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Should the Fed Raise Interest Rates?

October 1, 2016

Should the Fed Raise Interest Rates?

For some time now the Fed has been hinting that it will moderate its interventions–monetizing government debt by printing money to buy government bonds and now quantitative easing by printing money to buy corporate bonds–in order to drive down the interest rate to unprecedented low levels. The Keynesian theory behind these interventions is that lower interest rates will spur lending, which in turn will spur spending. In the Keynesian mindset spending is all important–not saving, not being frugal, not living within one’s own means–no, spend, spend, spend. The Keynesians running all the world’s banks firmly believe that it is their duty that spending not diminish one cent, even if this means going massively into debt. Keynes himself famously said that government should borrow money to pay people to dig holes in the ground and then pay them again to fill them back up.

To Austrian school economist like myself, this is childish, shallow, and ultimately dangerous thinking. Austrians understand that economic prosperity depends first of all upon savings, not spending. Savings is funneled by the capital markets into productive, wealth generating enterprises. Gratuitous spending is simply consumption. Now, there is nothing wrong with consumption…as long as one has actually produced something to be consumed. Printed money is not the same as capital accumulation. Or, as Austrian school economist Frank Shostak explains, goods and services are the “means” of exchange and money is merely the “medium” of exchange. Expanding the means of exchange through increased production–which requires increased capital, which itself requires increased savings–is a hallmark of a prosperous society. Increasing the medium of exchange out of thin air, as is current central bank policy, is the hallmark of a declining society that has decided to eat its seed corn.

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

Deutsche Bank Is Going Under: The Real Reason Germans Were Told To Prepare For A National Crisis?

October 1, 2016

Deutsche Bank Is Going Under: The Real Reason Germans Were Told To Prepare For A National Crisis?

There is a very real possibility that Deutsche Bank is going down.

If the most prominent bank in Germany fails, the effect on Europe will be profound, and I don’t think the United States will escape the effects. The ripples will turn into a tsunami as they travel across the Atlantic. Already, the bank’s troubles have stressed the American stock market.

Angela Merkel has stated that Deutsche Bank will not be getting a bailout from the European Central Bank – the lender of last resort for European banks.

The Department of Justice recently issued a $14 billion fine to the bank to settle a mortgage-backed securities probe…and the bank has no intention of paying.

“Deutsche Bank has no intent to settle these potential civil claims anywhere near the number cited,” the company said in a statement early Friday in Frankfurt. “The negotiations are only just beginning. The bank expects that they will lead to an outcome similar to those of peer banks which have settled at materially lower amounts.”(source)

Deutsche Bank shares fell alarmingly this morning on the news that Merkel won’t support the bank.

Deutsche shares fell as much as six percent to €10.67 in early Monday trading, the worst performance since 1992.

The bank has lost over 52 percent of its value since January and over 56 percent in the last twelve months. Earnings per share fell as much as €6.

The collapse has been prompted by a report in the German magazine Focus that said Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out any state assistance for the bank next year.

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

A Scam Too Far

September 24, 2016

A Scam Too Far

One of the more politically frustrating aspects of the last decade in the West is the unwillingness of the powers-that-be to address the radical dysfunction that underlies Western political economy. As fact, microcosm and metaphor, the ‘scandal’ of Wells Fargo bank creating millions of fake accounts, charging its customers for the privilege and then telling so-called regulators to kiss its ass, is loaded. In 2011, when the bank is said to have begun the practice, Wells Fargo was still being actively bailed out, ‘extraordinary’ measures were being taken to revive the fortunes of the rich and connected and it hadn’t yet become entirely clear that ‘change you can believe in’ meant full revival of the system that created the recurring crises of recent decades.

The relentless propaganda of economic recovery isolated ‘the economy’ from the broader system of political and economic control and posed the heavily engineered up-cycle as a permanent new state of affairs. It also pitted the facts as lived by hundreds of millions of people against the insistence by the governments and central banks of the U.S., the E.U. and Britain that recreation of the circumstances that produced the prior three crises would somehow produce widely-shared and benevolent outcomes this time around. What the Wells Fargo ‘scandal’ renders evident is that what was recovered is the system of predatory finance that exists as institutionalized capitalist taking in the service of a tiny but powerful plutocracy.

uriescam1

Graph: the capitalist coup that began in the 1970s was a response to a real crisis alternatively framed as a falling rate of profit and / or declining plutocratic control over Western political economy. Financialization shifted the balance of power back toward capital through the money system. Banks create money against separable liabilities. 

