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No Housing Recovery - Case Shiller Shows 8th Consecutive Month Of House Price Declines Durden

2-28-12 Little that can be added here. The December Case Shiller came, saw, and shut up all those who keep calling for a home price recovery. The Index printed at 136.71 on expectations of 137.11, with the prior revised to 138.24. The top 20 City composite was down -0.5% on expectations of a 0.35% drop. 18 out of 20 MSAs saw monthly declines in December over November… , Goldman: Germany Is Now On The Hook By €1 Trillion (Or 40% Of GDP) Durden 2-28-12 Earmuffs time for our German readers. , Durable Goods Big Miss -4%, Expected -1%, Biggest Sequential Drop Since January 2009 Durden 2-28-12 And so the transition to the QE3 "economic disappointment" regime begins. Because after the ECB is done with the LTRO it's over for global QEasing, and the Fed is next. Remember- Bernanke's semiannual testimony to Congress is tomorrow. Whatever will he say.... -Headline Durable Goods plunges from +3.2 to -4% on expectations of -1% -More painfully, Durable goods non-defense ex aircraft down a whopping -4.5% on Exp of -1.3%, down from +3.4%. Visually, this is the lowest Durable Goods number since January 2009 , Ireland Mentions "R" Word, EUR Plunges Durden 2-28-12 , Silver Passes 30% YTD As Catch 22 Economic "Updates" Becomes Blurry Durden 2-28-12 , It Begins: ECB Calls For Bids In 3 Year LTRO Durden 2-28-12 , JPM Pwns Nancy Pelosi Durden 2-28-12 , THiS Is TROIKA! : williambanzai7 : 02/28/2012 "There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of free Greece from the histories."---Xerxes , 20 Signs That Dust Bowl Conditions Will Soon Return To The Heartland Of America http://albertpeia.com/dustbowlusa.htm , Conditions Ripe for Inflation Inferno, St. Louis Fed Economist Warns The Wall Street Journal ‘…“Both economic theory and historical experience suggest that a significant and persistent expansion in the money supply will be associated with a significant increase in the longer-run inflation rate,” Thornton writes …’ [ Let’s get real here. Inflation’s vastly underreported / manipulated (ask any grocery shopper with meats, etc., up 30-50-70% to even 100% year over year most recently; and then there’s those gas prices), particularly now, and is already rampant! ] , Dave’s Daily: http://www.etfdigest.com HEADLINE WRITERS EXTOL DOW 13,000 2-28-12 ‘Headline writers are busy spinning the Dow breaking above 13,000. It’s a neat headline but as Ace Greenberg was fond of saying: “It’s just a number.” But this is the number Main Street and the media follow and obsess over most. The more cynical expression has always been; “The Dow is just window dressing for the tourists.” After all the index is just 30 “price weighted” large companies whereas the S&P 500 gives you a better overall picture of market strength.Economic data wasn’t great but bulls managed to cherry-pick the news they liked and ran with it most of the day. Durable Goods sank (-4% vs -.7% expected and prior 3.2%); Case-Shiller Home Price Index (-.5% vs -.4% expected and prior -.7% previous); GS Weekly Store Sales (-1.0% vs previous 3.00%) and lastly, Consumer Confidence (70.8 vs 64 expected and previous 61.1) was what bulls grasped (which is absolutely ridiculous since it’s manipulated if not outright false). , Stocks' Strength Could Prompt Pensions To Sell --- SocGen Barrons.com [ Wise move! ] , US Case-Shiller 20-city composite home price index (nsa) -1.1% to 136.7 in Dec, vs neg revised 138.2 in Nov; -3.99% y/y. Feb 28th, 2012 by News , US durable goods orders -4.0% in Jan, well below market expectations of -1.0%, vs positive revised +3.2% in Dec; -3.2% ex-trans. Feb 28th, 2012 by News , PIMCO's Gross shifts to defensive investment model NEW YORK (Reuters) , Corporate Profits Rise – but Wages Fail to keep Pace with Inflation

Noel Brinkerhoff , Economist Predicts US Interest Rates To Explode To 3.75% This Year Business Insider | John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York, expects rates on 10-year Treasuries to reach 3.75 percent this year. , Stockman: If We Want to Bring Oil Prices Down, We Should Stop Beating the War Drums Washington’s Blog | Stockman: War Drums Are Driving Up Oil Prices and Hurting the Economy. , Economy Squeezed As Debt Accelerates Ron Paul | Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee has pointed out that our per capita government debt is already larger than Greece’s. , Guest Post:The Existential Financial Problem Of Our Time Durden 2-28-12 The modern, debt-based economy requires constant economic expansion if only to service all that debt. So what happens when the modern economy goes ex-growth and stops expanding? Iceland already found out. Greece is in the process of discovering. But we will all get a chance to participate in this lesson. Runaway fiscal and monetary stimulus throughout the western economies is in the process of destroying the concept of creditworthiness at the centre of the modern monetary system.  Private investors, we suspect, have little or no conception of the extent to which the state is now the predominant player in the financial markets. Central banks control the money supply and interest rates. Central banking and commercial banking interests have essentially become fused. The ECB's long-term refinancing operations are banking bailouts by the back door. Central banks are now also the swing players in government bond markets which directly influences the price for corporate credit. Central bank monetary stimulus also directly influences equity market direction and confidence. Be careful, be very careful about the sort of government debt you hold. You may well end up being paid in whole- but in such depreciated terms that being "kept whole" will be meaningless in real terms , Phantom Gold And Deconstructing PollyAnna Durden 2-28-12 Many want to believe that a stock market that has doubled from the March 2009 low (or added $9tn in market cap) has to mean that the US economy is in a healthy long-term recovery. Unfortunately, as Charles Biderman of TrimTabs explains, the PollyAnnas are wrong. The sentiment, built on the three pillars of an improved labor market, higher corporate earnings, and the return of the housing market, are all based upon misleading data. Starting from the position of discovering where the new money is coming from, the Bay Area Beau dismantles each of the pillars one by one and ends by noting that it is not Gold, which has outpaced stock market gains, that is a phantom currency but the USD. , Sheer Mirror Image Insanity: S&P Hits New Multi Year Highs As 10 Year Bond Slides Below 1.90% Durden 2-28-12 There no longer are any words left to explain what is going on in this centrally planned market (technically "enantiomeric" may be a word, but nobody would get it). It is sheer and utter bipolar insanity, when the S&P can hit multi-year highs even as the 10 year drops below 1.90%, something which in the pre-New Normal would be completely impossible. We wish luck to anyone "trading" a market (read trading alongside Central Bank X, with momentum escalated courtesy of Algo Y, regulated by the SEC no less) which is now pricing in extreme deflation and inflation at the same time, or, simply said, much more QE from the Chairman, record EUR Brent be damned. Oh, and with crude (in USD) back on track to surpass $110, we can't wait for the Department of Truth to tell us how February consumer confidence is literally off the charts.