Monthly Archives: November 2009

IEA oil consumption forecast

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A modest rise in consumption for next year means the Saudis/OPEC remain firmly in control of price.

Global oil consumption is likely to average 86.1 million barrels a day in 2010, the IEA said in an Oct. 9 monthly report, raising next year’s forecast for a third consecutive month. The agency expects demand of 84.6 million barrels a day this year. The IEA’s next monthly report will be issued on Nov. 12.

It will be up to members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to satisfy the bulk of the world’s increasing need for oil as conventional production in countries outside the group peaks next year, the IEA said.

“Most of the increase in output would need to come from OPEC countries, which hold the bulk of remaining recoverable conventional oil resources,” the agency said in the report.


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China to Re-Export Copper as Stockpiles Mount, Xi’an Maike Says

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Interesting turn of events.

China to Re-Export Copper as Stockpiles Mount, Xi’an Maike Says

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — China, the top copper user, holds as much as 350,000 metric tons in duty-free warehouses and the metal may be re-exported as supplies outpace demand, according to Xi’an Maike MetalInternational Group.

“We can hardly find buyers for refined copper,” said Luo Shengzhang, general manager of the copper department at Xi’an Maike. The
company ranks among the country’s three biggest importers, according to the executive. “China’s got to export some copper from now and next year,” Luo said in an interview.

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Copper, used in pipes and wires, has more than doubled in London this year as China’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus spending,
increased state stockpiling and a lack of scrap material boosted imports to a record. That’s helped to drive Chinese prices below London’s sinceat least July.

Xi’an Maike has had to re-route some bonded copper to London Metal Exchange warehouses in South Korea because the company was unable to find buyers in China, said Luo, who spoke yesterday in Shanghai. The effect of the stimulus package was wearing off and local scrap supply was improving, he said.

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Luo’s estimate of the bonded-zone stockpiles compares with 60,000 tons by Macquarie Group Ltd.  in July. It’s also more than triple the
inventory in Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses, which stood at 104,275 tons as of the week of Nov. 2. A bonded zone holds imported goods before duty has been paid.

                     Copper’s Rally

Three-month copper in London traded today at $6,548 a ton compared with $3,070 at the end of last year. Futures in Shanghai have also more than doubled this year to a high of 51,580 yuan ($7,554) a ton today.

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Still, buying the metal from overseas to sell in the Chinese market has not been profitable since at least July, according to Bloomberg
calculations. Prices in Shanghai were more than 1,300 yuan a ton lower than London yesterday, after accounting for China’s 17 percent value
added tax.

In addition to the bonded-zone stockpiles, China may also hold 150,000 tons in the Shanghai area, including in exchange- monitored
warehouses; 235,000 tons at the State Reserve Bureau, which maintains government holdings; and 200,000 tons with fabricators and private
investors, Luo said.

Refined-copper exports by China were 10,705 tons in September, 70 percent more than a month ago and the highest this year, according to data by the Beijing-based customs office. Refined-copper imports in the first nine months were 2.58 million tons, 165 percent more than a year ago.

Xi’an Maike’s inbound shipments of refined copper may total about 400,000 tons this year, ranking among the top three importers by volume, according to Luo. The country’s imports of refined copper may halve to 1.6 million tons in 2010 from an estimated 3 million tons this year, he said.


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German October Consumer Prices Unexpectedly Decline

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Headlines all negative today.  

Soft prices indicate soft demand.

Weakness and calls for deficit cuts heightens stresses on vulnerable national govt finances.

The eurozone remains the one part of the world with systemic risk built into its institutional structure.  

Highlights:
German October Consumer Prices Unexpectedly Decline
German Investor Confidence Drops in November on Weaker Outlook
Germany to Observe EU Call for Deficit Cuts, Schaeuble Says
French Economic Recovery Probably Strengthened in Third Quarter
Italian Industrial Output Fell More Than Forecast in September
EU to Give Spain Extra Year to Trim Budget Deficit, ABC Reports


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China hopes U.S. keeps deficit to appropriate size

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Translation:  China threatens to liquidate it’s dollars to keep the dollar weak so China can peg to it and increase global exports??? 

China hopes U.S. keeps deficit to appropriate size

(Reuters) – China hopes that the United States will keep its deficit to an appropriate size to ensure basic stability in the U.S. dollar exchange rate, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Sunday.

“We have seen some signs of recovery in the U.S. economy … I hope that as the largest economy in the world and an issuing country of a major reserve currency, the United States will effectively discharge its responsibilities,” Wen told a news conference in Egypt.

“Most importantly, we hope the United States will keep an appropriate size to its deficit so that there will be basic stability in the exchange rate, and that is conducive to stability and the recovery of the global economy,” he added.

The premier had expressed concern in March that massive U.S. deficit spending and near-zero interest rates would erode the value of China’s huge U.S. bond holdings.

China is the biggest holder of U.S. government debt and has invested an estimated 70 percent of its more than $2 trillion stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, the world’s largest, in dollar assets.