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

How Much Longer Will Investors Trust the Central Banks?

September 24, 2016

How Much Longer Will Investors Trust the Central Banks? 

There is no simple, painless solution. The world has to reduce debt, shrink the financial part of the economy, and change the destructive incentive structures in finance. Individuals in developed countries have to save more and spend less. Companies have to go back to real engineering. Governments have to balance their books better. Banking must become a mechanism for matching savers and borrowers, financing real things. Banks cannot be larger than nations, countries in themselves. Countries cannot rely on debt and speculation for prosperity. The world must live within its means.

~ Satyajit Das, Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

There is now almost $16 trillion worth of sovereign debt trading with a negative yield. Last week the credit bubble entered new territory with two euro zone issuers of corporate debt, Germany’s Henkel and France’s Sanofi, becoming the first private firms to sell negative-yielding non-financial corporate bonds in euros. This may, just may, happen to mark the top of the great bond bull run that started as far back as the early 1980s. By Friday of last week, the implications of an ugly slide across bond and stock markets may have led some fund managers and traders to soil themselves, or suffer heart problems, or both. By a happy coincidence, however, Henkel makes Persil laundry detergent, and Sanofi makes treatments for cardiovascular disease. So any affected “investors” dumb enough to have bought those guaranteed loss-makers and then suffered immediate regret don’t have to look too far for a remedy.

Doubts Emerge in Global Markets

“Taper Tantrum II” would appear to have arrived. The sell-off in bond markets last week was universal. US Treasuries, UK Gilts, German Bunds, Japanese JGBs, all declined. Japanese bonds are suffering more than most. Kevin Buckland, Wes Goodman and Shigeki Nozawa for Bloomberg report:

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

88% Probability We Just Entered Recession & The Broken Monetary Mechanism That Got Us Here

September 17, 2016

88% Probability We Just Entered Recession & The Broken Monetary Mechanism That Got Us Here

My last piece “The Matrix Exposed” generated a bit of a stir.  And as per usual the PhD’s had some fairly colourful things to say to me regarding the notion that more money and more credit may actually stall an economy.  But look I’m not trying to be offensive to anyone.  I’m simply making a case that when consumer credit becomes the basis of growth, well you have a real problem.  And that is a pretty reasonable argument even without the hoards of data backing it up.

But so allow me an attempt to mend some bridges.  Let’s start by looking at the various existing frameworks that drive economic policy.  We have Monetary policy (the banks), Fiscal policy (Congress), Microeconomic policy (Corporations).  So let’s look at each.

Let’s begin with Fiscal policy.  The very first issue that should jump out to everyone is that Congress has been utterly ineffective for almost 2 decades now.  That is because the partisanship has become so intense that there simply seems no room for compromise in an effort to get any reasonable piece of legislation done.  What we are left with is a slew of outdated fiscal policies.  Perhaps most detrimental is a corporate tax rate nearly twice that of many other developed nations.

The problem with relatively (to other nations) high corporate tax rates is it means that any domestic investment, everything else equal, has a significantly longer breakeven point.  Said another way, the return on domestic investment is much lower than the return on foreign capital investment (ceteris paribus).  This is a very intuitive concept, easily digestible by all.  The implication is that the relative level of corporate tax rates here in the US incentivize corporations to invest elsewhere.

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

Former Treasury Secretary says banks may be riskier now than in the 2008 crisis

September 17, 2016

larry-summers

Former Treasury Secretary says banks may be riskier now than in the 2008 crisis

“Sir. SIR! This your bag,” the TSA agent barked at me last week, more as a statement than a question.

“It is.”

“Are you carrying any liquids?”

I knew immediately; I had forgotten about the bottle of water that I had shoved in my briefcase before checking out of my hotel.

They opened my bag and confiscated the water bottle immediately with an extra harrumph to make sure I knew that I had wasted their time.

Yeah, I get it. I broke the rule. But it’s such a ridiculous rule to begin with.

Are we really supposed to pretend that Miami International Airport is any safer because there’s a brand new, unopened Dasani bottle in the TSA wastebin?

You may recall how Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport was attacked on June 28th by men armed with automatic weapons and explosives.

