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Some people are confused by what I mean when I say that rates will rise as we move into the sovereign debt crisis, which will pick up steam in 2017 moving into 2020. We are NOT talking about central banks raising rates; we are looking at the FREE MARKET. As people realize that government debt comes with a risk, capital will begin to shift into the private assets. The market will not buy all the government debt that appears ready to explode. With central banks moving negative on short-term rates, smart money will wake up and flip into equities. If equities break-even, that is better than a guaranteed loss in government bonds. In Japan, the 10 year rate just went NEGATIVE so you want to park money with the government for 10 years and pay them to hold it?

Plus, the risk with government bonds will be that they can convert even short-term paper, of say 90 days, to 10-year bonds. Governments have done this before. As banks begin to get in trouble again, smart money will try to get off the grid. Banks will have to pay more for money as those keeping money in banks move out.

The FREE MARKET will force rates higher. Sure, central banks can keep short-term rates NEGATIVE as long as they buy the government debt. But this cannot continue indefinitely. The FREE MARKET will always win. This is how governments fail. The game remains on as long as there are bids at their auctions to sell new debt. What happens when there is NO BID? That is how the FREE MARKET will raise rates. Smart capital will move from public to private debt and equities in addition to gold and real estate on a VERY SELECTED basis.

The Cycle of War turned up in 2014. We have seen an escalation in international war (Russia-Ukraine) and in the Middle East while civil unrest spreads everywhere. This trend will pick up also in 2017 and move into 2020.

What’s Holding Back the World Economy?

February 10, 2016

What’s Holding Back the World Economy?

NEW YORK – Seven years after the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, the world economy continued to stumble in 2015. According to the United Nations’ report World Economic Situation and Prospects 2016, the average growth rate in developed economies has declined by more than 54% since the crisis. An estimated 44 million people are unemployed in developed countries, about 12 million more than in 2007, while inflation has reached its lowest level since the crisis.

More worryingly, advanced countries’ growth rates have also become more volatile. This is surprising, because, as developed economies with fully open capital accounts, they should have benefited from the free flow of capital and international risk sharing – and thus experienced little macroeconomic volatility. Furthermore, social transfers, including unemployment benefits, should have allowed households to stabilize their consumption.

But the dominant policies during the post-crisis period – fiscal retrenchment and quantitative easing (QE) by major central banks – have offered little support to stimulate household consumption, investment, and growth. On the contrary, they have tended to make matters worse.

In the US, quantitative easing did not boost consumption and investment partly because most of the additional liquidity returned to central banks’ coffers in the form of excess reserves. The Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006, which authorized the Federal Reserve to pay interest on required and excess reserves, thus undermined the key objective of QE.

Indeed, with the US financial sector on the brink of collapse, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 moved up the effective date for offering interest on reserves by three years, to October 1, 2008. As a result, excess reserves held at the Fed soared, from an average of $200 billion during 2000-2008 to $1.6 trillion during 2009-2015. Financial institutions chose to keep their money with the Fed instead of lending to the real economy, earning nearly $30 billion – completely risk-free – during the last five years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Negative Interest Rates Destroying World Economy: “Doom-and-Gloom Outlook for Banks in Europe”

February 9, 2016

Negative Interest Rates Destroying World Economy: “Doom-and-Gloom Outlook for Banks in Europe”

global-reset---shadow-banking

Trying to simply hold onto the standard that you’ve got has become a new normal for financial challenges.

Equity erodes away when interest rates go negative… then everything starts to sour.

China’s economy and stock market are effectively in the toilet, or poised to further collapse the next time anything big happens in Europe or the United States, and perhaps any part of the world.

The U.S. stock market has become jumpy and prone to collapse as well, and all major markets are now global, and trip up anytime the string tied around their ankle is yanked from across the ocean. And collapsing oil prices are adding huge pressures to everything.

Now Europe banks are at the brink. Will it be enough to set off the major crisis everyone has been warning about?

Via MarketWatch:

Europe’s bank index has posted its longest weekly string of losses since 2008 […] the Stoxx Europe 600 Banks Index has logged six straight weeks of declines.

Lackluster profits and negative interest rates, have prompted investors to dump shares in the sector that was touted as one of the best investment ideas just a few months ago.

[…]

The negative interest rates set by the ECB means that banks effectively have to pay to have cash on their balance sheets, while at the same time getting squeezed on their net interest margins. Debt levels are already really high on the continent, which means further loan growth is expected to be low, he said.

