[Every year, friend-of-the-site David Collum writes a detailed "Year in Review" synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year's is no exception. Moreover, he has graciously selected PeakProsperity.com as the site where it will be published in full. It's quite longer than our usual posts, but worth the time to read in full. A downloadable pdf of the full article is available at the bottom of the post — cheers, Adam]

Background

I was just trying to figure it all out. ~ Michael Burry, hedge fund manager

Every December, I write a Year in Review that has now found a home at Chris Martenson’s website PeakProsperity.com.1,2,3 What started as a simple summary intended for a couple dozen people morphed over time into a much more detailed account that accrued over 25,000 clicks last year.4 'Year in Review' is a bit of a misnomer in that it is both a collage of what happened, plus a smattering of issues that are on my radar right now. As to why people care what an organic chemist thinks about investing, economics, monetary policy, and societal moods I can only offer a few thoughts.

For starters, in 33 years of investing with a decidedly undiversified portfolio, I had only one year in which my total wealth decreased in nominal dollars. For the 13 years beginning 01/01/00—the 13 toughest investing years of the new millennium!—I have been able to compound my personal wealth at an 11% annualized rate. This holds up well against the pros. I am also fairly good at distilling complexity down to simplicity and seem to be a congenital contrarian. I also have been a devout follower of Austrian business cycle theory—i.e., free market economics—since the late 1990s.4

Each review begins with a highly personalized analysis of my efforts to get through another year of investing followed by a more holistic overview of what is now a 33-year quest for a ramen-soup-free retirement. These details may be instructive for those interested in my approach to investing. The bulk of the review, however, describes thoughts and observations—the year’s events told as a narrative. The links are copious, albeit not comprehensive. Some are flagged with enthusiasm. Everything can be found here.5

I have tried to avoid themes covered amply in my previous reviews. There is no silver bullet, however, against global crises, credit bubbles, and feckless central bankers. Debt permeates all levels of society, demanding comment every year. Precious metals and natural resources are a personal favorite. This year was particularly distorted by the elections; I offer my opinions as to why. Sections on Baptists, Bankers, The Federal Reserve, and Bootleggers describe the players in Jack Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.6 Special attention is given to a financial crime diaspora fueled by globally overreaching monetary policies. Everything distills down to a relentlessly debated question: What is the role of government? I finish light with the year’s book list that shaped my thinking. I acknowledge individuals who have made pondering capitalism a blast through direct exchanges over the years. They brought wisdom; I brought the chips and dip. You already know who you are. And then there are those characters whose behavior is so erratic, sociopathic, criminal, or just plain inexplicable—you guys are central to the plot. I leapfrog Rome and Titanic metaphors and go straight to the Lusitania.

One last caveat: I subscribe to the Aristotelian notion that one can entertain ideas without necessarily endorsing them, often causing me to color way outside the lines. With trillions of dollars circumnavigating the globe daily, nefarious activities are not only possible but near certainties. If you are prone to denounce conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists to avoid unpleasant thoughts, you should stop reading now. I’m sure there’s another Black Something sale at Walmart. If you are a bull, you should also bail out or buckle up. This is the bear case. I will remain a permabear until some catharsis knocks me off my stance and they find a cure for my market- and politics-induced PTSD.

As this review was being completed, Lauren Lyster and Demetri Kofinas recently uploaded a companion interview on the Year in Review I did with Capital Accounts on RT_America (to be aired on December 21st and posted on Youtube.)7 In this context I offer wisdom from the Master:

If there is ever a medium to display your ignorance, television is it. ~ Jon Stewart

Footnote superscripts appear extensively throughout this review. The actual footnotes and associated hyperlinks can be found here.

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Investing

The elevated prices of financial assets have already eaten the future. ~ John Hussman, CEO of Hussman Funds

With rebalancing achieved only by directing my savings, I have changed almost nothing consequentially in my portfolio year over year. The total portfolio as of 12/15/12 is as follows:

Precious Metals et al.: 52% Energy: 15% Cash Equiv (short-term): 30% Other: 3%

Most asset classes lurched off the starting line in January like Lance Armstrong. My portfolio eventually settled down and spent most of the year snorkeling slightly up or slightly underwater. In a relatively rare instance, an overall return on investment (ROI) of 4% was beat handily by both the S&P 500 (13%) and Berkshire Hathaway (17%), although nearly the entire return of the S&P was p/e expansion.8 A majority of hedge funds struggled to beat the S&P this year as well.9

My precious metals are distributed in approximately three equal portions to the gold-silver holding company Central Fund of Canada (CEF), Fidelity’s precious metal fund (FSAGX), and physical metals (Figure 1). Gains in gold (17%) and silver (8%) were offset by a horrendously lagging performance for the second year in a row by the corresponding precious metal-based equities (-10%). The metal-equity divergence began in January 2011 and continues to baffle the hard-asset crowd (Figure 2). A plot of the ratio of the silver ETF (SLV) versus the world’s largest silver miner, Pan American Silver (PAAS), is striking (Figure 3). In May I emailed a dozen gurus for opinions about arbitraging (swapping) an SLV position for PAAS. Realizing that collectively these folks controlled billions of dollars, I felt I had to move on the idea pronto (my only portfolio change for the year). After a few weeks of an overwhelming sense of superiority, gyrations eventually left the arbitrage at about break-even. I’m guardedly optimistic about the precious-metal equities, but they have been widowmakers for two years.

Figure 1. Precious-metal-based indices (GLD in green, XAU in red, SLV in brown, and XAU in red) versus the S&P 500 (in blue) for 2012.

Figure 2. Relative performance of gold-based equities (XAU in red) vs. gold (GLD in blue).

Figure 3. SLV/PAAS ratio over three years.

A basket of Fidelity-based energy and materials funds afforded 2-16%. They are represented emblematically by the XLE spider (3%) and XNG Amex natural gas index (1%) in Figure 4. I am wildly bullish on natural gas for reasons discussed in detail two years ago.2 Unfortunately, Fidelity’s natural gas fund (FSNGX) foisted upon me by Cornell got crushed in 2009 and subsequent years relative to its peers. Making the right calls is hard enough without that kind of headwind. New management as of 2010 seems to be finally tracking the XNG. I keep adding to an already chunky position. Friends deeply embedded in the energy complex suggest that the fracking glut will take 2-3 years to burn off. (It is also claimed that the derivatives traders are whacking out the price discovery; what else is new?)10 A global shift toward natural gas should reward patience.

Figure 4. Energy-based indices (XLE in red and XNG in green) versus the S&P 500 (in blue) for 2011.

Cash was in a U.S. Treasury-backed money-market bunker returning 0%. I had a $25K money market fund that failed to reach the IRS taxable threshold! I could care less what risky gangplank Bernanke wishes that I walk. Buying ten-year Treasurys returning <2%, with or without your finger quivering over the sell command, is a fool’s game: I’ll take the yield hit. The bond market will eventually become a killing field. Those who are pair trading—long bonds/short brains—will get their organs harvested. This seems like a near certainty.

The most disappointing part of the year was a personal savings equivalent of only 11% of my gross income compared with 29% last year and 20-30% in typical years. Unusual expenses in the form of a year of college education, a serious violin upgrade, and very large landscaping costs don’t excuse the fact that we chose lower savings over lower consumption. This troubles me deeply. Profound austerity is not a cause but an effect, something the Europeans may be just now figuring out.

To understand my lifetime returns, you must understand two unusual premises that have dominated my thoughts and actions. First, you must become wedded to an investment. Did I just say that? Yep. You’ve got to be a true believer to resist being shaken out of good investments or suckered into bad ones. Many say it’s never a bad time to take a profit. Total hooey. Those ten-baggers—the miracles of compounding—will never materialize if you bail after 20%. Just ask the Microsoft investors who exited in 1990 for a handsome profit.