“I follow very closely Chinese holdings of U.S. assets because that constitutes a very important part of our national wealth. Our consistent principle when it comes to foreign exchange reserves is to ensure the safety, liquidity and good value of the reserves,” Wen said.


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Goldman disclosure controversy

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Looks like it all comes down to whether Goldman violated the law by not disclosing what it was obligated to disclose.

There is no question the institutional structure that leads to this type of activity is flawed in that it doesn’t work for public purpose.
In fact, large elements of the financial sector do not serve public purpose.

Much of the financial sector is set up, by law to function as a casino, where each bet necessarily has a long and a short, presumably towards so further public purpose to allow public/private partnerships including banks, pension funds, and insurance companies to participate.

Unfortunately it’s never discussed at this fundamental level in the public debate, which is one of the reasons I’m running for President- to bring that debate back to public purpose- the fundamental behind government and the institutional structure:

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash

By Greg Gordon

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.


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Payrolls

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Karim writes:

Apart from net revisions, this employment report pretty much stinks:

  • Jobs -190k
  • UE rate from 9.8% to 10.2%; ‘Total’ unemployment rate from 17% to 17.5%
  • Hours down 0.2%
  • Difffusion index down from 37.5 to 33.8
  • Median duration of unemployment up 1.4 weeks to 18.7
  • Manufacturing jobs -45k to -61k (so much for ISM employment index as a leader)
  • Retail and construction still soft; modest improvement in temp jobs and education


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renting foreclosed houses to former owners

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I proposed this when the crisis first hit. Too late for millions of people in thousands of neighborhoods:

“Fannie Mae, the country’s largest mortgage holder, announced today that it is adopting a version of a “right to rent” policy under which foreclosed homeowners will be allowed to stay in their home paying the market rent. Under Fannie Mae’s Deed for Lease Program, foreclosed homeowners will be offered a lease of up to one year, in exchange for turning over the deed to their home. The lease will be at the prevailing market rent.”


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productivity up 9.5%

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Lower labor costs for the same sales (top lines were relatively flat) mean revenue is being shifted from compensation to profits, which carry a much lower propensity to consume than wages.

This reduces aggregate demand, which is a good thing, as it means, for example, we can cut taxes to sustain incomes, sales, output, and employment.

Unfortunately, our leaders don’t understand the monetary system and take no constructive action in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ while the main stream forecasts project unemployment to linger around the 10% level for an extended period of time:

The Labor Department said non-farm productivity surged at a 9.5 percent annual rate, the quickest pace since the third quarter of 2003. Productivity grew at a 6.9 percent pace in the April-June period.

Hours worked fell at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter, the Labor Department said. Unit labor costs, a gauge of inflation and profit pressures closely watched by the Federal Reserve, fell 5.2 percent after declining 6.1 percent in the second quarter. Analysts had expected unit labor costs to fall 4 percent in the third quarter. Compensation per hour rose at a 3.8 percent pace and, adjusted for inflation, was up 0.2 percent.

Compared with the July-September quarter of 2008, non-farm productivity rose at a 4.3 percent rate. Unit labor costs fell 3.6 percent year-on-year.


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Goodhart on narrow banking

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He’s correct in a world that doesn’t know how to use fiscal adjustments to sustain demand.

If we had had a full payroll tax holiday and per capita revenue sharing for the states introduced immediately after the real economy started experiencing the drop in demand associated with the Lehman failure and the Masters commodity liquidation, and all along had fed funded $8/hr jobs for anyone willing and able to work, the real economy would likely not have sustained anywhere near the damage it did. Unemployment may have risen a percent or so, and the economy would have quickly recovered.

And no one outside of investors caught with bad investments would have much cared about the financial crisis.

As long as the real economy is sustained, any financial crisis is far less of a concern- 1987, 1998, Enron, etc.

Narrow banking is not the answer

By Charles Goodhart

The proponents of narrow banking focus, almost entirely, on the liability side of banks’ balance sheets, and their concern relates to the need to protect retail depositors and the payments system. While this concern is entirely valid, it has been notable in the recent crisis that virtually no retail depositors lost anything, and the payment systems continued at all times to work perfectly. The crisis was not much about that, and policies served to protect these key elements satisfactorily.

The key problem that developed, and to some large extent remains, is that the fragility was experienced in the availability of credit to the real economy, companies and households. The modern economy cannot do without credit, and the need to maintain credit flows has been uppermost in the minds of the authorities.

Credit can be replace by income, and with income restored and sustained, credit quickly follows. Unfortunately, modern governments lack the understanding of their monetary systems to adjust incomes through counter cyclical fiscal policy.

The narrow banking proposal would shift virtually all such credit flows out of narrow banking into those parts of the financial system outside the narrow banking boundary, because the narrow banks would be required to invest in safe assets. So had a narrow banking system been in place, the crisis would have been even worse, with a virtually complete cessation of credit flows to the real economy.

Banks are public private partnerships implemented presumably to serve public purpose

‘Narrow banking’ can include bank lending for home mortgages, automobiles, credit cards, and any other assets deemed to suit public purpose to help isolate those sectors from lender related issues.


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