每日灌水--道听途说

feelucky

［国泰君安］行业景气复苏的季节性干扰不可忽视

我们一直很关注中观层面数据。从 4月份以来，行业数据也在中观层面验证经济复苏：钢价止跌回升，线材钢企产能利用率恢复至 90%；汽车产销两旺，有色金属中的铜、铝价格又再延升势，小金属价格也有不错的表现；全国水泥均价出现上涨；煤炭库存下降，价格获得支撑。我们认同中国经济已经走上复苏路，但需要提醒市场过度乐观情绪的是：部分行业强劲的量价数据存在季节性因素的干扰。二季度是北半球传统的生产和消费旺季，加上一季度的春节因素，使得二季度环比增速表现很好。如果笼统的将季节性因素都归结为经济复苏的带动，三季度环比增速的大幅回落将造成市场过度乐观预期的调整。

　  我们跟踪了 98-09年重要商品产量数据。煤炭、钢材、水泥、铜铝、化纤、汽车、工程机械、家电等，从平均 10年的季度产量环比增速来看，产销量旺季都在二季度。发电量、成品油、房地产的季节性表现不是非常明显。

feelucky

5月22号黄金日图波浪分析

时间:2009-05-22 12:37:48 | 作者:曹解 | 来源:The News Angle

黄金日图分析

日线图面趋势：看涨。
主要价位：918.15 和950-60 。

黄金终于如预期的上涨到目标区域950-60。目前价格在寻找红色浪3）的顶部。做多的投资者可以耐心等待红色浪4的回调时机买入。一旦波4 ）开始显示其不会低于波1 ）高点，即918.15区域，那么我们计算的波浪图就将成立。

feelucky

Geithner Calls for ‘Very Substantial’ Change in Wall Street Pay
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By Rich Miller

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for major changes in compensation practices at financial companies and said the Obama administration’s plan to help realign pay with performance will be rolled out by mid-June.

“I don’t think we can go back to the way it was,” Geithner said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” to be aired tonight and over the weekend. “We’re going to need to see very, very substantial change.”

He said that Wall Street’s pay practices, which include big year-end bonuses, encouraged excessive risk-taking and helped precipitate the financial crisis. What’s needed is a set of broad standards that financial supervisors can use to make sure that doesn’t happen again, he said.

The administration’s pay plan would be part of a proposed comprehensive overhaul of financial regulation aimed at both protecting consumers and reducing vulnerability to crises. Geithner has previously ruled out setting specific caps on pay and declined to infringe compensation contracts already agreed.

In a wide-ranging interview, the Treasury chief declined to say whether the administration would propose stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some of its powers as part of the plan and dismissed suggestions of a rift with Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair.

Geithner, 47, shied away from declaring the financial crisis over, saying that credit is still tight and interest rates are still high for many business borrowers. He forecast that would improve gradually as companies and consumers reduced their debt levels to more financially manageable levels.

Recovery Process

“That’s going to make the process of recovery somewhat slower than it would otherwise be,” he added.

The Treasury chief said it was a “real concern” that some banks that had received money from the government would pay it back too quickly. To discourage that from happening, banks that want to repay must show they have a lot more capital than they need and are able to raise money from the private sector “on a substantial scale” without government help, he said.

Geithner told lawmakers earlier this week that every $1 of capital at banks can generate more than $8 of lending. Still, he said in the interview that the Treasury won’t require that banks commit to specific increases in their lending as a precondition for paying the government back.

‘Deep Trouble’

“Lots of countries have got themselves in deep trouble with policies that force their banks to lend,” he said. “That’s likely to lead to a weaker, less efficient banking system, a less efficient economy.”

The government has distributed almost $300 billion in capital to about 600 U.S. banks and financial firms under the $700 billion financial rescue package approved by Congress last year. A number of lenders, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley, have applied to repay the government funds.

Geithner is under pressure to act quickly to rein in the financial services industry.

“No one bails out little grocery stores,” U.S. Representative Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York, told the Treasury chief at a hearing in Washington yesterday.

As part of its efforts to combat the crisis, the Treasury is putting together a Public-Private Investment Program to purchase as much as $1 trillion in distressed mortgage-backed securities and other assets from the banks. The partnerships would use $75 billion to $100 billion of government funds.

Bank Pressure

Geithner played down expectations that the program would ramp up quickly once it was launched and declined to say whether banks should be pressured to participate if it doesn’t, as the FDIC’s Bair has suggested.

“We want to get these programs in place and see how they work,” he said. “They can be helpful and valuable in putting a floor under things, even if they don’t see a lot of early participation.”

