a soft landing.
The risk cuts both ways. A quick and successful pivot to reopening in China could boost oil and other commodities prices. A colder winter in Europe and the US would generate upward pressure for electricity and utility prices. Assuming China is fully open by mid-2023 — the base case for our China team — energy prices could increase by 20% in the year. In that case, headline US CPI would hit a bottom of 3.9% in midyear before surging to 5.7% by year-end.
In that scenario, the terminal fed funds rate would most likely top 5%, possibly closing 2023 near the upper end of St. Louis President James Bullard’s estimated restrictive range of 5%-7%.
Thanks to Yellen’s legacy of too low interest rates for too long, The Fed is playing catch-up by finally raising rates.
It is truly Fed Dead Redemption!
Always behind the curve, US Senators (Warren, Marshall, Kennedy) want to get to the bottom of Silvergate’s decline and its relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. This reminds me of the 2008 financial crisis when The Federal Reserve claimed they never saw it coming. Despite the data.
But back to crypto bank Silvergate.
Crypto bank Silvergate Capital Corp. was asked by three US Senators to release all records about transfers of funds for the collapsed FTX empire of Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Your bank’s involvement in the transfer of FTX customer funds to Alameda reveals what appears to be an egregious failure of your bank’s responsibility to monitor for and report suspicious financial activity carried out by its clients,” Senators Elizabeth Warren, Roger Marshall and John Kennedy wrote in a letter released Tuesday. “The public is owed a full accounting of the financial activities that may have led to the loss of billions in customer assets, and any role that Silvergate may have played in these losses.”
Shares of the La Jolla, California-based bank fell as much as 8%. The slide extends Silvergate’s losses on the year to more than 84% and has it trading at a fresh 52-week low. Not surprisingly, Silvergates’ stock price is closely linked to cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The letter cite concerns about the banking services that Silvergate provided to both FTX as well as Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research. It says the arrangement between FTX and Alameda depended on Silvergate’s depository services and puts the bank “at the center of the improper transmission of FTX customer funds.”
“Silvergate’s failure to take adequate notice of this scheme suggests that it may have failed to implement or maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, as required under the Bank Secrecy Act,” the Senators said.
Perhaps Silvergate should be renamed Silverfish. But seriously, no US Senator or DC regulator saw the following chart?? Bitcoin and other cryptos have been clobbered in 2022 as The Fed tightens monetary policy to combat inflation.
Here is our regulator, SEC’s Gary Genslar, keeping an eye on cryto exchanges like FTX.
Maybe US Senators and DC regulators thought Silvergate is a silverfish.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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