My second premise is that you have to get it right only about once a decade. One of my favorite bloggers and an e-pal, Grant Williams, illustrated how daisy-chaining four secular bull markets—Gold, Nikkei, NASDAQ, and Gold—could have produced a virtual return of 640,000%—a 6400-bagger (Figure 5).11 Admittedly, this kind of luck is only found in Narnia. Statistically, somebody might have done this, although not likely in such a Texas Hold’em all-in fashion.

Figure 5. Sequential investments in secular bull markets starting in 1970.11

My variant of such a sequential trek via imbalanced portfolios changed in decadal rhythms as follows:

1980-88: exclusively bonds (100%)

1988-99: classic 60:40 equities:bonds

1999-2001: cash, precious metals, shorts (minor)

2001-2012: cash, precious metals, energy, tobacco (minor)

My total wealth accumulated through a combination of savings and investment as shown in Figure 6. (I redacted the dollar amounts along the y-axis.) Avoiding 1987 and 2000 equity crashes and capturing the bull market in precious metals proved fortuitous. You can see that 2008 was the only down year. Berkshire has dropped five years since 1991. A 13-year accumulation rate beginning 01/01/00 of 11% annualized compares favorably to an annualized return on the S&P of -0.03% and on Berkshire of 7%.

Figure 6. Total wealth accumulated (ex-housing) versus year of employment. Absolute dollar values have been omitted.

I also monitor overall progress by what I call a salary multiple, which is defined as the total accumulated investable wealth (excluding my house) divided by annual salary (line 22 of the 1099 form excluding capital gains). Over 33 years my salary (actually total income) rose twelve-fold, which I can fairly accurately dissect into a fourfold gain resulting from inflation and a threefold gain (relative to starting salaries of newly minted assistant professors) due to increasing sources of income and merit-based pay raises. My accumulated wealth normalized to the moving benchmark of a rising income is plotted versus time in Figure 7. The fluctuations visible in Figure 7 not apparent in Figure 6 result from income variations.

Figure 7. Total wealth accumulated measured as a multiple of annual salary versus years of investing.

To clarify the origins of a 13-year return of 11% per year I offer Figure 8. By plunging into the precious-metal and energy sector early and avoiding all other forms of investments (S&P in particular), I was able to capture the entire hard-asset bull market. According to Money magazine’s calculator,12 I can spike the ball in the endzone and dance. They are wrong. My ultimate target—a valid target—is to accumulate 20 salary equivalents over the next 12 years (age 70). This will require an inflation-adjusted (real) annual growth of 4-5%. Some of that will come from savings. As you can tell by the Hussman quote and discussions below, however, such gains are not assured.

Figure 8. Plot of Central Fund of Canada (CEF; 1:1 gold:silver by value), XLE, and S&P.

Thinking About Capitalism

When the blind lead the blind get out of the way. ~ First grader

I realize that is what I do—I think about capitalism. It’s not deep stuff; more like taking a weed whacker to a hay field of information. This year, however, there was something askew—something corrupting the information flow. It was the presidential elections. This is a good starting point.

Election Year

No serious person would question the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These numbers are put together by career employees. ~ Alan Krueger, White House Council of Economic Advisers

To a news and economic data junkie, presidential elections are profoundly distorting. The news feeds are inundated by election analyses that are mundane at best and nauseating on a bad day. It’s a variant of Gresham’s Law—bad information pushes out good. The pundits are either talking about the elections explicitly or couching potentially credible news stories in the context of the election. Terrorist attacks in Benghazi mutate into Obama’s Big Screw Up. The news feeds are further corrupted by billions of campaign dollars spent to deceive us. Frank Rich, award-winning New York Times journalist, estimates that George Bush had 120 “journalists” on payroll. They get overtime and hazard pay during elections. The shenanigans go deeper.

There have been numerous accusations of voter fraud. From my recollection, it was mostly the left accusing the right (the CEO of Diebold in particular). A window opened when the mischievous computer hackers, Anonymous, did a smash-and-grab on Stratfor’s server, obtaining over 5 million emails. Stratfor provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marines, and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. From 971 emails released to date (by Wikileaks), we find that Democrats stuffed the ballot boxes in Pennsylvania in 2008 that went unchallenged by McCain. Jesse Jackson shook down Obama for a six-digit payoff.13 Emails detailing the Bin Laden capture are worth a peek.

The most insidious election year distortion may be the tainting of economic data feeds that the marketplace relies on. Data coming from career statisticians in the federal government are always suspect. The inflation numbers, for example, are widely believed to be cooked beyond recognition using corrections recommended by the Boskin Commission.14,15 This year, however, the data massaging morphed into an all-out rub ‘n’ tug to ensure a happy ending for the Democrats.

The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are especially susceptible to corruption. The Birth-Death Model, for example, estimates new jobs being created that nobody can detect.16 Apparently, the absence of data demands that some get fabricated. These embryonic jobs have reached epidemic proportions—hundreds of thousands per month—oftentimes overwhelming the detectable jobs. Curiously, no administration ever fabricates undetectable job losses.

Another trick is a very simple iterative process for reporting statistics: Step 1—Announce inflated economic statistics as good news; Step 2—correct the inflated statistics at some later date to a very deflated number, hope nobody notices, and call it “old news anyway”; Step 3—Report new inflated numbers that are spectacular improvements relative to the recently deflated statistics. Rinse, lather, repeat.17

The fibbing gets serious during an election year. When pre-election unemployment numbers plummeted by 0.4%—a monumental drop—the response was immediate, visceral, and seemingly uncontestable disbelief. David Rosenberg expressed it well:

I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I don't believe in today's jobs report either. ~ David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff and ex-Merrill Lynch

Well, Rosie, apparently you do believe in conspiracy theories. Within minutes of the report Jack Welch, no neophyte to creative bookkeeping, released his now-infamous Tweet:

Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything… can't debate so change numbers. ~ Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric

It was an election year, however, so the goofy employment numbers morphed into a hot-button issue. Right-wing pundits accused the Obama administration of cooking the books. Left-wing pundits fired back with the shrill accusation, “Conspiracy theorists!” Few remembered that the GOP accused the Democrats of cooking the same numbers back in 2003.18

The whole sordid affair took a strange turn when Zero Hedge noted an odd mathematical relationship between the two carefully measured employment statistics:

Measured employment numbers: fully employed/partially employed = 873,000/582,000 = 1.5000…

Gosh. What are the odds that those numbers were actually measured? I would say about 2.000…%.19

Counting those who no longer receive unemployment benefits as no longer unemployed, an accounting gimmick that became chronic once the crisis began, by no means was invented by Team Obama. None of this is new. LBJ was rumored to send economic statistics back to the kitchen for more cooking. The U-6 unemployment numbers account for that mechanical engineer who is now a part-time “deposit bottle recycling engineer and firewood procurement officer.” U-6 is a more accurate measure of the employment stress and is staying persistently above 14%.20

Election year pandering may contribute to a very odd stock cycle.21,22 If you break the 20th and 21st century into 27 four-year fragments corresponding to the election cycle—2009-2012 being the most recent—and average the returns, you get what is called the Presidential Election Cycle (Figure 9). What causes this cycle? One cannot exclude the role of friendly central bankers (sado-monetarists) juicing the markets. Mitt Romney, when he promised to fire Bernanke, may have sealed his fate.

Figure 9. Four-year election stock cycle throughout the 20th century.21

Maybe the four-year cycle in Figure 9 is a statistical anomaly and, even if real, we may not have a clue why it occurs. Nevertheless, it suggests that “Sell in May and go away” has a longer wavelength variant: “Buy the midterm and sell the Presidential.” Urban legend or not, 2013 is looking dangerous.