Geithner said the credit crisis reflected “systematic failures” in financial oversight that would require “pretty significant changes across the board.” Among the changes the administration is considering IS the establishment of an independent agency tasked with consumer protection.

The SEC may be stripped of some of its powers under the regulatory restructuring plan being put together by Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, people familiar with the matter have said. In one scenario, the agency would lose its oversight of mutual funds to a new agency for policing consumer-finance products.

SEC Resources

Geithner praised SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and said he would support giving her agency more resources where needed. He declined to say whether he thought the SEC should lose oversight of mutual funds as part of the overhaul.

He also said the administration is working with top lawmakers to craft a new regulator that would police risk across the financial system. He said no judgments have been made yet about who would fill that task, or what the roles of the Federal Reserve and Treasury will be. A “white paper” on the subject is due in several weeks, he said.

The Treasury chief brushed off suggestions that he and Summers were at odds with the FDIC’s Bair and that the two didn’t consider her a team player. He called Bair “very creative” and said that he had worked very closely with her.

“One of her great strengths is she’s a strong advocate for her agency and strong advocate of her points of view,” Geithner said. “That’s the kind of thing that everybody wants around the table, including Larry Summers.”

The Treasury chief belittled charges by former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican leaders that President Barack Obama was adopting a socialist agenda. While markets can’t solve all America’s problems, the administration recognizes their importance, he said.

“It’s the least plausible charge anybody could say,” Geithner said. “The president understands how important markets and businesses are to the future prosperity of the U.S.”

feelucky

Geithner: We Won't Lose Our AAA
Posted May 22, 2009 08:52am EDT by Joe Weisenthal in Investing, Recession, Banking, Housing
Related: dia, spy, xlf

From The Business Insider, May 22, 2009:

The potential downgrade of the UK's sovereign debt rating may actually be lucky for us if it wakes us up to the fact that big, modern countries with heavy debt spending will get dinged.

For one day at least, the news forced a government official to address the question.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Tim Geithner promised the US wouldn't let its debt go further out of hand:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner committed to cutting the budget deficit as concern about deteriorating U.S. creditworthiness deepened, and ascribed a sell-off in Treasuries to prospects for an economic recovery.

“It’s very important that this Congress and this president put in place policies that will bring those deficits down to a sustainable level over the medium term,” Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. He added that the target is reducing the gap to about 3 percent of gross domestic product, from a projected 12.9 percent this year.

Note that Obama did make some similar comments last week, about how the expanding deficit was tantamount to mortgaging our children's future, and that we could see spiraling interest rates if foreigners became hesitant to fund our profligacy.

But unless the government is actually willing to make deep hard cuts, there's not much hope in cutting the deficit significantly. Right now the strategy is about hoovering up quarters that fell beneath the couch cushions (tax cheats, etc.)

Oh, and as for those weakening Treasuries. Geithner says not to worry:

Geithner, 47, also said that the rise in yields on Treasury securities this year “is a sign that things are improving” and that “there is a little less acute concern about the depth of the recession.”

Yes, in normal times that would usually be the interpretation.

Meanwhile, Felix Salmon has some sane comments on the US AAA rating, and why you shouldn't lose much sleep over it either way:

But let's get some perspective here. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed down 1.5% and 1.9% respectively, which by recent standards is a perfectly normal move, well within the range of what you'd expect on any given day. What's more, S&P putting the UK on watch for a possible downgrade is a decision prompted by economic fundamentals. Any such move with the US, by contrast, would be entirely political, and in any event would say much more about S&P than it did about Treasuries.

The most important thing to remember here, however, is that ratings agencies don't matter any more. They lost their credibility when structured finance blew up, and the number of people buying Treasuries because S&P says that they're triple-A rated is exactly zero.

There are lots of triple-A rated securities; people buy Treasuries because they're liquid.

feelucky

谢国忠：是放慢货币供应的时候了
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谢国忠：当前危机的教训对中国政策走向无意义，中国市场远未变成“太自由”


    【背景】工信部预测，下半年工业增长达10%。宋国青称中国经济迅速回升。

　　5月21日，工业和信息化部运行监测协调局、中国社科院工业经济研究所联合发布的《中国工业经济运行2009年春季报告》提出，下半年中国工业可望达到10%以上的增长水平。

　　近日，北京大学国家发展研究院教授、高华证券特别顾问宋国青，在高华证券和高盛集团“2009中国宏观经济展望”电话会上表示，中国经济已经出现了迅速回升，伴随经济回升、货币增长，今年四季度政府进行某种程度的宏观调控的可能性很大，对通货膨胀不必过多担心。