Ataturk was already one of the most security-conscious airports in the world– you actually have to go through a security checkpoint just to enter the building, followed by a second security checkpoint on your way to the gate.

And yet, despite all of this extra security, 41 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in an attack that shows just how ineffective airport security really is.

Airport security isn’t real security. It’s merely the illusion of security– a bunch of busybodies in uniforms enforcing pointless rules to make people believe that they’re safer.

Candidly, our financial system has borrowed the same principle. There’s no real safety in our financial system– merely the illusion of safety.

Leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, most people thought the banks were safe.

After all, we’ve been told our entire lives that the banks are rock solid. What could go wrong?

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

Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States

September 17, 2016

Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States

Wells FargoDo you remember when our politicians promised to do something about the “too big to fail” banks?  Well, they didn’t, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.  On Thursday, it was announced that one of those “too big to fail” banks, Wells Fargo, has been slapped with 185 million dollars in penalties.  It turns out that for years their employees had been opening millions of bank and credit card accounts for customers without even telling them.  The goal was to meet sales goals, and customers were hit by surprise fees that they never intended to pay.  Some employees actually created false email addresses and false PIN numbers to sign customers up for accounts.  It was fraud on a scale that is hard to imagine, and now Wells Fargo finds itself embroiled in a major crisis.

There are six banks in America that basically dwarf all of the other banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.  If a single one of those banks were to fail, it would be a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions for our financial system.  So we need these banks to be healthy and running well.  That is why what we just learned about Wells Fargois so concerning…

Employees of Wells Fargo (WFC) boosted sales figures by covertly opening the accounts and funding them by transferring money from customers’ authorized accounts without permission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Los Angeles city officials said.

An analysis by the San Francisco-headquartered bank found that its employees opened more than two million deposit and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the officials said. Many of the transfers ran up fees or other charges for the customers, even as they helped employees make incentive goals.

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

Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States

September 10, 2016

Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States

Wells FargoDo you remember when our politicians promised to do something about the “too big to fail” banks?  Well, they didn’t, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.  On Thursday, it was announced that one of those “too big to fail” banks, Wells Fargo, has been slapped with 185 million dollars in penalties.  It turns out that for years their employees had been opening millions of bank and credit card accounts for customers without even telling them.  The goal was to meet sales goals, and customers were hit by surprise fees that they never intended to pay.  Some employees actually created false email addresses and false PIN numbers to sign customers up for accounts.  It was fraud on a scale that is hard to imagine, and now Wells Fargo finds itself embroiled in a major crisis.

There are six banks in America that basically dwarf all of the other banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.  If a single one of those banks were to fail, it would be a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions for our financial system.  So we need these banks to be healthy and running well.  That is why what we just learned about Wells Fargois so concerning…

Employees of Wells Fargo (WFC) boosted sales figures by covertly opening the accounts and funding them by transferring money from customers’ authorized accounts without permission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Los Angeles city officials said.

An analysis by the San Francisco-headquartered bank found that its employees opened more than two million deposit and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the officials said. Many of the transfers ran up fees or other charges for the customers, even as they helped employees make incentive goals.

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

Beyond the Zombie Economy

July 17, 2016

Beyond the Zombie Economy 

The present day metaphor is the ‘Zombie’ economy depicting the economic system as an unthinking monster in relentless pursuit of a single objective. Part of the Anti-Austerity and Media Activism series with Goldsmiths.

Flickr/S
J Pinkney. Some rights reserved.

Economic metaphors are important to illustrate the distinct features of specific economic systems that exist at particular times. The Great Depression, for instance, uses a psychological framing of ‘depression’ to depict the dynamics of an economic system incapable of recovering from financial collapse. The present day metaphor is the ‘Zombie’ economy depicting the economic system as an unthinking monster in relentless pursuit of a single objective – here, short-term profits are synonymous with human brains. This builds on from the well-used ‘Zombie Banks’ metaphor made popular in the 2000s to describe the Japanese financial system, in which endless public subsidies to banks resulted in systemic erosion of economic vitality – the lesson was feeding the Zombie only breeds more.

There are, of course, other metaphors used to describe contemporary capitalism; like the ‘Vampire Squid’ used to illustrate the role of financial institutions in sucking the life out of the global economy. Sanguineous metaphors are very popular historically for depicting the role of finance within the economy as ‘bleeding it dry’; the Vampire, like the Zombie, is a monster with a singular rational objective ‘to feed’ and the humans are always its prey. Of course, Keynes preferred the ‘animal spirits’ metaphor to explain the same inhumane aspects of markets that must be controlled to sustain a market civilization.