Negative interest rates, a result of the overkill of quantitative easing at the Federal Reserve, is plenty enough rope for all involved to hang themselves. The desperate and poor will fall as a result of borrowing too much on easy credit, and the richer and better off will fall as a result of declining returns and falling standards for income.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Central Bank Soap Opera Hides Financial Globalization

February 9, 2016

Central Bank Soap Opera Hides Financial Globalization

Stock markets suspect Federal Reserve has interest rate jitters … Hints that the Fed won’t raise interest rates in March are proving to be good news for miners and oil producers’ share prices The Federal Reserve’s William Dudley said further strengthening in the dollar could have ‘significant consequences’ for the health of the US economy. – UK Guardian

Blame it on the dollar!

The Federal Reserve hiked a tiny bit and markets around the world plunged. This is the big story that implies the further loss of Fed credibility.

But there is an even bigger one that we’ll discuss at the end of this article.

Let’s continue with this Guardian analysis. The reporting is along the lines we would expect: We learn that market players have come to the logical conclusion that the Fed is not going to raise interest rates again any time soon.

Or even if they do “raise” them, they’ll have a negligible impact on real rates.

On Thursday, large stocks moved up and reports circulated that Fed officials were continuing to have “second thoughts” about a series of rate hikes. Here, more from the Guardian:

William Dudley, a top Fed official, said on Wednesday that monetary conditions had tightened since December’s quarter-point rise and rate setters would have to take note. Further strengthening in the dollar, added Dudley, could have “significant consequences” for the health of the US economy. Translation: the Fed probably won’t raise in March.

The dollar then sold off yesterday, while commodity prices rose, especially the share prices of miners and oil and gas producers. It was quite a clever statement, helping move the dollar down and the market up.

Even more importantly, it began the process of Fed damage control. The Fed hike had not merely bashed stocks, it had buttressed the dollar.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Three Reasons to Be Worried About the Economy

February 8, 2016

Three Reasons to Be Worried About the Economy

On January 12, America’s central planner-in-chief gave his State of the Union address. The president promised nothing less than to feed the hungry, create jobs, shape the earth’s climate, and make everyone a college graduate. There’s nothing new here, though. We’ve heard variations of this silly song and dance every year under both Democrats and Republicans. The president lambasted naysayers as fear-mongers that were too partisan to admit we have a booming economy. The fact that the Dow Jones cratered roughly 9 percent in the same thirty-day period President Obama gave his address did nothing to quell Obama’s optimism about America’s future. In fact, he labeled the US economy “the strongest and most durable in the world.”

Despite our leader’s unwavering confidence in America’s fortunes, a quick peak under the hood reveals a pretty grim state of American commerce.

1. The Federal Reserve and US Government Have Warped the American Economy

In just the past decade, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has grown from roughly $800 billion to over $4 trillion. Our central bankers engaging in massive asset purchases to pummel interest rates downward is not news to anyone. We’ve been living in a world of falling interest rates since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet, few mainstream economists have taken a good look at the destructive effects of this unprecedented monetary expansion. The calamitous distortions Fed policy has created for actors on both Main Street and Wall Street since 2008 have laid the groundwork for yet another crash.

Low interest rates stemming from a growing money supply are the only reason the US government has managed to service its gargantuan debt in recent years. The Congressional Budget Office itself has pointed out that even a slight rise in interest rates could potentially result in anywhere from $700 to $900 billion in annual tax payments just to service the interest on our debt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The War On Savers And The 200 Rulers Of Global Finance

February 5, 2016

The War On Savers And The 200 Rulers Of Global Finance

There has been an economic coup d’état in America and most of the world. We are now ruled by about 200 unelected central bankers, monetary apparatchiks and their minions and megaphones on Wall Street and other financial centers.

Unlike Senator Joseph McCarthy, I actually do have a list of their names. They need to be exposed, denounced, ridiculed, rebuked and removed.

The first 30 includes Janet Yellen, William Dudley, the other governors of the Fed and its senior staff. The next 10 includes Jan Hatzius, chief economist of Goldman Sachs, and his counterparts at the other major Wall Street banking houses.

Then there is the dreadful Draghi and the 25-member governing council of the ECB and still more senior staff. Ditto for the BOJ, BOE, Bank of Canada, Reserve Bank of Australia and even the People’s Printing Press of China. Also, throw in Christine Lagarde and the principals of the IMF and some scribblers at think tanks like Brookings. The names are all on Google!

Have you ever heard of Lael Brainard? She’s one of them at the Fed and very typical. That is, she’s never held an honest capitalist job in her life; she’s been a policy apparatchik at the Treasury, Brookings and the Fed ever since moving out of her college dorm room.