Events

Dan, quit embarrassing yourself. ~ Caroline Baum of Bloomberg Tweeting to a money guru who claimed that Hurricane Sandy will be stimulative

Acts of God—force majeure—tantalize market watchers and sophists alike but seem to have little effect on even the intermediate term: Economies and markets just keep marching forward. Katrina took its toll and irreparably altered lives, but it primarily illustrated government doing a heckuva job. Hurricane Sandy also exacted revenge against the civilized world (and New Jersey). It may portend things to come, should global warming live up to its billing. There is no doubt that corporations will use Sandy as an excuse for anything and everything. Q4 and year-end reports will have more Sandy-derived debris (including kitchen sinks) than dumpsters along the Jersey shore. Sandy also ushered in like clockwork the absurd claims that Frédéric Bastiat was wrong and that smashing windows and destroying infrastructure is good for the economy. Sandy will increase the GDP, but that is not economic gain. Sandy will be a bump in the road for the nation at large.

As I write this paragraph, cremnophobia—fear of cliffs—is sweeping the land. I submit that base-jumping the Fiscal Cliff may be exciting but doubt it will be some proximate trigger that causes cascading failure. The move to substantially greater austerity seems inevitable and likely to be painfully protracted—think Japan. The Fiscal Cliff would be a fumble on our own ten-yard line. It is just one down in a very, very long game. Regardless of outcome, this will be a topic for my 2013 Year in Review.

Broken Markets

A strange game. The only winning move is to not play. ~ The W.O.P.R. computer on “Wargames”

Since Cro-Magnon Man began trading flint, furs, and women, there have been nefarious activities in the marketplace. Painting the tape—moving markets at the end of a quarter to dupe customers—is tolerated. The pop icon Jim Cramer spilled his guts describing how players of even modest means can push prices around.23 I bet Jim would like a do-over on that video. Options expiration week is always exciting, as the options dealers purportedly move the equities to minimize payouts on the heavily leveraged options to maximize pain on the plebeians. Insider trading is a death sentence for a nobody, but is a misdemeanor for the big bankers. When caught, the going rate on the punishment of investment banks is a 3-5% surcharge on the profit from the illicit trade. One can only imagine how much it would cost us in punitive rebates if the criminal behavior caused a loss.

In general, however, blaming markets for your losses is a fool's game. Nonetheless, something has changed. The Federal Reserve—the Fed—has explicitly stated a vested interest in both the magnitude and direction that markets move, abandoning all willingness to let markets determine prices. These guys are playing God, taking full possession of our hopes and dreams. In analogy to global warming, their loose monetary policy jacks up prices with markedly increased volatility and enormous social costs. Kevin Phillips’ 2005 American Theocracy is a brilliant account of the demise of Western empires. He notes that the final death rattle is the financialization of the economy. When moving money becomes the primary economic activity, the end is near. Let’s look at some of the symptoms.

The high frequency traders (HFTs a.k.a. “algos” or cheetah traders) have really upped their game. The title of this section stems from Sal Arnuk’s and Joe Saluzzi’s book Broken Markets, which describes the seedy world of supercomputers skimming enormous profits. It is consensus that HFT’s are profitable for the trading platforms but of little merit otherwise. They gum up the system intentionally to garner advantage and dump millions of fake quotes to be cancelled within milliseconds.24 None of this is legal, but all is tolerated. They are now trading for razor-thin profit margins of as little as $0.00001 skim per share but making it up on volume—dangerously large volume. One Berkshire Hathaway trade—a $120,000 per share stock—is rumored to have netted $10 total (0.8 cents per share).25

The markets are now at great risk. We should not expect that profiteers benefit society. We can demand that they don’t bring the entire system to its knees. I got my ten seconds of fame in an article describing the consequences of the legendary Flash Crash on May 6th, 2010:26

Wall Street is a crime syndicate, and I am not speaking metaphorically… The banking system is oligarchic and the political system has metastasized into state capitalism. The most important market in the world—the market in which lenders and borrowers meet to haggle over the cost of capital—is the most manipulated market in the world. ~ David Collum, WSJ

Flash crashes are now daily occurrences, as thoroughly documented by market research firm Nanex, and are not restricted to any one market. India tanked 15% in a few minutes.27 The precious metals appear to be a favorite playground: “At 1:22 p.m. SLV was forced down by rapid-fire machine-generated quotes—more than 75,000 per second.”28 Berkshire Hathaway—Berkshire Hathaway!—dropped from $120,000 a share to $1 for a few milliseconds.29 Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Bart Chilton says that the “third largest trader by volume at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is one of these cheetah traders in Prague."30 (Bart appears to be a supporter of clean markets, though I remain distrustful.) On August 1st, 150 stocks swung wildly. In a heavy dose of irony, the wildest—a 40% swing—was a company called Bunge.31 The monstrous oil market flash crashed when a 50-fold spike in trade volume hit the tape.32 Some fear a flash crash in the unimaginably large U.S. Treasury market.33

Irony reached a fevered pitch when BATS Global Markets (BATS), the third largest trading platform behind NYSE and NASDAQ, listed their own IPO.34 Their primary customers—the cheetah traders—drove the share price from $16 to 1 cent in 900 milliseconds, forcing the cancellation of the IPO. Knight Trading, while beta-testing their own HFT algo, released it to the wild. While the traders snarfed down celebratory mochaccinos, a pesky sign error caused the HFT algo to buy high-sell low for a very long 45 minutes.35 One of the most respected trading firms in the business was shopping itself to potential buyers within 24 hours. The standard excuse for erratic market behavior—Disney-like “fat-fingered traders” hitting the wrong key on a trade—became comical alibis for deep-seated structural flaws in the markets.

We have a huge problem. Don’t take my word for it. Let’s listen to what some of the pros have to say:

All this trading creates nothing, creates no value, in fact, subtracts from value. ~ John Bogle, inventor of the index fund

Essentially, the for-profit exchanges are approving their own rule changes. The lunatics are now running the asylum. ~ Joe Saluzzi, cofounder of Themis Trading

High-speed trading, if we may get our two cents in, is a dubious activity to label as a technological advance. ~ Alan Abelson, Former Editor of Barrons

Not all IPOs flash-crashed; some simply beat investors like rented mules using more traditional methods. I had an entertaining Twitter exchange with Sal Arnuk, cofounder of Themis Trading and coauthor of Broken Markets, on May 18th just hours before the now-infamous Facebook IPO:

David Collum: @nanexllc @joesaluzzi @themisSal A Facebook flashcrash to $0.01 would be fun and educational for the whole family. Sal Arnuk: @DavidBCollum doubt that….prepping for weeks

The rest is history. Facebook didn’t flash crash, but weeks of prepping were inadequate. Facebook crashed the NASDAQ market for 17 very long seconds, which is a lifetime when measured in algo years.36 The high-profile Facebook IPO—technically a secondary offering—managed to maximize Facebook’s capital by selling shares into the market near its all-time high. Underwriter Morgan Stanley took a beating (possibly billions) defending the opening price of $38 before watching it drop, eventually reaching the teens. Isn’t “defending shares” illegal? While Morgan Stanley was getting hammered, the other underwriters, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, were loaning shares into the market for shorting.37 Despite a huge outcry from those hoping for an IPO opening day bounce, I found this all highly entertaining and a good lesson in risk management. Investors hoping for easy money discovered that IPO stands for “it’s probably overpriced.” Facebook also spawned a cottage industry of Mad Libs (Fraudbook, Faceplant, Farcebook…)

A lesser known IPO failure causing a stir was Ruckus (RKUS), dropping 20% on the opening and blaming it on Hurricane Sandy.38 Splunk’s (SPLK) IPO was halted after it hovered at $32 and then plummeted to $17 on a 500-share trade.39 They eventually dropped 30% in an orderly slide. IPOs from the not-so-distant past that continue to inflict pain include post-IPO losses for ZYNGA (-80%), Groupon (-90%), and Pandora (-60%). Investment-grade Beanie Babies and CPDOs sound good by comparison.

