MF Global Clients Marred by Sloppy Record Keeping; Missing Money Still Gone

Clients of MF Global still do not have access to their money and thanks to sloppy record keeping the missing money remains a mystery.

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U.S. banks have grabbed 10% of loan underwriting this year vs 8% last year.

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An interesting opportunity for buyers comes from Europe’s debt turmoil.

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A global slowdown has hurt industrial production.  In other news India’s Tata Steel has seen profits slip by 89%.

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Oil continues to rally. Currently up $0.10 @ $97.87

Yields have climbed significantly as of late and as a result the banks in Italy have gone on a borrowing spree. From September till now Italian banks have gone from a rate of 41 billion euros to 111 billion euros…

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Not so good news given all the budget cuts and money needed to be raised.

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Asia

Europe

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Italian 10 Year @ 6.63…down 25 basis points

The story is about hope and belief that the EU will advance solutions for sovereign debt woes.

Austerity measures in Italy will be voted on and once the bill is voted upon Berlusconi is expected to step down. Italy could have a new government by Monday next week.

Both Italian and French 10 year yields ease a bit.

UPDATE 3 (7:42 PST): According to this new video, released by an Occupy Oakland activist who witnessed the incident, the shooting occurred during a fight over “a bag of weed.” He concludes: “It’s gotten real nasty down here, real fast.”

Read the rest and see the video here.

For shits and giggles

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Nov 9 2011, 4:38 PM ET 575

When I was a young and naive economics writer, I used to write about developing countries a fair amount.  Time and again they would make these bizarre and pointless moves, like suddenly and for no apparent reason defaulting on a bunch of debt.  They would engage in obviously, stupidly unsustainable fiscal practices that caused recurring crises.  They would divert critical investment funds into social spendingwhich was going to become unsustainable when underinvestment reduced government revenue.  And the other journalists and I would cluck our tongues and say “Why can’t they do the right thing when it’s so . . . bleeding . . . obvious?”

Then we had our own financial crisis and it became suddenly, vividly clear: democratic governments cannot do even obvious right things if the public will not tolerate it.  Even dictators have interest groups whose support they must buy.

This has come home to me forcefully several times over the last few years, but never more than now.  The leaders of the eurozone have a dual mandate to keep the euro intact, and to not do the things which could keep the euro intact.  They cannot fiscally integrate to the extent necessary because, as I wrote for the Daily the other day, the Greeks do not want to act like Germans, and the Germans do not want to share their credit rating with anyone who won’t.

It is obvious that either Germany is going to have to guarantee massive ongoing fiscal transfers to the PIIGS, or Greece and probably Italy are going to have to undergo a massively contractionary austerity program, or they will have to leave the euro.  Yet in the face of these three choice–which exclude both each other, and any other mathematically possible outcome–their governments have chosen d: half measures.  No, half-measures is too generous.  Quarter measures.  Window dressing that only covers a single pane.

With Berlusconi’s obviously counterproductive antics tanking markets worldwide, the sort of hopeful pessimism that has pervaded the economic commentariat has now turned to open despair.  Their cri de coeur is ably summed up by Brad DeLong:

I have been complaining for some time now that Reinhart and Rogoff think that the time is always 1931 and that we are always Austria–that the great fiscal crisis is about to erupt and send us lurching down toward Great Depression II. Well, right now guess what? The time is 1931, and we are Austria. The Federal Reserve needs to buy up every single European bond owned by every single American financial institution for cash before the increase in eurorisk leads American finance to tighten credit again and send us down into the double dip. The Federal Reserve Needs to do so now. Paul Krugman: >This Is The Way The Euro Ends: Not with a Bang, But with a Bunga-Bunga: [W]ith Italian 10-years now well above 7 percent, we’re now in territory where all the vicious circles get into gear — and European leaders seem like deer caught in the headlights. And as Martin Wolf says today, the unthinkable — a euro breakup — has become all too thinkable: >>A eurozone built on one-sided deflationary adjustment will fail. That seems certain. If the leaders of the eurozone insist on that policy, they will have to accept the result. >Every even halfway plausible route to euro salvation now depends on a radical change in policy by the European Central Bank. Yet as John Quiggin says in today’s Times, the ECB has instead been part of the problem. >I believe that the ECB rate hike earlier this year will go down in history as a classic example of policy idiocy… the sheer stupidity of obsessing over inflation when the euro was obviously at risk boggles the mind. I still find it hard to believe that the euro will fail; but it seems equally hard to believe that Europe will do what’s needed to avoid that failure.

For all my cynicism, I too want to cray [sic] out, “For the love of Mike, why?”

Why can’t they do the any of the obvious things–not even necessarily the right ones?  Why are they picking the only path that is obviously not going to work?

But I come back to the answer above: they can’t.  Government, like soylent green, is people. And people are not always rational.

Read the rest here.

This speaks volumes

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One more thing to consider for that big interview…

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Hello Victoria Secret models 

That is a whopping half a penny on the dollar

Asia

Nikkei

S&P Futures

Risk on said the robot