Now she’s doing her bit to prosecute the war on savers. She wants to keep them lashed to the zero bound—-that is, in penury and humiliation—–because of the madness happening to the Red Ponzi in China. Its potential repercussions, apparently, don’t sit so well with her:

Brainard expressed concern that stresses in emerging markets including China and slow growth in developed economies could spill over to the U.S.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hyperinflating Venezuela Used 36 Boeing 747 Cargo Planes To Deliver Its Worthless Bank Notes

February 5, 2016

Hyperinflating Venezuela Used 36 Boeing 747 Cargo Planes To Deliver Its Worthless Bank Notes

The weeks ago, when we showed “What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like: Venezuela Prepares For 720% Hyperinflation“, we said that after looking at a chart of Venezuela’s upcoming hyperinflation…

… a hyperinflation in which the soaring stock market has failed to keep pace with the collapsing currency, thereby mocking all erroneous thought experiments that under hyperinflation being long the stock market is a sure hedge to currency destruction…

… we joked that it is unclear just where the country will find all the paper banknotes it needs for all its new currency.

After all, central-bank data shows Venezuela more than doubled the supply of 100-, 50- and 2-bolivar notes in 2015 as it doubled monetary liquidity including bank deposits. Supply has grown even as Venezuela has fewer U.S. dollars to support new bolivars, a result of falling oil prices.

This question, as morbidly amusing as it may have been to us if not the local population, became particularly poginant yesterday, when for the first time, one US Dollar could purchase more than 1000 Venezuela Bolivars on the black market.

And, as if on cue, the WSJ answered. As it turns out we were not the only ones wondering how the devastated “socialist paradise” gets its exponentially collapsing paper currency, which in just the past month has lost 17% of its value.

The answer: 36 Boeing 747s.

From the WSJ:

Millions of pounds of provisions, stuffed into three-dozen 747 cargo planes, arrived here from countries around the world in recent months to service Venezuela’s crippled economy.

But instead of food and medicine, the planes carried another resource that often runs scarce here: bills of Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Global Economy’s New Abnormal

February 4, 2016

The Global Economy’s New Abnormal

NEW YORK – Since the beginning of the year, the world economy has faced a new bout of severe financial market volatility, marked by sharply falling prices for equities and other risky assets. A variety of factors are at work: concerns about a hard landing for the Chinese economy; worries that growth in the United States is faltering at a time when the Fed has begun raising interest rates; fears of escalating Saudi-Iranian conflict; and signs – most notably plummeting oil and commodity prices – of severe weakness in global demand.

And there’s more. The fall in oil prices – together with market illiquidity, the rise in the leverage of US energy firms and that of energy firms and fragile sovereigns in oil-exporting economies – is stoking fears of serious credit events (defaults) and systemic crisis in credit markets. And then there are the seemingly never-ending worries about Europe, with a British exit (Brexit) from the European Union becoming more likely, while populist parties of the right and the left gain ground across the continent.

These risks are being magnified by some grim medium-term trends implying pervasive mediocre growth. Indeed, the world economy in 2016 will continue to be characterized by a New Abnormal in terms of output, economic policies, inflation, and the behavior of key asset prices and financial markets.

So what, exactly, is it that makes today’s global economy abnormal?

First, potential growth in developed and emerging countries has fallen because of the burden of high private and public debts, rapid aging (which implies higher savings and lower investment), and a variety of uncertainties holding back capital spending. Moreover, many technological innovations have not translated into higher productivity growth, the pace of structural reforms remains slow, and protracted cyclical stagnation has eroded the skills base and that of physical capital.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Modern Finance: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone

February 3, 2016

Modern Finance: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone

In his book Other People’s Money: The Real Business of Finance, author John Kay quotes Lord Keynes’s idiom, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are generally distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” The men and women with authority over monetary matters are indeed mad. Mad enough to see interest rates, not as pricing the present versus the future, after all, the idea that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future is axiomatic.

No, the Fed’s crystal ball sees lenders paying for the privilege of going without the present use of their money so the largest debtor in history can continue to operate. In the just released “2016 Supervisory Scenarios for Annual Stress Tests Required under the Dodd-Frank Act Stress Testing Rules and the Capital Plan Rule” the Fed, in its Severe Adverse Scenario, foresees,

As a result of the severe decline in real activity and subdued inflation, short-term Treasury rates fall to negative ½ percent by mid-2016 and remain at that level through the end of the scenario. For the purposes of this scenario, it is assumed that the adjustment to negative short-term interest rates proceeds with no additional financial market disruptions. The 10-year Treasury yield drops to about ¼ percent in the first quarter of 2016…