The markets are broken. It’s only a matter of time before the vernacular phrases FUBAR and SNAFU will reassert into our language. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge as a metaphor for instability has been around the web for years, but is well worth a peek.40

Precious Metals

They (gold investors) want everybody to be so scared they run to a cave with gold. Caves might be a better investment than gold. At least they’re not producing new caves all the time. ~ Warren Buffett

Those elements here and abroad who are getting rich from the continued American inflation will oppose a return to sound money. ~ Howard Buffett

Let’s stay on the theme of broken markets as a transition into a discussion of precious metals. Bill Murphy and the folks at the Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) obsess over powerful and dark forces. Declassified documents showing overt attempts to restrain the price of gold provide a few smoking guns.41,42,43,44 The Hunt brothers grotesquely misjudged the silver market and willingness of bankers to trigger margin calls and drive them to bankruptcy.45

By the early 2000s even novice market watchers could see that central bank selling into the open market could have price suppression as a motive. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown participated in the most famous market timing fiasco by emptying much of Britain’s gold stash below $300 per ounce.46 That got him promoted to Prime Minister.

Then there is the very strange phenomenon of central bank leasing of gold. I surmise that the idea was presented to the populace as a way to make money from the shiny yellow metal that just sits there in vaults. Why not lease it? The gold carry trade commenced, but lease rates are fractions of a percent per annum.47 No profit motive there. Central bank leasing of gold to the large bullion banks—the Too Big to Fail group—at a fraction of a percent interest seems to serve two purposes: (1) provide essentially free capital to the banks, and (2) apply downward pressure on the gold price. Rumor has it they are going to stop publishing the leasing rates.

The game began to falter in 2001 when neither the announcement of British bullion sales nor the actual sales dropped the price, commencing a decade-long run in the metals. That is not to say the central banks have given up. Sudden and repeated margin hikes at the COMEX trapped the levered longs, and affiliated mob-like hits by insiders became commonplace. A rumored huge silver short position by JP Morgan-Chase (JPM) may lurk beneath the London Whale saga. JPM’s commodity guru, Blythe Masters, began denying the silver short as the whale story started to surface, claiming that JPM’s silver positions were simply hedges for their customers.48 Why would silver bulls hedge their investments? Data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency brought to light by Rob Kirby eventually showed that JPM has a whopping $18 billion naked short position in silver,49,50 corresponding to 50% of the estimated global above-ground silver supply.51 Is it any wonder that silver gets “monkey hammered” with some regularity by the invisible hand? Naked shorting on such a scale is both illegal and reckless.52 To the extent that JPM is at risk, taxpayers are at risk. CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton unabashedly claims that big money with outsized short positions are moving the silver market, although he won’t name names yet and hasn’t done squat.53 Let me help you out Bart: Start with JPM.

I am wildly bullish about the metals going forward. Gold and silver’s returns look like a normal year within a secular bull market [editor's note: this section was written by David prior to this week's smackdown of the precious metals]. Precious metals investors waited with baited breath as a descending triangle starting in mid-2011—a classic chart pattern recognized in technical analysis (TA)—marched to judgement day (Figure 10). Folklore says when the highs and lows converge, the price will resolve boldly to the upside or downside. OK. That sounds really stupid, but that’s state-of-the-art TA. In any event, it seems like gold took the 50% probability route to the upside thanks to an auspicious goose from more quantitative easing (QEIII). But that’s just T&A (chart porn) for the gold bugs.

Figure 10. Descending triangle and “resolution.”

The future is unknowable, yet $85 billion per month of QE IV is most definitely bullish for tangible assets. Central bankers around the World are printing around the clock. Of course, the usual cast of top callers were braying about a top. Notable gold bears included Warren Buffett hammering gold in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report, quickly followed by a show of support from his poker buddy Bill Gates. Buffett wrote an article entitled “Why Stocks Beat Gold and Bonds” and then promptly bought a gold-mining company.54 Charlie Munger again displayed his tin ear with a decidedly anti-Semitic quote about gold (not worthy of repeating, only criticizing). There are credible arguments against gold, some better than others. An optimist might believe that central bankers will begin to behave themselves…but only in the land of unicorns and Skittles rainbows. Some claim it is a crowded trade. Many argue that gold has been a horrible inflation hedge. To this I note that shovels and bulldozers both move dirt but are very different tools. Equities and gold have similarly differentiated roles as inflation hedges.

Secular (multi-year) bull markets are said to attract investors in three specific phases: (1) first arrivals are wing nuts and whack jobs and precede anybody in their right mind, (2) the smart money arrives once the bull offers evidence there is serious money to be made, and (3) retail investors—the rabble—show up in the final phase. Once group (2) sells to group (3) in what is euphemistically called “distribution,” the invisible hand of the market throws a toaster oven in the pool and the bodies start floating to the surface. This year was dominated by smart-money gold supporters with gravitas and serious bucks. Hedge fund managers supporting gold with dire warnings of monetary chaos included luminaries George Soros, John Paulson, David Einhorn, Jim Rogers, Ray Dalio, and Kyle Bass. Einhorn and Dalio both took special care to condemn Buffett’s gold bash.51,52 Bill Gross, head of PIMCO with almost two trillion dollars under management, noted gold “will be higher than it is today and certainly a better investment than a bond or stock, which will probably return only 3% to 4% over the next 5 to 10 years.”53 Bill has caught the fever. Billionaires Hugo Salinas Price and Eric Sprott are avid precious metal investors and devout believers in organized price suppression.

Central banks became net buyers starting in 2009 after years of selling and have been increasingly aggressive (Figure 11).54 (I call central bankers both “smart money” and “feckless”; I’m still working on resolving that paradox.) Chinese and Korean central bankers have explicitly stated gold is the only safe asset.55 Such reports are picking up in intensity. Other events seemed new to 2012. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has flipped to net buyer.56 South Korea, Paraguay, Turkey, Vietnam, and Russia all increased their gold holdings. Iran swaps oil for gold with China and Turkey.57,58

Figure 11. Central bank gold purchases

What made this year so interesting was the part occurring below the surface. Gold may soon be designated a Tier 1 asset.59 Banks are required to maintain minimum balances of Tier 1 assets to ensure the safety of the system. (They need to work on that.) When the next credit crisis arrives, rather than selling gold to raise Tier 1 assets, banks will be incented to buy gold. It is beginning to act like a currency. The ramifications are multifold.

For the first time, we are beginning to hear discussions of some form of gold standard. It would probably be a variant of the gold-exchange standard of the early 20th century. I would be satisfied if gold was simply allowed to compete for supremacy in the open market. The most important step would be to pass gold legal-tender laws, which are at various stages in a dozen states.60 (This could elicit a states’-rights battle.) Rendering gold’s price change denominated in dollars as a non-taxable event would be the big move. Bernanke tried to take on the push for a gold standard in a series of lectures at George Washington University.61 I found his arguments unpersuasive, exactly what you would expect from a guy who believes that profound monetary injections and inflation are valid monetary tools. The gold standard seems like a distant possibility given the Republicans endorsed the idea in their platform; we know they lied—their lips moved. The counter argument stems from a survey showing 37 prominent economists all opposed a gold standard; 37 economists couldn’t possibly be right.62

One could dismiss discussions of a gold standard if it were not for the second really interesting topic—global gold movements. Let’s be clear, this story is muddled. There are three variants of gold conspiracy theory that may (or may not) lay the foundations:

(1) Thesis 1: Gold exists in the vaults of the Fed and Fort Knox, but we don’t own it anymore. We are told that the gold possession is as simple as a forklift moving a pallet from one wall to the next within the same vaults. Doubts about ownership are exacerbated by the unwillingness of the authorities to independently audit the gold since the 1950s despite calls for it from Congress. This is odd by any standard.63

(2) Thesis 2: The gold in the vaults is of a substandard quality. This idea is way out there but cannot be summarily dismissed. What does low quality actually mean? Supposedly we have delivered sub-standard gold on a number of occasions.64 There were rumors years ago that the gold in the bank of England was reported to be “flaking,” leading one intrepid analyst to declare that it doesn’t matter “provided they don’t try to sell it.”65 Oh, I just wet myself. As a chemist, I can assure you if it flakes it ain’t gold and that analyst-dude is a perma-doofus. Tungsten-impregnated gold surfacing in retail gold markets has fueled speculation that the central banks are hoarding tungsten.66 The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the occasional fake gold bar would be good for tamping down an incipient gold mania.

