The other shoe is dropping? but will pad the hurt by printing money...

The other shoe (from my column a while ago), seems to be dropping.....

Usually central banks have three options available to repay debt for which they don't have money- print, default, restructure. So when these banks owe debt denominated in their own currency- say a 100 Euros and they only have 50 Euros, then either they can just print another 50 Euros, or they can refuse to pay, or they can say how about we pay you 50 today and 10 in the future and let's call it even.
Now, if both banks choose to "print" (print in quotation marks since they are buying bad bonds but effectively they are printing money to buy those bonds.)

I haven't gathered much data, I am just trying to simply think through the options facing OTHER central banks (debt and assets)/Sovereign funds ( assets)- who need to hold these "stronger" currencies and cannot simply trade them nimbly.
Earlier in the week, when we all were digging a grave for EUR (political confusion means economic death and EUR definitely has more political confusion than USD). It seemed that we will be left with only ONE panic currency to hold- USD. As these central banks and sovereign funds get out of the Euro or just stop buying it , it would be bad for the Euro. Rescuing Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain etc. (high debt) countries would place a burden on German taxpayers who won't like handing Greeks their money.
Now the ECB has announced a Trillion dollar rescue package and the Euro has bounced back from 1.25 levels back to 1.30 very quickly.
So now we might see ECB seek guidance from the Fed on how to go about buying up every single asset. A few things emerge

1) The EM banks/Sovereign funds have two currencies following quant easing. We will see commodities becoming more expensive since we buy commodities in a currency and that currency is being printed and hence losing value
2) Naturally this is the same as saying higher inflation
3) Mediocre/Low growth. With quant easing I fear that the "weaker" companies won' learn they are weak quickly enough and they will continue to live in a zombie state (see Japan).
3) Higher levels of govt. regulation and control over the markets
4) Lower levels of shadow lending may be the desire (and the high levels of govt regulation will do that) but the banks will continue to be the whipping boys. So lower trading profits from banks
5) Consumers, esp US, are still saving too little and spending too much. I think that will change somewhat as we see lower number of credit cards and home equity loans in their pockets. Thus there may be some enforced savings. Lower student loans.
6) The houses that they bought and are underwater will continue to be so and these consumers won't be as mobile since they don't want to write off their houses. Lower labor mobility, high debt burden - worse labor markets.
7) There will be repeated small panics as some situation or the other (unforeseen as usual) emerges.
8) Haven't thought through the stock market situation. For now I remain bearish for medium term, with choppiness and intermittent panics and rallies - many banks will now NOT want to be short gamma, so expect gamma to be bid up. Vega goes bid too. The reason to not be bearish is high inflation. I do think (see above) high inflation is coming and expected inflation may be a common driver up of commodities stocks as whole. However, UNexpected inflation will obviously drive up commodities but I am not sure about stocks- there may be an interesting trade of long and short baskets of commodity owning and consuming stocks.

Funds withdrawn from long dollar and US equity positions

• Reading the headlines below it seems investors want to be short USD and short USD equities while investing in other foreign equities and US Bonds. The thinking must be that a second shot of Fed stimulus awaits! If so, corporate bonds (Fed made a killing on AIG bonds as the risk aversion dies) will do well AND the dollar will continue to go south.

• If you want to send your money to India and ride the carry train (long INRUSD) not a bad idea.

• I also find it interesting that ETFs continue to become more popular. Wonder if small hedge funds are using them more (since banks are tightening and the easy money to hedge funds may be drying up) or individual investors are.

Fund Flow News Below

1. Bond funds (+$24.6 billion) padded their coffers in December, while stock and mixed-equity funds (-$2.1 billion) and money market funds (-$7.7 billion) were in the red for the conventional funds business.
2. - However, ETFs experienced inflows for both major macro groups: bond ETFs garnered $3.4 billion while stock and mixed-equity ETFs attracted $21.3 billion.
3. - Investors continued to shun USDE Funds in December, redeeming a net $10.3 billion from the group. However, the other equity macro-groups caught investors' attention, drawing in a combined $8.2 billion.
4. - Mixed-Equity Funds (+$3.8 billion) attracted the largest net inflows of Lipper's four equity macro-classifications for the first month in four.
5. - A strengthening dollar and minor concerns over the extended run-up in world markets weighed marginally on World Equity Funds' flows, but the macro-group still attracted net inflows ($2.8 billion) for the ninth consecutive month.