Canadians for Nobel Literature: Of course!  

Chile and Greece claim two Nobel laureates in Literature each.  Heaven has its ways. Things happen. 

Nonetheless, I have a problem appreciating the Nobel Academy's oversight of Canadian authors-French and English. That they missed the vote on Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence and Anne Hebert is polemical. All mastered the language and the novelty, body and mind of a literature and a nation.That they miss a vote on Canadian authors of the last two decades is becoming an optical bias not to say a reflection of mediocrity. Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro are outstanding in all jurisdictions. Margaret Laurence's work certainly quibbled with some of the best in Latin America; Atwood certainly quibbles with Doris Lessing. Michel Tremblay can  certainly quibble with recent Nobel playwrights. Canadian authors can certainly quibble with Morrison, Gordimer, Kertesz, Jelinek, Muller. Or are Canadians considered too local. 

We'll keep poets out.

Shall we live to see some demise of courage and intellectual honesty instead of mutual back rubs, and the projection of historical and colonial guilt from the Academy. Or are Canadian French Literature and Canadian English Literature considered  subsets of  French Literature and American Literature and English Literature. Or is the novel, not the short story, the paradigm for a Literature. Or is that the Nobel Academy considers Literatures of Witness, gender count and geographic allocation more critical as criteria for awards than excellence. 

On the other hand, the Academy did disregard the lifetime achievements of 'some such' as Hardy, Lawrence, Joyce, Musil, Lorca, Borges, Calvino. 

At least, let's give Kadare, if not a Canadian, recognition during this lifetime - like Next Year!

To all European Fiefs and Vassals: 

Beware if you breach the Limit: budget deficits cannot exceed 3% of GDP.

To foreign (?) sovereign currency issuers: Don't meddle! or else. 

Kingdom of Europe

Merkel-Sarkozy (random order :)
Date: 


Today's announcement foretells the coming of the Kingdom of Europe. One wonders who the terrible duo are and what legitimacy founds their pretension. Wonder! were the United States to voice such a position. European sovereign issuers or any sovereign issuer. Is this History or the loud boast that speaks the vacant mind...the boast of a florid vigor not their own! Now let's put your money where your mouth is- does the ECB-Draghi print money or not? Does it keep on lending and purchasing bonds?

The United States Secretary of the Treasury Geithner will certainly go back to Europe soon in order to ensure mutual understandings of the intent.

Heaven spare the democracies. Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village is worth the read.

Equity Markets: Thank Heaven for Central Bankers

November 30, 2011 will be a day to remember for many Bourse firms.

It's never a pleasant to be wrong. But it's always a pleasure to be wrong when you called the only viable option that would have made you wrong.

Finally the Central Banks convened to lower USD swap costs and consequently ease tensions within the Euro-Area. Acknowledging that the ECB (and IMF-chuckle for those that conceived that piece of gossip) could do little on their own without frustrating donors, Mr. Draghi understood the problematic and the challenge. Europe needed help from its friends: The Fed and its allies, and the Bank of China. One signaled monetary comfort; the other signaled monetary stimulus. In both cases,  the better bankers realized that a demand for the USD could get out of hand and leave an even more fragile Euro begging for crumbs at untenable rates. That setting without improvement on the Chinese economic front, global economies were in trouble.

The best part of the staging is that China is becoming a beach-head participant in the world's financial system. Mr. Xiao's next challenge is to convince his stakeholders that assisting in the European bailout is a necessary condition to not losing out on everything else, and exercise the appropriate actions. Slowly but surely, Chinese pragmatism is waving a wand that signals a change in political directions towards western rhetoric.The only other adjustment China has to make is a concession on the yuan.

The swap arrangements agreed to (who knows when) are effective December 5, 2011 and will extend for 15 months into 2013. Is there anyone that still thinks that Europe has no problem when its own banks show appetite only for USD. Is Europe out of the woods? Not necessarily. This morning, Mr. Cameron et al, are you listening, European unemployment is on a record rise with the exception of Germany, and that will reverse. Mrs Merkel will see a reversal within three months as less and less demand go her way, and more and more constraints are put on businesses.

Well, US President Obama, Fed Chair Bernanke and Secretary of the Treasury Geithner were there again and maybe someday, some inspired filmaker will find a decent moment to direct  real drama. Europe has been saved for a second time by the United States and its credible allies. Bank of China dropped its reserve requirements by 50 basis points in order to help trigger some activity on a slowing economy. This monetary easing was the first sign that November 30, 2011 was going to be a V-Day.

At this moment, there is little left that the Central Banks and Chair Bernanke can do on the monetary front. US Republicans should analyze their own pundits' results on job creation by President's Obama spending initiatives, and improve on the solutions by fine-tuning timing and sectoral interventions rather than dismiss the spending option. Most of all, they should stop battering the US Public Service. The constituents of that sector represent the most faithful spending segment of the consumer population.

Don't knock down the walls that hold back the oceans.

To the many, stay the course.

Mellow Yellow Monday; Black the Week

Today we'll experience a cover-the-shorts rally and from all indications, we might get a 200pt lift. That's the best this week will bring. By week's end, regardless of mixed signals from the US economy, the week's cumulative should be down by 250points. The USD will gain another notch, and European malaise will continue to batter the credibility of the Euro-Area. Best to short the Euro.

What can the IMF do? What are its sources of income? Should one chuckle. Not really; it's pathetic that most of the market forget that both the ECB and the IMF are recipients from donor sovereigns.

