Afternoon Reading – December 14, 2010
FT.com Alphaville: The corroding core
Belgium has six months. The rest of the eurozone core has a problem.
Macro Man: Of Squeezes, Ratings Agencies, Lawyers and Haircuts
Whilst we are on the subject of taxing professions. How come the lawyers get off so lightly? Talk about a tax on efficiency, a tax on lawyers, if it decreased their activities and intervention, would actually be a tax that INCREASED efficiency. And if you thought Winston Churchill was talking about the RAF when he said “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, it’s more likely he had just received a lawyer’s bill.
The Big Picture: Fed Ownership of the U.S Treasury Curve
The Fed owns a high of 35 percent of the $60 BN of bonds maturing in 2011, and only 4.4 percent of $142 BN of 2040 bonds. It doesn’t take a MOTU to recognize the potential for massive POMO generated short squeezes on the long-end of the curve, which we have seen and, will not doubt, continue see during this age of quantitative easing.
The Big Picture: NFIB: Modest Improvement and Correlation du jour
The National Federation of Independent Business Index of Small Business Optimism rose 1.5 points in November rising to 93.2, the highest reading since December 2007, and the fourth consecutive monthly gain.
Unfortunately, even a reading of 93.2 is still recessionary territory.
The Big Picture: Where’s the Note? Leads BAC to Ding Credit Score
Let’s imagine the following scenario: You have a Jumbo mortgage with Bank of America. You are a good customer, do your banking with BofA, and you have never missed a payment. In fact, you always send your mortgage in on time.
But this fraudclosure mess has you curious. You wonder who actually holds your note, how many times its been sold, what MERS involvement is.