Really, rates going negative would mean “no additional financial market disruptions?” In a world with somewhere between $700 trillion and $1.2 quadrillion in derivatives exposure nothing out of the ordinary would happen? Some will pooh pooh the big numbers because on a net basis the exposure isn’t even close to 1000 times 1.2 trillion. But, as Zero Hedge explains, “net immediately becomes gross when just one counterparty in the collateral chains fails – case in point, the Lehman and AIG failures and the resulting scramble to bailout the entire world which cost trillions in taxpayer funds.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gerald Celente: Get Prepped For Global Systemic Collapse

February 2, 2016

Gerald Celente: Get Prepped For Global Systemic Collapse

More ridiculous predictable market action today. The worse things become in the real world the more frantic the stupidity becomes. The American authorities are clearly terrified that their world role as hegemon is being threatened and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that your fears of war will turn out to be a reality. – John Embry

It was reported last week that a Government panel is recommending that all adults over the age of 18 should be screened for “depression” – LINK. Nothwithstanding the fact that the term “depression” is a subjective concept, it exemplifies the move in the Government to control the population. It’s a frightening movement toward Totalitarianism that has been in motion since the formation of the Federal Reserve and the ratification of the16th Amendment, giving the Federal Government authority to enact an income tax. Both events occurred in 1913.

Make no mistake about it, the Government panel’s recommendation, if it finds its way somehow through Congress, is an underhanded way for the Government to implement gun control. We can’t have depressed people running around with guns in their possession. In addition, there’s no doubt that one of the big drug or hospital corporations has devised some sort of “depression screening” protocol which generates very high margin profits. Even better if the testing is covered by Medicare and Medicaid so the taxpayers can fill yet another big trough from which corporate America feeds.

The irony in the Totalitarian creep of the Federal Government is that humans don’t like the idea that they can’t control their immediate lives and living environment. Thus, they want to believe with surprising adamance that their vote matters – that they can control the outcome of an election with their “participation” in the process. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rewardless Risk

February 2, 2016

Rewardless Risk

Faramir:	Then farewell! But if I should return, think better of me.
Denethor:	That depends on the manner of your return.

– J.R.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings” (1954)

I’m going full-nerd with the “Lord of the Rings” introduction to today’s Epsilon Theory note, but I think this scene — where Denethor, the mad Steward of Gondor, orders his son Faramir to take on a suicide mission against Sauron’s overwhelming forces — is the perfect way to describe what the Bank of Japan did last Thursday with their announcement of negative interest rates. The BOJ (and the ECB, and … trust me … the Fed soon enough) is the insane Denethor. The banks are Faramir. The suicide mission is making loans into a corporate sector levered to global trade as the forces of global deflation rage uncontrollably.

Negative rates are an intentional effort to weaken your own country’s banks. Negative rates are a punitive command: go out there and make more bad loans where risk is entirely uncompensated, or we will, in effect, fine you. The more bad loans you don’t make, the bigger the fine. Negative rates are only a bit worrying in today’s sputtering economies of Europe, Japan, and the US because the credit cycle has yet to completely roll over. But it is rolling over (read anything by Jeff Gundlach if you don’t believe me), it is rolling over everywhere, and when it really starts rolling over, any country with negative rates will find it to be significantly destabilizing for their banking sector.

There’s a reason that the Fed kept paying interest on bank reserves even in the darkest, most deflationary days of the Great Recession. Yes, it’s the Fed’s job to support full employment. Yes it’s the Fed’s job to maintain price stability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Negative Interest Rates Already in Fed’s Official Scenario

February 2, 2016

Negative Interest Rates Already in Fed’s Official Scenario

But forget QE-4.

The Germans, with Teutonic precision, call them “Punishment Interest.” Negative interest rates are spreading from the ECB’s negative deposit rate across the bond market and to some savings accounts in the Eurozone. The idea is to enrich existing bond holders and flog savers until their mood improves. Stock prices are allowed to get crushed by reality.

Negative interest rates destroy one of the most essential mechanisms in an economy: the pricing of risk. Investors end up taking huge risks with no reward. Many of them will get cleaned out down the road.

In Switzerland, punishment interest already causes “perverse unpredictable effects,” as mortgage rates have started to soar. It’s wreaking havoc in Denmark and Sweden. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz let the idea float that he’d unleash punishment interest to destroy the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Japan announced Friday morning – timed for maximum market effect – that it too would inflict negative interest rates on its subjects.

In the US, Ben Bernanke has been out there preaching to the choir about them. Over-indebted corporate America, except for the banks, would love this absurdity; it would allow them to actually make money off their mountain of debt.

“Potentially anything – including negative interest rates – would be on the table,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen told a House of Representatives committee in early November.

Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer has been publicly obsessing about them for a while. Monday, during the Q&A after his speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said that negative interest rates are “working more than I can say I expected in 2012.”

It seems to be just talk. But negative interest rates are already baked into the official scenario for 2016.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The End Of Plan A: The Big Reset & $8000 Gold

February 1, 2016

The End Of Plan A: The Big Reset & $8000 Gold

Willem Middlekoop, author of The Big Reset – The War On Gold And The Financial Endgame, believes the current international monetary system has entered its last term and is up for a reset. Having predicted the collapse of the real estate market in 2006, (while Ben Bernanke didn’t), Middlekoop asks (rhetorically) -can the global credit expansion ‘experiment’ from 2002 – 2008, which Bernanke completely underestimated, be compared to the global QE ‘experiment’ from 2008 – present? – the answer is worrisome. In the following must-see interview with Grant Williams, he shares his thoughts on the future of the global monetary system and why the revaluation of Gold is inevitable…

Middlekoop predicts the real estate crash in 2006… (ensure English Subtitles – Closed Captions – are enabled)

Bernanke did not… (stunning!!)

And now today, Middelkoop has some even more ominous concerns about the end of Plan A and where Plan B begins…

“By revaluing gold to a much higher level, to over $8000 an ounce, central bankers solve quite a lot of problems”

17:00 – “But we know Plan A – the current financial system – will end soon, we can’t go on this way… so we need a monetary reset… and a revaluation of gold has helped central bankers in the past, such as Roosevelt in the 1930s. It would help to restore the balance sheet of The Federal Reserve.”

But there are problems…

21:00 – “It always ends in inflation.. certainly in 2016, we can expect more QE… and when that does not defeat deflation (driven by global over-indebtedness), further unorthodox measures will be taken (helicopter money).. and eventually a gold revaluation.”

In this episode of the Gold series, Willem Middelkoop, founder of the Commodities Discovery Fund, dives into the history of monetary shifts and explores a scenario where the US dollar could be debunked as the global reserve currency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“The Fed Suspended The Laws Of The Market In Order To Save It” – What Happens Next

January 31, 2016

“The Fed Suspended The Laws Of The Market In Order To Save It” – What Happens Next

That the Fed has been boxed in by unleashing destructive monetary policies to “fix” decades of prior policy mistakes, is something we have been warning about since our first day. And, with every passing day that the Fed and its central bank peers pile up error upon error to offset prior mistakes, the day approaches when this latest bubble, which some have dubbed it the “central banks all-in” bubble, will burst as well: Friday’s shocking announcement of NIRP by the BOJ just brought us one step closer to the monetary doomsday.

However, the one saving grace for the central banks was that as long as none of the market participants who benefited from these flawed policies dared to open their mouths and point out that the emperor is naked, nobody really cared: after all, why spoil the party, especially since virtually nobody outside of finance knows, let alone cares, about monetary policy or why the Fed is the most important institution in the world.

All of that has changed in recent weeks, when just one week ago in the aftermath of the Fed’s dovish quasi-relent, the billionaires in Davos were quite clear that in light of the upcoming bursting of the latest “policy error” bubble by the central banks, “The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play The Game.” As the WSJ summarized the Davos participants’ mood so well, “their mood here was irritated, bordering on affronted, with what they say has been central-bank intervention that has gone on too long.”

There is just one problem: central bank intervention simply can not go away. Exhibit A: NIRP in Japan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who Warned “Be Careful What You Wish For… If Interest Rates Go Negative”

January 31, 2016

Who Warned “Be Careful What You Wish For… If Interest Rates Go Negative”

Now that the Bank of Japan has joined other central banks such as Denmark, Sweden, the ECB, and Switzerland into pushing its rates into what until just two years ago was considered the monetary twilight zone below the zero bound, and in the process sending a record $5.5 trillion in government bond yields negative…

… which quickly puts into in context all the recent warnings about physical cash being eliminated (because as a reminder negative rates and cash simply can not coexist as the latter provides a ready immunity from the former), such as the following:

Perhaps the only open question is which comes first i) Japan hinting at a cash ban, or ii) the Fed going NIRP as well.

So in light of all this monetary lunacy, we have dug up the following blast from the not so distant past, which contains several rather dire warnings about the dystopian future of a NIRP world:

if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.
I might even go to my bank and withdraw funds in the form of a certified check made payable to myself, and then put that check in a drawer.
If bank liabilities shifted from deposits to certified checks to a significant degree, banks might be less willing to extend loans, because certified checks are likely to be less stable than deposits as a source of funding.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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