(3) Thesis 3: There is no gold.67 The claim that the gold is missing holds a certain logic. If the Fed leased physical gold to the bullion banks and these banks sold it into the open market for beer money, then it’s gone.68 It is very odd that the Fed pools the physical metal and the leased metal on a single line of their self-reported balance sheet (to save space, I guess).69

The status of sovereign gold stashes is unclear. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Sovereign states are starting to repatriate their gold—they want to bring it home. It started in 2011 when our close friend and ally Hugo Chavez requested 100 tons returned to Venezuela, with a correlated spiking of the spot-price of gold and gold backwardation. (Backwardation is a grammatical abomination indicating that short-term demand for a commodity is high and commodity traders flunked English.) Demand began in earnest starting in the Netherlands and spreading to other postage-stamp-size countries Paraguay, Ecuador, Vietnam, Switzerland, and Germany.70,71 Germany? Germany may be growing weary of sharing a fiat currency with the PIIGS—Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (vide infra).

It seems like gold is coming out of the closet. My concern is that we will quickly move from fear of deflation to disquieting inflation culminating in uncontrolled inflation. If the dollar goes south fast, do you think investors will seek safe-haven in another fiat currency? Those who headed to Swiss Francs got their heads handed to them this year in an instantaneous 10% debasement.72 There must have been some forex traders doing laps around the drain that morning. I cannot rule out a run on fiat currencies—a collapse of the entire Bretton Woods currency system. Mitigating such tail risks would not be completely irrational. Am I saying that this time it’s different? No. I am saying our fiat currency will join the other fiat currencies as historical footnotes.73 As the insane posters at Zero Hedge like to say about gold, BTFD (buy the dips).

Resources and Energy

I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. ~ Thomas Edison (1931)

Eventually the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. ~ Joseph Tainter, author of Collapse of Complex Societies

The resource sector provides me with a potential inflation hedge and represents a bet on a secular change in energy availability, all the while allowing me to pretend to be normal. In previous years I have endorsed Chris Martenson’s Crash Course with unbridled enthusiasm—a must see,74 which emphasized the case for increasingly constrained oil production, and delineated my enthusiasm for natural gas equities.1,2,3 Many of my views have not changed.

Investment giant Jeremy Grantham continues to actively warn of acute resource depletion. He submits that rapidly rising raw material prices are not a bubble but rather a civilization-altering paradigm shift.75 Simply put, we are depleting everything. The CEO of Gulf Oil, in a decidedly ambiguous statement, noted that “oil consumption in the next seven years is not going to grow and could drop off as much as 15%."76

Suggestions of constrained oil supply continue to work their way into the mainstream. Data shows Saudi production has remained remarkably constant. Many doubt they can ramp it or even sustain it. The former vice president of Saudi Aramco warns of unwarranted optimism that price hikes stem from “the reality that the oil sector has been pushed to the limit of its capabilities.”77 There are claims that the Saudis will be net importers by 2030 but from whom?78 David Greely of Goldman Sachs indicated that it is only a matter of time before “OPEC spare capacity become[s] effectively exhausted, requiring higher oil prices to restrain demand.”79

Other Goldmanites suggest that “a disturbing pattern has emerged where each tentative recovery in the world economy sets off an oil price jump that, in turn, aborts the process… Oil has become an increasingly scarce commodity. A tight supply picture means that incremental increases in demand lead to an increase in prices, rather than ramping up production. The price of oil is in effect acting as an automatic stabilizer.”80 A hyperbole-free interview of prominent oil economist James Hamilton sheds light on a world facing tighter supplies.81

A counter-argument to all these gloomy views came in a report via Bloomberg stating that the U.S. will pump “11.1 million barrels of oil a day in 2020 and 10.9 million in 2025.”82 This may be true, but anybody who projects oil production a dozen years from now to three significant figures has credibility issues. That did not stop viral dissemination across the Twittersphere.

Some suggest that natural gas will fuel our economy for hundreds of years. Others say the case is wildly overstated: Bakken wells lose 90% production within five years.83 Still others focus on the environmental catastrophes and legal boondoggles affiliated with fracking. It seems clear that, come hell or high water, we are going to frack, and we are going to witness a secular shift to a natural-gas-dependent economy. It would be great if this works and does so without environmental calamity. I am agnostic on both. The equity valuations are tame, especially given the current razor-thin profit margins that are projected to expand.84 I continue buying the equities betting that powering the globe will be profitable.

Fresh water and, by direct correlation, food face huge supply issues in China, the U.S., and emerging markets around the world. Staying close to home on this one, the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains was reported to be down to one third of its original depth and is projected to “run dry in two to three decades given recent withdrawal rates.”85 Atlanta is in a legal battle with Florida and Alabama over 20% of the flow from Lake Lanier.86 No matter how you cut it, this is foreshadowing trouble ahead. I looked into water-sector investments a decade ago but couldn’t tease out opportunities.

The blogosphere has made the case for highly constrained rare-earth elements crucial to wind turbines and solar cells.87 The bulls note that China controls 95% of the market and suggest that building alternative energy programs based on the rare earths will drive the price to the moon. I had dinner with the CEO of Chemetall, a major dealer in metals and metal catalysts. He assured me that rare earths are not rare, and that China has driven competitors out of the marketplace; higher prices will fix that when needed. I could detect no agenda in his answers.

The Baptists

The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened is…alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. ~ George Eliot in Silas Marner

We were all worried about these issues in 1927, but you can only worry about things for so long. ~ Anonymous

Prior to any financial dislocations there are many who preach of the coming crisis. In 1924, Roger Babson warned of credit excesses that would lead to catastrophe. Charlie Merrill of Merrill Lynch fame sought psychiatric help due to his inexplicable bearish views; as legend goes, he and his psychiatrist emptied their investment accounts and dodged the carnage. The stock futures speculation in the 1920s was so obvious that Congress held hearings to discuss it well before the crash.88 The crash and subsequent multi-decade global devastation arrived to the total shock of many. Town criers could be heard screaming of a coming tech crash in the late ‘90s by those who listened. We had congressional hearings on derivatives speculation wherein Brooksley Born methodically laid out the plotline for the coming storm in unregulated derivative markets.89 I wrote a 2002 email describing the coming subprime crisis and banking collapse.3,90 Prescient? Not really. I was simply parroting ideas scattered over the Internet. The few who played the housing bust with leverage get the limelight; countless thousands saw the housing excesses in the years leading up to 2007.

This year had its share of preachers of unassailable credibility telling us of more trouble to come. Are they farsighted or fooled? I haven’t a real clue. I can say, however, that their advice demands your attention.

Let’s begin with the most prolific of doomers, David Stockman, former Wall Street insider and Reagan budget genius. Stockman was omnipresent, telling anybody who would listen of a coming mayhem in the bond market and accompanying pension crisis, labeling our current economic status as “the end of a disastrous debt super cycle that has gone on for the last thirty or forty years.”91,92,93

David places blame squarely on the Fed by suggesting “if we don't drive the Bernankes and the Dudleys and the Yellens and the rest of these lunatic money-printers out of the the Fed and get it under the control of people who have at least a modicum of sanity, we are just going to bury everybody deeper.” Somewhat paradoxically, he noted, “if the Fed doesn't keep printing, it's game over.”

