The Weekend Wrapup 9.17.11

Americas:

• Stocks were up in the US with DOW up 76 points to 0.7% while the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ both climbed 0.6%. Latin America also had a good week with Brazil’s Bovespa climbing 1.5% on the Real’s steady decline, same with Mexico’s MEXBOL, which is also up 1.5% for the week. Meanwhile to the north, Canada’s TSX fell 1%, supposedly thanks to RIM.

• While August manufacturing numbers were a little better, practically every other figure was disappointing: jobless claims rose by 11,000 to 428,000 – its highest since June, CPI spiked to 3.8% year on year, reports are saying that foreclosures are set to increase, and all the while consumer confidence as well as spending are tracking lower, hurting sales. Really curious what the short term bulls think is going to happen.

Europe:

• European indices also surprised to the upside with the DAX up 1.2%, the FTSE up 0.80%, while the CAC and the IBEX were up 0.3% and 0.1% respectively.

• Greece has lived to default another day, the Germans however have been giving serious thought to kicking them out when push comes to shove and are now preparing for the worst. The rest of the EU nations however are still in la la land, thinking that their actions will somehow rescue that beach resort from inevitable doom. We’ll see how that works out for them.

• Deposits in European banks, especially Greek and Irish banks, have dropped significantly lately as everyone from savers to large funds pull out assets from the EU. Old news yes but at current levels it seems that their financial institutions are relying solely on the ECB to feed lending their needs, leaving the central bank with very little cushion to handle all the shitty assets since a huge chunk of the collateral they’re getting are crappy sovereign bonds. If shit hits the fan who do you think will pay for all of this? Hey Germany, howzit goin?

Asia:

• Asia also had a great week with all their indices soaring from severe lows. The Nikkei was up 2%, the Kospi almost 4%, Hong Kong also rose 2% while Shanghai, Singapore, and Australia were up 0.4%, 1%, and 2% respectively.

• China might give banks the greenlight to securitize assets to ease liquidity as bad debts in the region are starting to pile up. Not surprising, most of these bad debts seem to be from local authorities who may or not have built massive ghost towns but who really knows the scale of these things anyway? Nevertheless, if this pushes through it could be a sure sign of what Chanos keeps rambling about. Meanwhile, a leak from Beijing hinted that the Chinese are set to “liquidate” some of their Treasury holdings to buy up stocks in AAPL, BA, and INTC. This brings up a lot of questions but most importantly, was this really a leak or was it something to scare the Ben Bernank?

• Lastly, India hikes up interest rates again as inflation is still a major issue in the BRIC nation.

That’s enough for me today, here are my clips of the week.

Was a fan of the Spartacus series’ and since Andy Whitfield passed away last week (my prayers to his family), I figured I’d post a few of his awesome scenes from the series.

And if you haven't seen this yet, here's the trailer for season 3:

Thoughts on the new guy?

Enjoy your weekend WSO.