Two books in particular articulate different aspects of the Zombie economy metaphor. The fist is John Quiggin’s Zombie Economics: how dead ideas still walk among us, which systematically unpicks how defunct economic theories are clung to by policy makers and politicians.

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

Investor Fears Spike as Italy (and the EU) Inch Closer to Doomsday Scenario

July 5, 2016

Investor Fears Spike as Italy (and the EU) Inch Closer to Doomsday Scenario

Risk of contagion in Italy and far beyond would be huge.

Just how low can Italian bank shares go? That’s the question plaguing the minds of European investors, policy makers, bankers and central bankers. Today the shares of the country’s third largest publicly traded bank, Monte Dei Paschi, plunged 14% to €0.33, their lowest point ever. Two years ago, they ran between €5 and €9.

The reason for the latest plunge was news that the ECB had sent the bank a letter urging it to draw up a plan for tackling its bad-loan burden. The lender is being asked to reduce its load of curdled debt by €10 billion to €14.6 billion by 2018. That’s a big ask even in the best of times, and these are certainly not the best of times for Monte Dei Paschi. According toBloomberg, its loan loss provisions would represent over 95% of its operating profits.

No bank in Europe has fallen so low, so fast, without completely crashing and burning. On the eve of the global financial crisis, Monte Dei Paschi was worth €15 billion. Now its market cap is just over €1 billion. The only reason it’s still alive today are the multiple taxpayer-funded bailouts it has received, and all they seem to have achieved is to postpone the inevitable (and prolong the taxpayers’ suffering).

Earlier this year, Italy’s government was given the go-ahead to set up a bad bank in which to bury some of Italy’s most toxic financial waste. It was a €5 billion solution to a €360 billion problem, as we warned at the time – far too little, far too late. Last week the EU, in a fit of desperation, authorized the country to use “government guarantees” to create a “precautionary liquidity support program for their banks.”

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

“We Won’t Be Lectured” – Italy’s Renzi To Defy Brussels Over Banking Bailout

July 3, 2016

“We Won’t Be Lectured” – Italy’s Renzi To Defy Brussels Over Banking Bailout

With all eyes distratcted by the post-Brexit euphoria, the last week has seen a far more existential crisis accelerating in Europe. Italy’s banking system is in tatters (from a EUR40bn bailout 6 days ago, to EUR150 emergency support 3 days ago, to a bank bailout and chatter of further support from pension funds Friday) but, in what seems like a clear admission that things are really bad, The FT reports that Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi is prepared to defy the EU and unilaterally pump billions of euros into its troubled banking system if it comes under severe systemic distress, a last-resort move that would smash through the bloc’s nascent regime for handling ailing banks.

As we noted previously, Brexit will be just the scapegoat used by Renzi and Italy to circumvent any specific eurozone prohibitions. And if it fails, all Renzi has to do is hint at a referendum of his own. Then watch as Merkel scrambles to allow Italy to do whatever it wants, just to avoid the humiliation of a potential “Italeave.”

And sure enough, as The FT reports, Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is determined to intervene with public funds if necessary despite warnings from Brussels and Berlin over the need to respect rules that make creditors rather than taxpayers fund bank rescues, according to several officials and bankers familiar with their plans.

The threat has raised alarm among Europe’s regulators, who fear such a brazen intervention would devastate the credibility of the union’s newly implemented banking rule book during its first real test. In the race to find workable solutions, Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, has laid out options for Rome to address its banking problems without breaking the bail-in principles of Europe’s banking union.

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

Italy Just Bailed Out Another Failed Bank, May Use Pension Funds For Future Bank Rescues

July 1, 2016

Italy Just Bailed Out Another Failed Bank, May Use Pension Funds For Future Bank Rescues

Despite – or perhaps due to – Italy’s failed attempt to slide a state-funded €40 billion recapitalization attempt past Angela Merkel while blaming it on Brexit, and coupled with a bailout proposal to provide €150 billion in liquidity to insolvent banks, overnight we got yet another confirmation that the biggest risk factor for Europe is not Brexit but Italy, where yet another failed bank was bailed out. As the FT reports overnight, Atlante, Italy’s privately backed €5bn bank bailout fund which was created in April to stem the threat of contagion from struggling lenders and whose assets turned out to be woefully inadequate, took control of Veneto Banca after a €1bn capital increase demanded by EU bank regulators attracted zero interest. 

