China’s Bubble Warning, New Home Paradox, Gold Production Sea Change, Vancouver UpdatPublished: July 20, 2009 by RssFeed The 5 min. Forecast
July 20, 2009 11:05 AM by Addison Wiggin & Ian Mathias
 "[We] must control the risk of real estate loans," said a mystery banker. “In the first half of the year, our country's banking loans expanded rapidly… but the loans growth has led to accumulated risks also increasing." Our man of the moment said his banking sector had become “not prudent and impulsive” in issuing loans for new housing projects, many of which have falsified their capital levels to meet current standards. He urged lenders to “strengthen risk management” right way, before they loan themselves into poor credit positions.So who is he? Robert Shiller, who just recently suggested another housing bubble could be in the mix? Or maybe some vintage Ben Bernanke, circa 2007? Nope… Liu Mingkang, the head of China’s version of the FDIC, said the above over the weekend at a conference in Beijing. China bulls take heed. And at the risk of belaboring the obvious -- he’s Chinese. We know what kind of exigency would get an American regulator to speak out against a bubble in the making. We imagine it’s far more politically dangerous for a member of the Chinese government to publicly go against the grain.  Back in America, the housing market rejoices: Housing starts climbed an unexpected 3.6% in June. According to the latest from the Commerce Department, builders broke ground on new homes at an annual rate of 582,000 in June, well above the Street’s expectations and the “best” month for housing starts since November. Curiously, single-family homes led the way, with a 14% building boom from the month before. That’s the biggest one-month gain since 2004.Of course, this is a “signal that the housing market was improving” in June, as The New York Times suggests. But we dug up a longer-term chart of housing starts this morning that didn’t inspire as much confidence. Starts may have come up from the deep blue abyss, but we’re yet to emerge from uncharted waters   And who says more housing starts are a good thing? We may be market simpletons, but we’re under the impression home prices are falling because demand is exceptionally weak and supply is exceptionally high. So explain to us again how adding more inventory to the 3.8 million existing homes on the market helps stop the bleeding. Over 1.53 million homeowners were in the foreclosure process in the first half of 2009. That’s an all-time high, said RealtyTrac late last week -- and up 9% from the last half of 2008 and up 15% from the same time last year.Around 1.9 million individual properties are in some form of foreclosure, or one in every 84 U.S. properties. And we’re adding new homes at an annual rate of 582,000? Really, we must be missing something this morning.  The stock market is still giddy over recent earnings surprises. The S&P 500 finished last week up 7% after companies like Intel, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, IBM and Citigroup all beat earnings.Today the market looks poised to finish in the black again. CIT, the commercial lender we discussed Friday looks like it might live to fight another day. The lender managed a last-minute debt-equity deal with bondholders that will give them another $3 billion to play with. (Look for this crisis to repeat in a couple weeks.) Still, the market has dodged a bullet, and is up about 0.5% as we write.  “In last week’s market, you could almost feel portfolio managers reacting to the prospect of missing a rally,” writes Dan Amoss, a former money manager himself. “Career risk drives many irrational investing decisions. And missing out on a rally is a cardinal sin for portfolio managers. This goes a long way toward explaining this week’s rally.“The consensus seems to be looking for a return to something resembling the environment before the credit crisis. They’ll be waiting for a long time. Sure, there are still lots of wealthy people. But the essence of the financial crisis has to do with most consumers and businesses stretching their budgets and capital spending plans in unsustainable fashion. The next few years will reverse this trend, and we’ll continue to see economic development in emerging markets maintain pressure on commodity prices. “Mr. Market is now testing the conviction of the bears. But through the rest of 2009, the momentum favors the bears. The stock market is far below its peak, but this is justified by long-term fundamentals. In fact, the recent rally has priced in very rosy earnings for many sectors and stocks, including our short ideas. “Remain patient with your short positions. This rally will end soon enough, probably by the time the fourth branch of government -- the mega banks -- are done reporting their paper trading profits and we learn more about the bleak outlook for earnings in the real economy.”  