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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stan_hughes who wrote (5448)	3/24/2008 1:25:59 PM
From: ggersh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71455

No, is there anywhere to see it?

To: stan_hughes who wrote (5448)	3/24/2008 1:39:10 PM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71455

Noland sees hedge fund melt more problematic than bear. prudentbear.com I understand perfectly the motivation Wall Street, the Administration and the Fed have in blindly throwing the “kitchen sink” at this unfolding Crisis. These are indeed scary times bereft of solutions. I am certainly familiar with the view that bailing out Wall Street and the speculators is medicine necessary to stabilize the system. But not only is this approach both inequitable and unethical on moral grounds, it is my view that such endeavors will prove only further destabilizing for the system overall. Many are this weekend undoubtedly relieved by the market's strong rally. The Fed and Administration finally are said to have discovered the right antidote – crisis resolved – buy financial stocks! I will caution, however, that U.S. and global markets this week had “dislocation” written all over them. First of all, there is the issue of a problematic dislocation in the massive “repo” market to resolve. We all should hope and pray that this is not the next “contemporary” financing market buckling under the forces of contagion. And to see commodities break down while financial stocks go into spectacular melt-up mode forebodes only greater losses for leveraged speculators in the troubled “market neutral” and “quant” arenas. The short financials and long commodities “pairs trade” was quickly added to the list of favorite trades gone sour. And those (and there were many) using March options (especially financial sector derivatives) to hedge market risk saw this strategy go up in flames as well. Speculators that were long international markets against shorts in the U.S. were similarly crushed. And speculators hedging with short positions in agency, agency MBS, and many other fixed-income derivative indices quickly found themselves on the wrong side of hasty developments. Surely, policymakers were keen to mete out some punishment on the increasingly destabilizing “systemic risk trade” (shorting stocks, bonds, Credit derivative indices, buying bearish derivative products, etc.), but the upshot was only further destabilization. News that the GSEs were Back in the Game in a Big Way added to an already highly unsettled situation for myriad sophisticated trading strategies. But before getting too excited about the spectacular short-squeeze, keep in mind that shorting has become an instrumental facet of leveraged speculator trading strategies – and, really, “contemporary finance” more broadly speaking. And the disintegration of an ever increasing number of hedge fund and Wall Street strategies, as I’ve written previously, remains at the Heart of Deepening Monetary Disorder. Not surprisingly, the Fed could not risk a Bear Stearns failure - not with all of its derivative, “repo” and counterparty exposures. It really was not a difficult fix. Yet the rapidly lengthening line of vulnerable non-bank lenders (Thornburg, CIT Group, and Rescap come immediately to mind) and hedge funds will pose a greater challenge. There are some very substantial balance sheets at risk and significantly more “de-leveraging” in the offing - and the big banks will have no appetite. The S&P500 is down a modest 7% from the much changed financial and economic world of one year ago. While having little impact on the Unfolding Credit Crisis (or home prices), policymakers have thus far largely succeeded in sustaining inflated U.S. stock prices. But, in reality, the profound deterioration in the U.S. and global Credit backdrop has greatly altered prospects for the vast majority of companies, industries, and the U.S. and global economies more generally. Despite any number of policy actions and all the good intentions imaginable, there is absolutely no way that the U.S financial system will now be capable of sustaining either the (pre-bust) quantity of Credit or the uniform flow of finance that levitated Bubble Economy asset prices, household incomes, corporate cash-flows, “investment” spending or consumption. Huge sections of the Credit infrastructures (notably throughout Wall Street-backed finance) are inoperable and disCredited. Prominent Monetary Processes have been broken and the resulting Flow of Finance radically revamped. Prospective Credit and financial flows will prove insufficient for scores of companies, as well as for state and local governments and various entities all along the economic food chain. Enormous numbers of business downsizings and failures – many by companies that thrived during the Bubble Era – will lead to huge losses of jobs and incomes (many at the “upper end” where the greatest excesses transpired). I simply see no way around it – Nationalization of U.S. mortgages notwithstanding. It is fundamental to my analytical framework that efforts to subvert the Unavoidable Adjustment Process only extend the misallocation of finance and real resources, while adding greatly to the future burden of the financial institutions today aggressively intermediating very risky pre-adjustment Credit (certainly including the banking system and GSEs). And I certainly don’t believe this week’s rally in the dollar should be viewed as a vote of confidence for the direction of U.S. policymaking. Nationalization will prove a further blow to already fragile confidence