This is good news for Veneto Banco and bad news for all other insolvent banks, because the fund, known as Atlas in English, was intended to hold up the sky for Italian banks. Instead it is now practically out of funds, having depleted more than half of its war chest after taking control of Popolare di Vicenza, another regional bank, last month.

That has left little in reserve to tackle about €200bn in non-performing loans run up during Italy’s three-year recession, of which €85bn have not yet been written down. Bad loans are weighing on bank lending and crimping an already weak recovery.

As the FT adds, Lorenzo Codogno, an economist and former treasury director-general, said: “Italian [and to a lesser extent European] banks have entered into a negative loop where they cannot ask for private capital as there is no investor appetite and without capital they cannot provision or write off NPLs.”

This means the only hope is public-funded bailouts, however that is banned by eurozone regulations.

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

Is Europe In Trouble Again: Hints Of Portuguese, Italian Bank Bailouts Suggest Not All Is Well

June 30, 2016

Is Europe In Trouble Again: Hints Of Portuguese, Italian Bank Bailouts Suggest Not All Is Well

In the aftermath of Germany refusal to allow Italy to breach Eurozone regulations, and provide its banks with up to €40 billion in new capital, Italy has unveiled a new track to handle its insolvent banks and as Reuters reports, the Italian government may have to inject capital directly into weaker banks to bolster their financial strength, a government source said on Thursday, adding it was waiting for the results of stress tests being conducted by European banking authorities. The results of the tests are expected to be published at the beginning of the third quarter.

The source told Reuters the government was also working on a plan to increase the firepower of bank bailout funds Atlante, which was set up in April to help lenders raise cash and sell bad loans, by 3-5 billion euros ($3.34-5.57 billion) by the summer. The source said the government was in talks with private pension funds to seek additional contributions for Atlante.

Other contributions were expected to come from the state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and from a public company called Societa per la Gestione di Attivita.

And then, in a surprising follow up, the EU appears to have once again backtracked when Reuters headlines emerged suggesting that Europe would provide up to €150 billion for Italian banks”

  • LIQUIDITY SUPPORT FOR ITALIAN BANKS INCLUDES GOVERNMENT GUARANTEES OF UP TO EUR150 BILLION –EU OFFICIAL
  • BANK LIQUIDITY SUPPORT WAS REQUESTED BY ITALY FOR PRECAUTIONARY REASONS –COMMISSION SPOKESWOMAN

But…

  • LIQUIDITY SUPPORT APPLIES ONLY TO SOLVENT ITALIAN BANKS –COMMISSION SPOKESWOMAN

Which, technically is none of them, but practically any bank can – after the sufficient non-GAAP adjustments – pass for solvent.

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

2008 All Over Again

June 25, 2016

2008 All Over Again 

   Financial markets in the United States and worldwide face uncertainty and potential crisis after Britain voted to leave the European Union. (Sparkx 11)

Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has wiped out many bankers and global speculators. They will turn, as they did in 2008, to governments to rescue them from default. Most governments, including ours, will probably comply.

Will the American public passively permit another massive bailout of the banks? Will it accept more punishing programs of austerity to pay for this bailout? Will a viable socialism rise out of the economic chaos to halt further looting of the U.S. Treasury and the continued reconfiguration of the economy into neofeudalism? Or will a right-wing populism, with heavy undertones of fascism, ascend to power because of a failure on the part of the left to defend a population once again betrayed?

Whatever happens next will be chaotic. Global financial markets, which lost heavily on derivatives, are already in free fall. The value of the British pound has dropped by over 9 percent and British bank stock prices by over 25 percent. This decline has wiped out the net worth of many Wall Street brokerage houses and banks, leaving them with negative equity. The Brexit vote severely cripples and perhaps kills the eurozone and, happily, stymies trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It throws the viability of NATO and American imperial designs in Eastern Europe and the Middle East into question. The British public’s repudiation of neoliberal economics also has the potential to upend the presidential elections. The Democratic Party will orchestrate a rescue of Wall Street if there is a call for a bailout. Donald Trump and the Republicans, by opposing a bailout, can ride popular revulsion to power.

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

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