Four more banks failed this weekend. Two in California, one in Georgia and another in South Dakota got the FDIC kibosh late Friday. That makes 57 failed financials for 2009, at an FDIC cost of over $13.4 billion. After a long flight from Baltimore to Vancouver, we were able to move through Canadian immigration last night with relative ease, but many Czechs and Mexicans were suddenly not welcome. Just another sign of the times… the Canadian government recently legislated rules that prohibit any Mexican or Czechoslovakian from entering Canada without a visa.Canadians say political and economic strife in both nations has caused a wave of immigrants seeking refugee status, many of which are bogus. So the Canadian government drafted the law last Monday and enacted it on Tuesday… Canadian diplomats in Mexico City have been ripping their hair out ever since:  The scrum for last-minute visas at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City Heh, nothing stokes a free market like sudden and severe travel restrictions.  We’re in Canada this week for our Investment Symposium (more below in the P.S.) and got a visceral reminder of the loonie’s recent strength. 98 cents to the U.S. dollar at the airport currency exchange! No thanks… we’ll wait till we stumble upon a bank.The Canadian dollar is once again rapidly approaching parity. The ol’ loonie is officially at 90 cents today, up a full cent since Friday and about a nickel in July. Most of the loonie’s strength can be attributed to dollar weakness. Since breaking through that historic barrier at 80 last week, the dollar index has been in steady decline. It’s at 78.9 today, nearly a two-month low.  Oil’s recent stabilization has been helping out the Canadian dollar, too. Light sweet crude traded as high as $64 a barrel today, a $4 bump from last week’s low.  Gold is performing nicely as the U.S. dollar falls. The spot price is up $20 from Friday’s low, to $955 an ounce. “The first thing to understand,” writes Mr. Byron King, “as an old geology professor at Harvard once told me, is that ‘gold is where you find it.’ And the second thing to understand is that no matter where you look, gold is hard to find -- and getting harder.“In the past decade, gold-related exploration efforts and expenditures have increased dramatically. I’ve seen numbers adding up to tens of billions of dollars poured by mining companies into gold exploration. “But despite the best efforts of the global mining industry, world gold production has DECREASED since early in this decade. Take a look at the chart below, depicting world gold production 1850-2008.  “I love this chart. I could spend all day discussing it. For example, look at the very steep rise in gold output during the 1930s. That was during the depths of the worldwide Great Depression. In both the U.S./Canada (blue area), and the rest of the world (gray area), people were digging more and more gold. The Soviets (purple area) increased their gold output too, courtesy of Joseph Stalin and his Gulag. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. Will that sort of history repeat this time around?” If it does, will you be ready? Check out Byron’s favorite gold plays here.  “To back up Mr. Shiller,” writes a reader in response to Robert Shiller’s call that the new wave of “cheap” homes might cause another housing bubble, “I was Skyping a friend in Phoenix last week, and they were all excited that they just bought a foreclosed home for a ‘steal,’ with an 80/20 FNMA-backed mortgage. Not five minutes later, I read the 5 article regarding that the Phoenix market is still dropping. I still don't think that many people (my friend included) get it that prices can still drop, and that just a 10% drop wipes out almost all their equity, since they will have to pay some sort of 6% commission. I myself have seen a greater than 20% drop on my very expensive house in Atlanta, costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars.”My wife is an agent, and she has counted three (yes, three) home sales in our area in six months. Two of them were foreclosures. The unsold homes continue to accumulate, and the market is moving toward ‘the only sale is a short sale.’ I live in Augusta, and my prayers go to my neighbor who was just transferred up to an area outside of Detroit. I can see the wealth destruction personally, and can only imagine the nationwide ramifications.” Thanks for reading, Ian Mathias The 5 Min. Forecast P.S. It’s game time here at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. We’ve made the transcontinental trip yet again for our annual Investment Symposium. Today’s the calm before the storm… we’ll spend most of the day writing, readying the conference area and, hopefully, enjoying the very pleasant weather. If you’re here, feel free to check into the event later this afternoon on the second floor. We’ll be there -- be sure to say hello. If you couldn’t make it, stick with The 5. We’ll be bringing you the best of each day, and even a way for you to listen in on the conference from the comfort of your home. And if you’re a proud member of the Twitterati, be sure to pay special attention to The Daily Reckoning’s feed this week. Our man Greg Grillot, one of the great behind-the-scenes minds at Agora Financial, will tweeting event highlights and personal insights all week. P.P.S. Today’s event highlight will come later tonight, at the first-ever meeting of the Richebacher Society. We’ll gather on the rooftop lounge of the hotel for a meeting of the minds and general merriment. Addison will speak, as well as the current steward of The Richebacher Letter, Rob Parenteau. We’ll give the finer details tomorrow. In the meantime, check out Rob’s 2009-2010 forecast.     
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