Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pain Trade, Treasury Bears, Margin Calls
Obama's Lame Response to Ebola; No Protocols but Lots of Fearmongering; Where's the Common Sense?
21-Point Plunge in Empire State manufacturing Index, New Orders Contract; Future Expectations Remain in Stratosphere
Post-Foreclosure Hell: Garnished Wages, Seized Assets, Deficiency Judgments

Pain Trade, Treasury Bears, Margin Calls

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:38 PM PDT

I have been warning US treasury bears for quite some time, but I now wonder if we have seen a bit of short-term capitulation.

Before discussing further, let's first look at a Mish Mailbag.

Reader Rob writes ...

Hi Mish

I was thinking that margin calls would be made after today and could pull the market down further by Friday. Do you think margin calls would be made to any degree yet?

Also your article Stock Buybacks Peaked With Stock Market in 2007: History About to Repeat? would be a great post on Business Insider.

Thanks, Rob

Bond Market vs. Equities

Generally I stay away from short-term prognosis. As for equities, all I can offer is general advice: Huge plunges do not happen in overbought conditions, but rather oversold conditions.

Even so, the tendency is to bounce not plunge. Are equity dip buyers about to give up? I don't know, but nor does anyone else (but when it happens the plunge is likely to be spectacular).

To me the bond market is far more interesting. I am on record as a treasury bull in belief the US economy is far weaker than most think. My position changes from time to time, and perhaps yields are at a short-term bottom.

A few charts may help explain.

$TYX 30-Year Treasuries

From top to bottom yield on the 30-year treasury went from 2.935% to 2.677%, a swing of 25.8 basis points. That's an enormous move.

$TNX 10-Year Treasuries

From top to bottom yield on the 10-year treasury went from 2.169% to 1.868%, a swing of 30.1 basis points. That's an even bigger move.

In both cases, yields traded well off the lows.

While the same can be said in equities, I have a lot more faith in the bond market (despite Fed manipulations).

Simply put, the bond market does not believe the recovery story and neither do I.

Pain Trade

Blooberg reports Biggest Pain Trade Gives 37% Loss to Bond Bears Getting It Wrong.

What a dismal time for bond traders who were optimistic about growth.

Investors who poured more than $1 billion this year into a $3.8 billion leveraged exchange-traded fund that bets against long-dated U.S. Treasuries are suffering a 10.7 percent loss this month alone, Bloomberg data show. The fund is down 36.5 percent this year, a small window into the magnitude of pain in a market where many traders have been wagering debt prices would fall.

Treasuries have defied predictions across Wall Street for higher yields all year, and yesterday's move is sending bond bears into a tailspin. Yields on 10-year Treasuries fell the most since March 2009, trading below 2 percent for the first time since June 2013 as a decline in retail sales prompted traders to reduce wagers the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates next year.

The move is in part driven by traders covering their short bets, according to Jack Flaherty, an investment manager at GAM USA Inc. in New York.

Primary dealers had the biggest short position on benchmark government notes at the beginning of the month since June 2013. They had a net $20.7 billion wager against notes maturing in the seven-to-eleven year range in the week ended Oct. 1, Fed data show.

"We keep thinking we're getting capitulation trades, but clearly there's a lot more skeletons in the closet than we thought," Ira Jersey, an interest-rate strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) in New York, wrote in an e-mail. "We're also seeing more flight to quality buyers out of global asset classes that are considered 'riskier.'"

Economic News, Not Ebola

Bloomberg has the story right: There's a lot of hidden skeletons.

In contrast, CNN blamed the stock market decline on ebola. (See Obama's Lame Response to Ebola; No Protocols but Lots of Fearmongering; Where's the Common Sense?)

Where to Now

Where to from here? I found treasuries attractive at the beginning of the year, and I also mentioned them at a Casey Conference presentation I made in September.

Long-term treasuries are no longer the value now they were then, but that does not make them a short. Convince me a recovery is coming and the Fed will hike and I will change my tune.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Obama's Lame Response to Ebola; No Protocols but Lots of Fearmongering; Where's the Common Sense?

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 07:44 PM PDT

Ebola Fearmongering

I seldom watch TV. But today I am on the road and watched CNN from a restaurant. I did not have sound, but I did see captions.

CNN's headline story was ridiculous. CNN placed the blame for the intraday DOW plunge of 460 point on ebola.

There was no mention of the 21-Point Plunge in Empire State manufacturing Index. Nor was there any mention of weak consumer spending.