John Hussman undermines the very foundations of monetary easing in one of the most cogent arguments that I have read.94 He is a deep-value guy whose analyses have refreshingly long-time horizons and whose portfolios have been bludgeoned in the short term.

George Soros rattled Newsweek readers when he suggested the global credit retrenchment is “about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career…comparable in many ways to the 1930s. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”95 He predicts a collapse of social order, suggesting that “it is about saving the world from a downward economic spiral." George is known for talking his book, but what position is he talking up? This is not a trick question…well maybe it is. (Answer: Gold. Lots and lots of gold.)

Bill Gross suggests that "a 30-50 year virtuous cycle of credit expansion which has produced outsized paranormal returns for financial assets—bonds, stocks, real estate and commodities alike—is now delevering because of excessive ‘risk’ and the ‘price’ of money at the zero-bound.”96 He concludes that “we are witnessing the death of abundance and the borning of austerity, for what may be a long, long time." Detractors like to pick on Bill’s DOW 5000 call years ago. With inflation adjustment—accurate inflation adjustment—that decade-old call is approaching spot on.

Jim Rogers predicted that some of the Ivy League institutions would go bankrupt.97 Harvard had a terrible credit seizure in 2007-09 due to their hedge-fund-like endowment, but Jim’s prediction was made in 2012. Jim doesn’t think we are done yet.

Nomura's Bob Janjuah is always good for brutal assessments.98,99 Bob noted that "markets are so rigged by policy makers that I have no meaningful insights to offer.” Bob goes on to note in a later piece that “central bankers are intentionally mispricing the cost of capital, in an attempt to push the private sector to misallocate capital into consumption and into asset purchases at the wrong time and at the wrong price.” He blames Greenspan and Bernanke explicitly for tens of millions of American citizens who are “either homeless and/or on food stamps.” Bob can really turn a phrase. “Financial anarchy” is always good for a few chuckles. Say what you really think, Bob. The world’s central bankers are reserving their own special place in hell.

Ray Dalio, head of Bridgewater Associates—the largest hedge fund in the world—has been bearish for awhile and is becoming quite the gold bug. In January he noted that he was bearish “through 2028.”100 In subsequent presentations, he seemed to change his tune by referring to our global state of affairs as a “beautiful deleveraging ,” which he defines as some sort of optimal inflation/deflation cross-dresser operating through a combination of defaults and debt monetization.101 I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. One prominent market watcher—me—suspected that Ray had an eye on a Romney-cabinet-level appointment. We’ll never know.

Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham with $150 billion under management, Thomas Brightman of Research Affiliates, and Robert Gordon of NBER lit up the blogosphere late in the year with conclusions that global growth would drop to the 1% zone.102,103,104 Their predicted durations—decades or more—were newsworthy. Grantham suggests that demographics and resource depletion will cause us to never regain our previous growth rates. He had previously amplified a notion first presented by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations by showing that a sustainable 3% compounded growth rate, rather than the “greatest invention of all time,” is total mathematical nonsense.105 A cubic meter of physical wealth expanding at 3% over the Egyptian dynasty—admittedly a long time—would fill ten solar systems—a large volume.

Billionaire Richard Branson joins Grantham in predicting that capitalism is destroying the planet, focusing in particular on the perpetual growth model that will consume everything. The great story about Richard is that he is rumored to have tried to hit up Obama for some weed in a recent trip to the White House.106 We don’t know if Obama’s “Choomwagon”107 was in the shop.

Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Texas, was a buzzkill for the fluffers at the Fed, noting that there is “a frightful storm brewing in the form of un-tethered government debt.”108 He says that he chose the phrase "frightful” to “deliberately avoid hyperbole.” Fisher suggests that the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are working so hard right now to correct.

2012 was a big year for taking the bear case to the Halls of Power. Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars, presented his concerns about currency debasement to Congress.109 James Grant and Robert Wenzel in speeches at the Federal Reserve both hammered the Fed for horrendous monetary policies that are destroying our currency and capitalist system.110,111,112 Jim is a total genius, and he is very attention-worthy.113,114,115

Legendary hedge fund manager and cherished confidant David Einhorn poked at the Fed with his “jelly donut” speech.116 It was Silence of the Lambs at the Buttonwood Conference when he pointed out what they should have known: Artificially low interest rates drive up commodities and reduce income streams to a trickle, forcing consumers to save more and spend less.117 He throws in a little money multiplier logic and—voilà!—stimulus is totally negated.

Einhorn accuses the Fed of “offering some verbal sleight-of-hand worthy of a three-card Monte hustle.” David wonders out loud: “We have just spent 15 years learning that a policy of creating asset bubbles is a bad idea, so it is hard to imagine why the Fed wants to create another one.” I wonder out loud: How much did Fed policy have to degenerate to force the Einhorns of the world to focus on monetary theory rather than investing?

We had several bootleggers-turned-Baptists. The technical term is “tranny.” John Reed confessed his sins while CEO of Citibank, explaining how Citibank and Travelers, with the aid of a very friendly administration, destroyed the Glass-Steagall safeguards that had protected consumers from financial disaster since the ‘30s.118 Sandy Weill, the next CEO of Citigroup, shocked the world by suggesting that big banks “be broken up so that the taxpayer will never be at risk.” What’s gotten into these Citi-boys? Would it be too much to ask for a mea culpa from Robert Rubin? Yes.

William Cohan, former Wall Street investment banker and author of several best sellers including a comprehensive history of Goldman Sachs, pointed out the cracks in the seams—the omerta—at Goldman, flaws in the FINRA arbitration system, the mathematically nonsensical $100 million IRA of Mitt Romney, the SEC’s lack of oversight on nefarious activities at Citigroup, and a striking exposé of Robert Rubin’s deep-seated political power.119,120,121,122

These guys are some of the sharpest knives in the drawer. They view the world through darker lenses than most. Whether they are right or not, you’ve been warned.

The Bankers

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. ~ Henry Ford

The most newsworthy story about Goldman Sachs may be that they weren’t in the news that much. Of course, there were a few skirmishes. Disgruntled employee Greg Smith took his best shot at the Goldman Death Star, but both his interview and book proved toothless.123 Smith told us that Goldman employees showed scorn as they ripped the faces off their clients called “Muppets.” Anybody who read Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker knows that clients are chum for the brokerages. Goldmanites had to run out the back door without putting their pants on when it was discovered that they were part-owner of a website focusing on the sex-trafficking of underaged girls.124 It also was reported that many Goldman folks were tipping off Rajaratnam, although that story is now passé. Most importantly, however, JPM managed to knock Goldman below the fold.

Problems for JPM began in 2011. As noted in my 2011 summary, MF Global—a reincarnation of the formerly bankrupted and scandal-riddled Refco—had collapsed, segregated funds had been rehypothecated (rehypothecate = used repeatedly; see also, “stolen”), and the money was lost speculating at the track. Remaining funds (including stored gold bars, if they weren’t already rehypothecated) were quickly snarfed up by JPM under the arcane principle of law referred to as “finders keepers, losers weepers.” We finished 2011 knowing that Corzine was a weasel and in a world of trouble and serious money had “vaporized”—not to be confused with “stolen”—to use language from a planted story.125 Vaporized money brings to mind the must-see South Park episode, “And It’s Gone.”126 The authorities were handed a Madoff-quality scandal to finally prove they are the best regulators money can buy. Twitter hound Mark Melin was posting hourly updates on nefarious activities while legal beagle James Koutoulis was gearing up for a big class action suit.