　　《财经》杂志特约经济学家谢国忠认为，中国应该着眼于提高效率来保持高增长，而且，已经到了该收紧货币的时候了，信贷再放松可能会导致恶性通货膨胀。

　谢国忠认为，中国应该更多地着眼于提高供应方的效率，来保持高增长。未来十年里，全球经济增长很可能比过去慢很多。中国需要更高的效率，才能达到同样的增速。效率的提高不能依赖固定资产扩张。过去的问题是规模小，设备陈旧。现在，这两点都不再是问题，中国大部分工业似乎都是装备精良，但苦于产能过剩。

　　今后，效率的提高是一个系统或者激励问题，而不是投资问题。因为是微调而不是蛮力使生产率提高，是市场的力量而不是政府干预能提升效率。

　　谢国忠指出，现在中国的宏观经济政策由流动性主导，大量流动性被注入企业和政府部门。无论效率如何，更多的消费会使经济恢复；如果通过低效率的投资来达到同样的效果，会需要更多的消费。当然，如果没有什么不良后果，印钞票能解决任何经济问题：如果不奏效，只需再多印一些。但是，增加流动性或者印钞票会导致通货膨胀。投资效率越低，通货膨胀出现得越早。由于全球化和IT业的收益已经被吸收，现在，通货膨胀更容易出现。

　　谢国忠认为，中国有很大的机动空间：政府债务低，银行系统存贷款比例低，家庭部门杠杆率低。当然，公司部门的高杠杆值得担忧。国家有强大的购买力，这在巨额外汇储备和持续的贸易顺差中反映出来。如今可选择的办法反映了过去在提高生产率和出口能力方面的成功。但是，这两方面都遇到了困难，因此，中国应该谨慎地将资金投向那些能带来未来收益的项目上，而不是投在仅仅能提高即期GDP的非生产性项目上。

　　即使中国有足够的财力，也应该谨慎花费，因为未来挣钱的难度加大了，谢国忠指出，很容易就能提高生产率和出口能力的日子已经一去不复返了。因此，中国应该尽早收紧货币政策。在2008年12月至2009年4月五个月里，中国的银行信贷增长了20%。如果保持这一速度，信贷年增长率将达到 50%。上一次信贷如此快速增长是在1992年，它导致了失控的通货膨胀。如果通货膨胀再次出现，将比上一次更难解决。上世纪90年代中期，中国实行紧缩货币政策以控制通胀时，出口的快速增长维持了经济增长。这次就没有那么幸运了。

    谢国忠认为，如果通货膨胀出现而经济仍然低迷，政府可能不愿充分收紧来冷却通胀，这可能导致长时间的高通胀、低增长。对中国、美国和世界来讲，滞胀的风险很大。最初信贷激增对稳定经济是必要的，但是，持续下去可能带来更多的负面影响。“为今年GDP多增长一两个百分点，甘冒出现恶性通货膨胀的风险，是不值得的。”

　　他建议，在今年剩余的时间内，银行信贷应由非常宽松转向中性。中性意味着银行信贷与GDP的比率应该保持不变。例如，现在的银行信贷是37万亿人民币，是GDP的1.2倍。如果名义GDP每月增加2000亿人民币，今年增长8%，那么，银行信贷应该每月增长2400亿人民币。4月新增贷款从此前四个月的月均1.4万亿，下降到6400万亿，但相对中性的标准来讲，仍然太高。货币收紧还有很长的路要走。

　　现在过多的流动性刺激可能导致今后的通货膨胀。对中国来讲，是放慢货币供应的时候了。政策着眼点应该转向扩大家庭部门的消费，提升供应方的效率。否则，在接下来的数年里，中国将要承受低增长和高通胀。

　　许多人认为，美国和发达国家发生的事情表现出了市场经济坏的一面，因此，中国不应该再朝市场经济发展。谢国忠表示，这是从当前的金融危机中得出的错误结论。市场仍然是激发企业用最低的成本交付最好的产品的最好工具。其他所有的体制都已经在促进繁荣上失败了。然而，市场要正常运转，也需要监管。比如，需要有食品安全标准，确保行业正常发展。监管的主要目的，应该是使市场更有效率地运转，而不是取代市场。

　　他指出，一些经济体，像美国、英国，十年前过多地放松了管制，为当前的危机埋下了隐患。中国经济则是被政府过度监管和控制。当前危机的教训对中国的政策走向没有意义，中国的市场要变成“太自由”，还有很长的路要走。■

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