AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS

Then again, turning five isn't the hardest thing in the world but the triplets sailed through it with nothing but smiles and laughter.  To be that young and innocent...but we are not and it's back to business.

It would appear that after the great celebration of last week over the supposed solving of Europe's problems, reality has once again set in despite the French note auction of yesterday which immediately after it closed went to a negative yield.  The wise folks out there immediately proclaimed that France was surely in the catagory of Germanydespite the fact that anything in France that looked like a financial institution was ordered to bid on the damn thing and a six month auction tells us nothing about anything  The fact of Spanish yields inching above 7% again tells us a great deal more and none of it is good and the Spanish being given an extra year to meet the financial standards ordered by Brussels (which they have already said they will not meet) tells us a great deal more.  Not only are things not good, they are not getting any better.

Meanwhile, the great Libor scandal continues to grab the headlines with the special commission now trying to figure out who knew what when between the Chairman of Barclays and the CEO.  Yawn.

John Taylor of Stanford and the Hoover Institute, a very smart guy, had a piece in the WSJ the other day saying far more eloquently than I some free standing facts that I have been talking about for some time; to wit if you REALLY want to investigate interest rate manipulation look no further than the world's central banks and by all means start with the Fed.  As opposed to the terrible effects of the Libor manipulation--which, curiously, have yet to be identified--the central banks have caused real damage and it is there for all to see.

With the dollar as the reserve currency there is no point in not singling out the Fed as the culprit in this international dance macabre and the reason begings with one single fact; the dual nature of the Fed's mandate.  Somewhere along the line someone got the bright idea that a central bank should be more than a guardian of the risk of inflation and take on the added duty of assuring, to the greatest extent possible, full employment through the use of monetary tools.  Needless to say, the first role is often ignored in pursuit of the second, and particularly so by the political forces at play as inflation is the greatest friend a free-spending politician can have (not to be redundant) in most cases.  Of course the only tool a central bank has is to regulate the supply of money and in that is the rub: they will never admit to playing with interest rates but that is exactly what they are doing.  When the Fed does it the entire world is affected and the results are often not immediately apparent, not fully understood or simply ignored by the Fed who have adopted the view first expressed by Treasury Secretary James Baker who straightforwardly told a foreign finance minister, "The dollar is your problem not ours."
A more honest man never lived.

The last time the Fed really went after inflation or the threat thereof was back in 1980 when Paul Volker--a Carter appointment of all things--killed it in this country, stone, cold dead through the brutal application of monetary policy.  Of course he killed Latin America stone, cold dead as well and for a full ten years, and damned near killed the American banking system and a few other systems as well, but that was the last time in recent memory that our central bank showed any kind of monetary restraint and what we face today is the result of the distortions in a global marketplace that unfortunately continue and are magnified by the current policy of the administration in Washington.  Tune in tomorrow and we'll try to stroll through the last 20 years of financial history.

A DIAMOND GETTING ROUGH

I still have no idea of what the heck went on in the dealing rooms of Barclays but I am 3 hours poorer for trying to find out.  There was admitted rate fixing which was called "reprehensible" behavior by former CEO Bob Diamond today at the select committee hearing.  He is indeed correct but he added that the effort was limited to 14 traders out of 2000 which makes it no less reprehensible but something considerably less than wide-spread.  There was much tooing and frowing back and forth as to when poor Bob knew about this thing (late in the game apparently) and how could that possible be, tut-tut, and not a word about what the real fall-out in dollars and sense was as a result of the fabulous fourteen which has either been forgotten or never figured out in the first place.  Unless more is revealed, it would appear that a few boys with sharp pencils might have made a bob or two at the expense of some poor bugger down the road but in the great, wide world of international finance I suspect no one is going to lose sleep over that.  Reprehensible, yes.  Game changing...well, we await developments.

There was very little said about what was going on during part of the time when all of this was going on.  It is of course a long four years ago but the bloody world was about to end in a financial sense and in many cases there was less concern about the cost of a bank's funding as opposed to whether there was any funding to be had at all.  Having been involved in the past in events akin to what we then witnessed, I can state with some conviction that a calm, well-considered decision making process does not exist; there is more of a "*&^%$, what the ^&)@ do I do now" attitude permiating the premises.  It came as no surprise that Diamond speculated that the then CEO probably feared for the bank's future existence when faced with inquires governmental officials as to why Barclay's funding costs appeared to be out of line on the high side.  "Can you fund yourself" would be the question and the fear of being nationalized would certainly enter into peoples' minds.  According to Diamond, there was a true misunderstanding as to whether Barlays was being asked to muck about with it's funding costs or not which then led to the most interesting and possibly important issue of the hearings; namely who was involved.

Surely, as I indicated yesterday I thought the Bank of England or the FSA--somnolent throughout the entire crisis and the run-up period--would be named.  Not so.  Diamond named the then Labor Government who was involved.  To say that this put a cat among the pigeons is to understate the case.    We now have the makings of a full-blown political crisis and along with royal wedding and funerals no one does that better than the Brits.  This promises to be great fun, although I still can't figure out what was the damage done or cui bono?  I also can't figure out whether I should be spending any more time on this but another day or two probably wouldn't hurt.  Not much else is happening save for the slow slide of the world economy and the fall of Euroland.  It is the Silly Season after all.

One other point directed towards Mr. Diamond:  Bob, you might have noticed that every member of the select committee referred to you as "Mr. Diamond" and you referred to every one of them by their Christian names.  Bobby, Bobby, Bobby, they're Europeans and MPs.  That isn't Kansas, Toto.  They don't like it...which is one of the reasons you no longer have your job.  Being a rude American is one thing.  Rubbing it in on July 4th. in London is quite a bit different