What about PEs in the stratosphere? No mention of course. (For discussion, please see Stock Buybacks Peaked With Stock Market in 2007: History About to Repeat?)

Instead, CNN assumed the DOW plunge was based on ebola.

Obama's Lame Response

Fear is in the air, and it's easy to assign blame. A few simple questions will help explain.

Is there a chance of spreading the disease by coughing or sneezing? Yes.
Would I want to sit on a plane next to someone who was in contact with an ebola patient? No, and neither would anyone else.
Would I want to sit on a plane next to someone from a country where ebola is viral? No, and neither would anyone else.

To stop the spread of the disease and the accompanying panic, I have a fourth question:

Why isn't there a flight ban on those from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (and every other country where there is a major outbreak)?

Instead, we take temperatures even though the incubation period is as long as three weeks.

To top it off, today we learn 2nd Texas Worker with Ebola Took Flight With Elevated Temperature, and the Center for Disease Control OK'd the flight.

New shortcomings emerged Wednesday in the nation's response to the Ebola virus after it was revealed that a second nurse was infected with Ebola at a hospital here and that she had traveled on a commercial flight the day before she showed symptoms of the disease.

The nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, 29, was on the medical team that cared for the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan after he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28 and put in isolation. Vinson should not have traveled on a commercial flight, federal health officials said, when she boarded Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Monday, en route from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth.

One official said Vinson had called federal health officials before boarding the plane to report having a slightly elevated temperature but was allowed to fly.

Second Texas Nurse with Ebola Transferred to Special Facility

The Guardian reports Second Texas Nurse with Ebola Transferred to Special Facility.

Concerns over US response intensify after reports say the nurse told the CDC that she had a fever but was still allowed to fly.The second nurse diagnosed with Ebola in Texas is to be transferred from Dallas to a special bio-containment unit in Atlanta, officials announced on Wednesday, as they acknowledged failings in the response to the arrival of the virus in the US.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also said that the 29-year-old nurse, Amber Vinson, flew on a commercial flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas with a low-grade temperature a day before she was diagnosed. While in Ohio, she also reportedly travelled from Cleveland to Akron.

Concerns about the US response to the crisis intensified on Wednesday night when it was reported that Vinson told the CDC that she had a slight fever before she boarded the flight but was not told to stay put.

Vinson is the second healthcare worker to have contracted Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, which treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who was the first patient in the US to be diagnosed with Ebola. Another nurse, 26-year-old Nina Pham, was diagnosed at the weekend. Both had cared for Duncan, who died in an isolation ward on 8 October.

The second infection called into question the Dallas hospital's ability to protect staff treating Ebola patients, and raised concerns about the quality of the initial response to Duncan's diagnosis by state and federal agencies.

Dr Tom Frieden, the CDC director, conceded on Wednesday that Vinson should not have been allowed to take the flights to Ohio. "We will, from this moment forward, ensure that no other individual who is being monitored for exposure undergoes travel in any way other than controlled movement," Frieden said.

According to Frieden, the two nurses who contracted Ebola in Dallas had "extensive" contact with Duncan in the days before he was diagnosed, when he was extremely ill, excreting large quantities of highly contagious body fluids.

Protocols? What Protocols?

"Were protocols breached? The nurses say there were no protocols," said National Nurses United Co-President Deborah Burger in a call with reporters Wednesday.

Is the US attempting to contain the disease or not?

In typical US fashion, no one can come up with proper protocols until after panic sets in.

Texas governor Rick Perry cut short a trip to Europe to deal with the ebola crisis in Texas, and President Obama cancelled a campaign trip to deal with the outbreak.

Where's the Common Sense?

In response to McCain Calls for Ground Troops in Syria and an Ebola Czar; Secret Friends a couple of people claimed I was overly downplaying the risk of ebola.

I plead not guilty. Before these latest incidents, I emailed there should be flight bans and procedures to stop the risk of spreading (and that was always my expectation).

What I did not see (but easily could have) was the totally inept response from this administration.

However, even Obama now realizes the situation is serious. He must, because he cancelled a campaign fundraiser. What can possibly be more serious than that?

So, rest assured, unless ebola quickly mutates, the odds of a massive outbreak in the US is extremely unlikely (provided of course common-sense protocols are finally adopted).

Will Common Sense Finally Prevail?

Well, not quite. I actually expect the underwhelming response so far will go overboard in the other direction by orders of magnitude.

Here's an easy prediction: This will culminate with a claim from Obama that he saved us all from ebola.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

21-Point Plunge in Empire State manufacturing Index, New Orders Contract; Future Expectations Remain in Stratosphere

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 08:38 AM PDT

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey (a diffusion index) hit a multiyear high last month, then promptly crashed this month.