Just as night follows day, 2012 brought us…crickets. Nothing but chirping crickets. The case was dropped. How the hell did this happen? The JPM legal team exploited the chaos and rushed MF Global into bankruptcy. Chris Whalen explains that bankruptcy gave JPM “first dibs” creditor status whereas a fraud charge would have diverted the funds to less worthy folks—the rightful owners.127

To ensure the transition went smoothly, former FBI Director and political hack Louis Freeh was put in charge of overseeing this mess. Freeh promptly asked the bankruptcy court to allow payouts to MF global executives for the long hours spent cleaning up.128 (I'd give them free room, three square meals, and snappy orange jump suits.) Freeh then diverted funds from clients to legal defense funds of MFG execs.129 The other MFG trustee named Giddens—the other MFG trustee?—pressured litigants to release the banks of all liability to receive reimbursement, suggesting that (1) the money didn’t really vaporize, (2) stealing money and then giving it back when caught should not be a crime, and (3) extortion is legal if you are a trustee.130 Within a week it was announced that the Rule of Law had been downgraded to a guideline.

As often used in comedies, we use an epilogue to track the fates of the major players. Jon Corzine bought himself a “Get Out of Jail Free” card by remaining a major fundraiser (a bundler, to be exact) for Team Obama.131 The Department of Justice (DOJ) stood ready to indict Corzine if he missed a payment. Immunity to Corzine’s consigliere would have revealed some serious dirt, but the DOJ declared there was no case and walked.132 Corzine is exiled in the Hamptons sans ankle bracelet on an OJ-esque quest for the lost funds and a new job as a hedge fund manager. Rumors that Corzine’s life insurers put his policy in a risk pool have not been confirmed. Team Obama got a second term in the White House, and nobody in the administration has been indicted for racketeering. The sordid story of MFG has been relegated to case studies in MBA ethics classes. (Evidence aside, they do have such courses.) The main character, Jamie Dimon, landed a leading role in the next scandal and was put on the shortlist for Secretary of the Treasury.

As the replacement regulators and DOJ were playing Pull My Finger, rumors among the blognoscenti surfaced of a big London-based commodity trader who was in trouble.133 The trader was originally referred to as “The Caveman” but soon became “The London Whale.” Mike Mayo, one of the elite banking analysts, downgraded JPM a day or so before the story broke and later attributed the problem to “negative incentives and the revolving door” (corruption from the unholy alliance of banking-government).134 Jamie Dimon initially claimed it was “a tempest in a teapot ,” but then JPM announced burgeoning losses in the billions. Eventually, even CNBC bought a ticket on the London Whale Watching Tour. Those guys are sleuths.

JPM was in very big trouble. (Just kidding; of course they weren’t.) Damage control was swift and effective. JPM liquidated an estimated >$25 billion of assets to both clean up the mess and book enough profits to guarantee that their reported earnings would show that this was not a BFD (big deal).135 The London Whale, aka Bruno Iksil, was labeled a rogue trader, which is a technical term for a “rainmaker turned patsy.” With dripping irony, Bruno’s boss is named Achilles Macris.

Normally, the story would end there, but the Greatest Banker in the Universe—Jamie Dimon—faced a stark choice: Either claim that he screwed the pooch—uniquely so—or admit that the banking system is still hopelessly corrupted. The forthcoming mea culpas were slathered with gobs of sincerity. “We were total idiots. We can’t pour water out of a boot with the directions on the heel.” (paraphrased, of course) Jamie testified to Congress for no apparent reason, getting grilled by Congressman Tim Johnson who, because of a massive stroke in 2006, was not particularly threatening. Spencer Bachus, Chair of the Financial Services Committee, treated Dimon with kid gloves and let him testify not under oath because JPM is his second biggest donor. What’s appalling is that Bachus sold us down the river for a take of $119,000 over the congressman’s career.136 That was money well spent. Supposedly, the entire Financial Services Committee cost a little over $800,000.137 Peter Schweizer’s book, Throw Them All Out (vide infra) documents in lurid detail that congressmen and congresswomen are prostitutes, but cheaper. In an interview in Davos, Dimon was able to put the problems to rest, noting that “most of the bad actors are gone." You betcha.

Of course, other banks wanted a piece of the action. Barclays made a feeble grab for fame by taking the lead in the Libor scandal.138 Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate, is a compilation of self-reported lending rates that influence interest rates throughout the $500 trillion global credit markets.139 Self reported? Whatever could go wrong? It turns out Barclays was cheesing the numbers. The retribution was swift and severe: Barclays was fined a whopping $200 million,140 which cut into some of their profits on the scam. The British Banking Society, using language right out of Casablanca, said that they were “shocked.”141

Meanwhile, journalists around the globe, scrambling to figure out what Libor meant, spouted scholarly analysis like Milli Vanilli. It soon became evident, however, that all of the banks were fudging their numbers.142 The scandal was promptly downgraded three levels to an embarrassment when 2008-vintage articles by Mark Gilbert and Gillian Tett surfaced that described the rate rigging.143,144 The Fed knew about it in 2008.145 Liborgate could clog the courts for awhile as borrowers lawyer up hoping to identify damages.

The blogosphere thinks Liborgate is “huge.” I find the scandal oddly anticlimactic given that central banks around the globe openly rig rates on a daily basis. James Grant concurs with this minority view. It is galling, however, that the scandal seems to reach the highest levels of the banking cartel—the central banks. For me, it is profoundly disturbing that global capital has been fully sequestered from price discovery.

The British Banking Association was shocked again when Standard Chartered Bank got accused of illegally laundering $350 billion for Iran.146 Rogue New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky filed his charges as the Justice Department was on the verge of declaring that Standard Chartered’s trades “complied with the law.”147 Standard Chartered promptly entered settlement talks with everybody. A Deloitte partner involved with the scandal offed himself. For him, the scandal was a big deal.

The hits just kept coming. HSBC got charged with money laundering for terrorists, drug cartels, and organized crime syndicates. It seems that HSBC must have picked up BCCI’s clients after their scandal-induced collapse in the late ‘90s. This ‘affiliation’ with organized crime is silly: Banking is organized crime. Reuters reported that HSBC could be fined over $1.5 billion for money laundering and face criminal charges.148 Of course they could, but they won’t.

US Bancorp got charged $55 million for scamming customers with overdraft fees by illegally maximizing the number of checks put into overdraft.149 In a possible script for the MFG sequel, Cantor Fitzgerald was accused of “undersegregating” funds.150 This is like “kind of pregnant.” The whole thing seems “sort of criminal.”

The more generic thieves and scoundrels returned with an encore when CEO of Peregrine Financial Group (PFG) stole rehypothecated customer funds for several years.151 The CEO of Attain Asset Management (AAM) captured the spirit of the outrage against PFG, noting “This time it’s personal.”152 PFG CEO Wasendorf attempted suicide, presumably hoping to front run the AAM CEO to (paraphrased) “put a cap in his ass.” Jeffries promptly began a Chapter 7 liquidation of PFG positions after a failed margin call. Once again, Chris Whalen explained the nuances.153 Apparently, this time they did it right by sending PFG into receivership to the advantage of the customers; Reuters reported depositors got 30 cents on the dollar.154 I imagine that debt subordination by big money folks somehow played a role.

Whistleblowers took a serious beating this year. FINRA, Wall Street’s self-policing arbitrators, managed to bankrupt a Morgan Stanley broker with a fine of $1.2 million after he accused Morgan Stanley of adding hidden fees to retirement accounts.155 When the case was followed up, nearly half of the 18 hrs of tape, mandated to be saved, “disappeared.” The transcript of an anonymous whistleblower testifying to CFTC was a great read. The CFTC removed it from their website, but a copy was saved.156 A lawsuit by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) whistleblower David Weber alleges that the SEC is involved in all sorts of nefarious activities, including specifically tracking potential whistleblowers.157 David Einhorn also presents the SEC as profoundly corrupt in his book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time.