Not a week to enjoy!

Mr. Niall Ferguson: Stick to History

I just finished reading Mr. Niall Ferguson's prediction of Europe 2021. I usually enjoy Mr. Ferguson's ideas and his craftmanship. This time around, both were wanting; the article in the Wall Street Journal was soft on craft and poor on fantasy.  Maybe his projection in 2012 on 2022 will have cleared up some of the blind spots in his vision. We should all stick to Malachi, Mother Shipton, Nostradamus and Cayce. They're more entertaining.

Leave the Future's Foundations to Isaac Asimov

Black Monday? No. A BLACK WEEK!!

A regular reader to my favorite webpage FRB or Fictional Reserve Barking commented after a polemic that a squall is coming the likes of which we had never seen. The structure of that phrase clicked a neuron and plucked a memory chord. I'm still trying to figure out where I heard or saw it, and it keeps on slipping. This morning's opening on Wall Street affects in a like manner. Deja vu! but I can't remember when or where. Was I young or was it more recent? In any case, for the pundits that ponder their stats looking for a pattern, this time around there is no precedent from the regressions. It's the Mule breaking out the maths: the coeffcient of error that can't be contained systemically. There are only two players that can restrain the overflow, contain the explosion and both are trading partners, both have their own tensions and both are in search of an author.

One snickers listening to Mr. Cameron highlighting some punctual anomaly in the economic figures just released. It's unreal to finger out the semblance of sunlight amidst a hurricane. That's it, the phrase comes from Dune-the book and the movie!!! It's a variant in a dialogue when the Fremen note a 'wormsign'...

Well, Monday won't be Black, it'll be bleak. Losses will range between 250-325pts. Treasuries will gain and most commodities will fall. Gold, it should fall (except for those that see a backstop international standard on the horizon). Tuesday, some profit at the beginning of the day and then for another 'swerve...towards the bend of bay'. Wednesday figures will be mixed and by the end of this week, Wall Street will be flattening out with losses between 750-800 points, unless the FOMC minutes reveal some silver lining. There will be no Thanksgiving for most investors; there will be one for those holding CASH.

CASH is King!! and whether you like the sound or not, the USD is the only currency worth its logo. I guess there's something providential underscoring the dictum.

The Week will be Black!!!

Is the Euro-Area Collapsing?

Over the last week, there are three significant Euro-Area activity figures that merit the market's consideration.

September's Eurozone's industrial production dropped from a previous August +1.3% to -1.9%
September's construction production dropped from a previous months -0.4% to -1.3%;
New Industrial Orders for the four largest populated economies-Germany, France, Italy and Spain all dropped significantly to -4.4%, -6.2%.-9.2% and -5.3% respectively. For the reverent, the United Kingdom NIO's dropped to -1.9%.

Well, shuttered factories are not privy only to the UK; they seem to be the prospect of industrial Europe, especially if one considers that levels of capacity utilization in manufacturing is slipping everywhere with the exception of an anomalous month in United Kingdom.

Evidently, once investors realize that the longer term confidence required to justify purchasing Eurobond securities is not justified by output figures from the region's business sector, then even if your brand name is Germany, and even if the rating agencies mark you tops,  it won't help keep yields down. Germany is as susceptible to being dumped as is Italy and its next candidate France which witnessed its yields increase, and its yield gaps widen against the German counterparts. There is no Immune Boutique in this Shopping Mall. There isn't any vote of confidence for Germany; rather it signals that investor concern is becoming pandemic within the Euro-Area and no sovereign, especially a non-sovereign issuer, is immune. But the contagion on the financial front is not as great a deterrent in our opinion as the rapid weakening and dampening of economic activity within the area. Germany can certainly pull out, or welcome the unstable members' exit, but it can't deter the oncoming economic slowdown that will devastate its own regional economies.

The ECB is a lame-duck if Mr. Draghi continues to endorse without challenge its constitutional mandate. Signor Draghi deve sospendere 'Price Stability',  which is a moot predicament at the moment, and with the help from two oversea friends, act to stabilize the yield curves. The New Normal advocated by financial and portfolio managers should not be higher unemployment and softer growth, it should be lower Returns on Investment. The structural adjustment required by the global economy in order to survive the extending contagion of below-quality investments is to realign investor expectations in view of  de-stabilized and riskier investment scenarios.

Obviously, this goes contrary to the grain of conventional investment lore: the riskier the target, the higher the yield! Unfortunately, when available resources are numbered, and quality contaminated, there's not much choice. You buy into the mess,praying for a cure, or seek quarantined shelters. Are there any? You run to gold? Does anyone care? To SF, Yen or some other resource-constrained sovereign? Price those economies out of the market and over time, the original predicament only changed hands.

What is becoming clearer is that there are only a few viable Backstops in this Global economy, and the Classic is the United States Treasury, with a little help from a friend.

To the United States Treasuries-of course, and at most probably quasi-zeros, or cash the portfolio. If the latter is the soundest judgement  of the wise and enlightened investors, then why wait for the storm; shelter yourselves now.

How will the markets end? Not with a tumble but a crumble. The EU will fall apart unless Draghi and some confreres show their stuff...change the discourse from financial narratives about controlling deficits and imposing guarantees to a discourse with fiscal narratives about job creation, stabilizing growth engines and stimulating aggregate demand. Mr. Draghi will need support from Mr. Bernanke and gang. He knows it and the United States know it.