Diffusion Index Problems

The first problem with diffusion indices is they do not distinguish between big companies and small companies.

The second problem is they record expansion or contraction in companies surveyed, but all expansions (and all contractions) are treated equally. Barely growing and wild growth are treated alike.

Nonetheless, let's take a peek inside the survey.

Survey Details

General business conditions (the overall index) fell twenty-one points to 6.2
New orders dropped nineteen points to -1.7
Shipments fell twenty-six points to 1.1
Unfilled orders rose 6 points but remains in negative territory at -4.55
Employment rose seven points to 10.2
The average workweek fell 4 points to -1.11
Prices paid fell thirteen points to 11.4, its lowest level in more than two years
Prices received fell eleven points to 6.8
Inventories rose 10 points to 2.27

General Business Conditions

Future Expectations Remain in Stratosphere

Curiously, and in spite of this month's swan dive, the index for future general business conditions remains in the stratosphere.

Future Index Components

Future general business conditions is a lofty 41.7 (down 5 points).
The future new orders index fell three points to 42.3
The future shipments index declined five points to 42.5.
The capital expenditures index climbed nine points to 21.6, its highest level in several months
The technology spending index rose to 15.9.

Are future expectations too lofty? I think so. Everyone is a believer at the top.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Post-Foreclosure Hell: Garnished Wages, Seized Assets, Deficiency Judgments

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 11:18 PM PDT

In 2009 and 2010 "Walking Away" was the rage. (skip the adds and scroll down to my list of articles).

Back then, I frequently cautioned Before Walking Away Consult An Attorney, advice repeated in nearly every reference to the practice.

Walking away without declaring bankruptcy, especially with a recourse mortgage was always a dangerous practice.

Moreover, law is complicated because rules vary from state to state, and non-recourse loans often became recourse loans if refinanced.

Post-Foreclosure Hell

Unfortunately, Post-Foreclosure Hell is the sorry result for those who did not consult an attorney.

Many thousands of Americans who lost their homes in the housing bust, but have since begun to rebuild their finances, are suddenly facing a new foreclosure nightmare: debt collectors are chasing them down for the money they still owe by freezing their bank accounts, garnishing their wages and seizing their assets.

By now, banks have usually sold the houses. But the proceeds of those sales were often not enough to cover the amount of the loan, plus penalties, legal bills and fees. The two big government-controlled housing finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as other mortgage players, are increasingly pressing borrowers to pay whatever they still owe on mortgages they defaulted on years ago.

Using a legal tool known as a "deficiency judgment," lenders can ensure that borrowers are haunted by these zombie-like debts for years, and sometimes decades, to come.

The most aggressive among the debt pursuers is Fannie Mae. Of the 595,128 foreclosures Fannie Mae was involved in – either through owning or guaranteeing the loans - from January 2010 through June 2012, it referred 293,134 to debt collectors for possible pursuit of deficiency judgments, according to a 2013 report by the Inspector General for the agency's regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

It is unclear how many of the loans that get sent to debt collectors actually get deficiency judgments, but the IG urged the FHFA to direct Fannie Mae, along with Freddie Mac, to pursue more of them from the people who could repay them.

The article notes that Florida is one of the more aggressive states in pursuing "deficiency judgments". For example ...

Bank teller Danell Huthsing broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of the concrete bungalow they shared in Jacksonville, Florida. Her name was on the mortgage even after she moved out, and when her boyfriend defaulted on the loan, her name was on the foreclosure papers, too.

On July 5, a process server showed up on her doorstep with a lawsuit demanding $91,000 for the portion of her mortgage that was still unpaid after the home was foreclosed and sold. If she loses, the debt collector that filed the suit can freeze her bank account, garnish up to 25 percent of her wages, and seize her paid-off 2005 Honda Accord.

I specifically spotlighted Florida in Before Walking Away Consult An Attorney.

But it's not just Florida.

Reuters reports "Once financial institutions secure a judgment, they can sometimes have years to collect on the claim. In Maryland, for example, they have as long as 36 years to chase people down for the debt. Financial institutions can charge post-judgment interest of an estimated 4.75 percent a year on the remaining balance until the statute of limitation runs out, which can drive people deeper into debt."

Hundreds of thousands of people will soon be in extremely hot water because they failed to seek advice from an attorney, advice which may have cost only a couple hundred dollars in 2009.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Economy News

15.10.14

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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