We found out this year that Deutsche Bank had been accused by three independent whistleblowers of hiding $12 billion in losses to avoid a bailout during the bailouts (if that makes any sense).158 This scandal is a dog’s breakfast: (1) the whistleblowers—one of them a risk officer—got fired within days of the complaint; and (2) the current SEC’s chief enforcement officer was in charge of the legal compliance at Deutsche Bank and was its general council during the cover up.

I have painted the banking industry with an ugly brush. I’m sure most bankers are good, honest people. If so, it’s time you guys start cleaning up your profession. When you find yourself saying, “Somebody should do something,” that somebody is you. If you stay silent, it’s just a Sandusky sequel.

The Federal Reserve

I simply do not understand most of the thinking that goes on here at the Fed, and I do not understand how this thinking can go on when in my view it smacks up against reality…Do you believe in supply and demand or not?…Let’s have one good meal here. Let’s make it a feast. Then I ask you, I plead with you, I beg you all, walk out of here with me, never to come back. It’s the moral and ethical thing to do. Nothing good goes on in this place. Let’s lock the doors and leave the building to the spiders, moths, and four-legged rats. ~ Robert Wenzel, in a speech at the NY Federal Reserve

Well that pretty much captured my sentiments. The Fed gets their pick of the litter coming out of PhD programs. They are a politically (in)dependent group with a dual mandate of supporting the banks and maximizing bank profits. The dozen or so members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), by virtue of arrogance and hubris, have become intellectually neutered and are now menaces to society. Why listen to an organic chemist—an academic, to boot? Let’s see what the pros have to say.

A first year investment banking associate knows more about credit creation than the entire FOMC combined…. Our colleagues at the Fed have consistently failed to understand the operations of financial markets and how credit operates in our society. This may surprise some of you, but it doesn't surprise me at all. ~ Chris Whalen, Founder of IRA Risk Analytics

I have to say the monetary policies of the U.S. will destroy the world. ~ Marc Faber, Elite Barrons Round Table Member

The little sliver of remaining hope was officially pronounced dead [with QEIII]….we are witnessing the greatest monetary fiasco ever. ~ Doug Noland, Federated Investors

The Chinese aren't loaning to us anymore. The Russians aren't loaning to us anymore. So who's giving us the trillion? And the answer is we're just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, ‘Here, we're giving it.' It's just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future. ~ Mitt Romney, unemployed

When I read direct quotes and commentary about Bernanke's policy of driving up asset prices in general and equity prices in particular, I almost want to cry over the ludicrousness of this position. The Fed is pursuing the same road to ruin as it did between 2003-2007. ~ Albert Edwards, Societe Generale

Bernanke, and his MIT ilk, has made monetary policy into a laboratory for monetary theoreticians. ~ Kevin Warsh, former Federal Reserve governor

It’s the general global landscape where you have an incredible mispricing of risk that’s being delivered at the hands of academics at the central banks of the world. ~ Wellington Denahan-Norris, CEO of Annaly Capital

I am a little—maybe more than a little bit—worried about the future of central banking. We've constantly felt that there would be light at the end of the tunnel, and there'd be an opportunity to normalize but it’s not really happening so far. ~ James Bullard, President of Saint Louis Federal Reserve

Let’s briefly break away from 2012 condemnations and snag a quote from my favorite book on Austrian economics and the Great Depression:

The end result of what was probably the greatest price-stabilization experiment in history proved to be, simply, the greatest and worst depression. ~ Phillips et al. in Banking and the Business Cycle (1937)

Of course, the big news was the third wave of debt monetization referred to as QE IV, QEtc, QEInfinity, or Cash for Clunkers II. The Fed is jamming over $80 billion of high-powered money per month into the economy. Initial promises to monetize aggressively until 2015 have been extended to infinity and beyond. The Fed pretended it was sterilized—the long-term debt purchases were being offset by short-term debt sales. “Operation Twist” (QE II), however, recycles the short-term debt right back into long-term debt. Problem solved.

There is some room for debate as to why they are pushing monetary policy to the edge of the known universe. They tell us that it is to improve the economy and help the little guy by throwing savers under the bus with repressively low interest rates. Last I looked, the savers are the little guys. It has been estimated that if interest income as a percentage of total personal income had remained at its 2008 level, the total would now be an additional $1.5 trillion.159

To achieve their goal of stabilizing the banks—not all the banks, just the really big ones—the Fed has completely dismissed any notion that the debt markets should be allowed to clear, which is Austrian-speak for establishing market-based pricing. James Grant calls it “waging war on the pricing mechanism.” The Fed does this via purchases of 60-80% of all the newly issued federal debt because our foreign creditors have gone on a buyers’ strike.160 Without the Fed’s unprecedented interventions, bond prices would plummet (sponsored by Red Bull, no doubt), affiliated interest rates would spike, bond holders would get crushed, and the federal government would have to borrow at rates that would completely choke our already auto-asphyxiated federal budget. We’re now homing in on why the Fed is monetizing debt. (Note to readers: When you read an article stating some variant of “low rates show everything is rosey,” that person is an idiot.)

The irony here is that the Fed’s zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) is choking the savers, as noted by David Einhorn (vide supra). Similar cases have been made by Chris Whalen and others.161 William R. White, former Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), wrote a must-read paper entitled, Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences.162 The Fed’s policies are Soviet-style stupidity and a short trek to financial perdition. Even worse, Daniel Kahnemann, Nobel Laureate and expert in behavioral psychology, would probably argue that the Fed’s decision making is no more accurate than “monkeys throwing darts.” Milton Friedman indirectly made a similar case against central planners in an interview with macroeconomist Phil Donohue.163

The Bootleggers

Why does the New York Times hate the banks? ~ Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan

It’s not the New York Times, Mr. Dimon. It really isn’t. It’s the country that hates the banks these days. ~ Joe Nocera, New York Times

I have beaten on the bankers hard and will continue to do so until somebody can say their house is clean. I should, however, let these bootleggers and affiliates—the Baghdad Bobs of Finance—speak for themselves. As you read these quotes, ask yourself: Did they really say that? Really?

Low Fed rates didn’t fuel the housing bubble. ~ Alan Greenspan, former Chair of FOMC

This is the United States of America. That's what I remember. Guess what…. It's a free f***ing country. ~ Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPM

Hanging bankers won’t help…Public anger over the financial crisis is wrong. ~ Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of England

Large numbers of people who have ‘lost’ their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost. In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender. ~ Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway

The evidence that I’ve seen and that we’ve done within the Fed suggests that monetary policy did not play an important role in raising house prices during the upswing. ~ Ben Bernanke, Chair of FOMC

We economists…have reason to be proud of our analyses over the past five years. We understood where we were heading, because we knew where we had been. ~ Brad DeLong, economist at UC Berkeley

Quantitative easing isn’t being imposed on an unwitting populace by financiers and rentiers; it’s being undertaken, to the extent that it is, over howls of protest from the financial industry. ~ Paul Krugman, Princeton University and Nobel Laureate

The demonization of Wall Street and bankers is very much a function of the press and of Washington, and not much more broadly held. ~ John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch

Wage and price controls distort markets…prices are prices…We’re not going to monetize US debt. ~ Ben Bernanke, FOMC

Thank the people of AIG for having the courage to do what they did. ~ Robert Benmosche, CEO of AIG

To claim that it’s effectively a gift you have to claim that the prices the Fed is paying are artificially high, or equivalently that interest rates are being pushed artificially low. And you do in fact see assertions to that effect all the time. But if you think about it for even a minute, that claim is truly bizarre. ~ Paul Krugman, Princeton

There is a German word, backpfeifengesicht, that reputedly translates to “a face badly in need of a fist.” It seems appropriate for some of these characters, which would generate some serious schadenfreude. For these gentlemen, however, I’ll let pop culture respond: