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Back in September (and on several subsequent occasions), we discussed the implications of a further cut to the ECB’s depo rate. A plunge further into NIRP-dom would have serious consequences for the Riksbank, the SNB, the Nationalbank, and the Norges Bank.

In world dominated by beggar-thy-neighbor monetary policy, one cut begets another in race to the bottom as everyone scrambles to, i) keep their currency from soaring and ii) keep the inflationary impulse alive.

As Barclays explained in great detail several months ago, another ECB depo rate cut would have an outsized effect of the franc:

A cut in the ECB’s deposit rate further into negative territory likely would have a significant impact on the EURCHF exchange rate and provoke a more immediate response from the SNB. Indeed, we expect that a cut in the ECB’s deposit rate may have a greater effect on EURCHF than on other EUR crosses. Switzerland applies its negative deposit rate to only a fraction of reserves, currently about 1/3rd of sight deposits by our calculation. In contrast, negative deposit rates apply to all reserves held at the ECB, Riksbank and Denmark’s Nationalbank. Consequently, a cut to the ECB’s deposit rate likely has a larger impact both on the economy and on the exchange rate than a proportionate cut by the SNB.

Now, it appears Mario Draghi may be about to go the Swiss route by introducing a tiered system for the application of negative rates. As Reuters reports, “Euro zone central bank officials are considering options such as whether to stagger charges on banks hoarding cash ahead of the next European Central Bank meeting, according to officials.”

“Officials are discussing a split-level rate,” Reuters goes on to note, adding that the “contested step would impose a higher charge on banks depending on the amount of cash they deposit with the ECB.”

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

Hang Onto Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the $10 Trillion Bail-in

November 21, 2015

Hang Onto Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the $10 Trillion Bail-in

In uncertain times, “cash is king,” but central bankers are systematically moving to eliminate that option. Is it really about stimulating the economy? Or is there some deeper, darker threat afoot?

Remember those old ads showing a senior couple lounging on a warm beach, captioned “Let your money work for you”? Or the scene in Mary Poppins where young Michael is being advised to put his tuppence in the bank, so that it can compound into “all manner of private enterprise,” including “bonds, chattels, dividends, shares, shipyards, amalgamations . . . .”?

That may still work if you’re a Wall Street banker, but if you’re an ordinary saver with your money in the bank, you may soon be paying the bank to hold your funds rather than the reverse.

Four European central banks – the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, Sweden’s Riksbank, and Denmark’s Nationalbank – have now imposed negative interest rates on the reserves they hold for commercial banks; and discussion has turned to whether it’s time to pass those costs on to consumers. The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve are still at ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), but several Fed officials have also begun calling for NIRP (negative rates).

The stated justification for this move is to stimulate “demand” by forcing consumers to withdraw their money and go shopping with it. When an economy is struggling, it is standard practice for a central bank to cut interest rates, making saving less attractive. This is supposed to boost spending and kick-start an economic recovery.

That is the theory, but central banks have already pushed the prime rate to zero, and still their economies are languishing. To the uninitiated observer, that means the theory is wrong and needs to be scrapped. But not to our intrepid central bankers, who are now experimenting with pushing rates below zero.

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

The Mad Euro Project Just Got A Lot Madder

November 21, 2015

The Mad Euro Project Just Got A Lot Madder

Feeding a Monstrous Pile of Debt.

Under Mario Draghi’s radical stewardship, the ECB seems determined to push the limits of monetary experimentation. And by all accounts, it’s succeeding.

This week saw numerous eurozone governments sell bonds at negative rates, an economic anomaly that has no place in a rational world. Even some mainstream economists still seem confused by it. Unfortunately, thanks to the tireless efforts of central bankers around the globe, we stopped living in a rational world a long time ago.

Feeding a Monstrous Pile of Debt

The latest government to enjoy the perks of negative-interest-rate living is Portugal. That’s right, Portugal, a country that four years ago was selling 12-month notes with an average yield of 6% amidst fears about the government’s ability to service its monstrous debt pile, is now able to sell €1.1b billion of 12-month debt at a -0.06% yield. In other words, if investors hold the bonds to maturity they will actually pay the Portuguese government – a government that doesn’t yet exist – for the privilege of holding its debt.

This is despite the fact that Portugal has not only a perpetually stagnating economy but also one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world. After four years of so-called “austerity,” Portugal’s combined public and private debt is now a mind-blowing 530% of GDP, with total corporate debt expected to reach 240% of GDP.

Most of the country’s public debt is foreign owned, and while there aren’t any reliable figures on who exactly owns the private debt, it is a fair bet that it is also mainly foreigners (and, of course, local banks). In other words, the country’s heavily-levered corporate sector is sitting upon the granddaddy of tick-tocking debt time bombs.

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

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

October 24, 2015

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

On Friday, in “Is Mario Draghi About To Go Full-Kuroda? RBS Says ECB Could Buy Stocks,” we took a closer look at what the ECB’s options are when it comes to implementing further easing measures come December.

As a reminder, Mario Draghi telegraphed either another depo rate cut, an expansion of PSPP, or both at Thursday’s ECB presser and now the market is keen to analyze the situation and determine not only what Goldman’s man in Europe is most likely to announce, but what the implications of his announcement are likely to be.

To be sure, further cuts to the depo rate will simply trigger a chain reaction whereby the Riksbank and the SNB will be forced to respond in kind, lest they should lose ground in the global currency war on the way to seeing their inflation targets threatened. This raises the spectre that NIRP may soon come to household deposits, something which, despite the proliferation of negative rates, hasn’t yet occurred.

As for the expansion of PSPP, we looked at a variety of options courtesy of RBS’ Alberto Gallo who notes that Draghi could end up buying corporate bonds, munis, equities, and even individual bank loans before it’s over. Here’s how we summed it up yesterday:

In the end, all that will happen is the EMU’s neighbors will be forced further into NIRP and the ECB will end up with a nightmarish balance sheet full of stocks, corporate credit, munis, and God only knows what kind of loans purchased from banks, and all of which will have been bought at or near the top. That sets up the possibility that central banks could end up being forced to operate from a negative equity position. In other words: it sets up the possibility that they’ll technically go broke.

There’s been no shortage of coverage over the past several years regarding the idea that central banks can effectively go bankrupt.

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

The Mindless Stupidity of Negative Interest Rates

October 11, 2015

The Mindless Stupidity of Negative Interest Rates

Here we are in the midst of The Great Stagnation Middle Class Elimination and some central bankers and mainstream economists are promoting negative interest rates. One economist was quoted in a Marketwatch piece by Greg Robb as saying,

“…pushing rates into negative territory works in many ways just like a regular decline in interest rates that we’re all used to.”

OK. That’s false. We know exactly what negative interest rates do since Europe has made a fine case study of it. They don’t work just like a “regular decline in interest rates.” I mean not that a “regular decline in interest rates,” does what economists think it does, but that’s another story. The issue here is how negative interest rates work.

Negative interest rate proponents ignore the basic tenets of double entry accounting.

Because there are two sides to a bank balance sheet, negative interest rates are the mirror image of positive rates. The move to negative rates imposes new costs on the banks, unlike low positive rates or ZIRP which reduce bank costs.

The greater the negative interest rate, the higher the cost imposed, which is the same as a central bank raising interest rates when they are positive. When the Fed lowers a positive interest rate, it lowers the bank’s cost. But when there are trillions in excess reserves held by the banks as deposits at the Fed and the Fed lowers the interest rate to below zero, that becomes a cost to the banking system which it cannot avoid, except by using those cash assets to pay down debt.

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

“Cash Is Coined Freedom”: War on Cash Becomes Official in Germany, Reaches G-7, Draws Withering Fire

May 19, 2015

“Cash Is Coined Freedom”: War on Cash Becomes Official in Germany, Reaches G-7, Draws Withering Fire

It came from a voice that has, by law, the ear of the German government. Peter Bofinger is a member of the German Council of Economic Experts – the “Five Sages on the Economy” – which in its official function advises the government and parliament on economic policy issues. These folks are taken seriously.

So Bofinger told the German magazine Der Spiegel in an interview (full interview behind paywall) that cash should be done away with.

In Denmark, a new law was proposed that would allow shops to refuse cash payments. Officially, it’s to reduce the “administrative and financial burdens” of handling cash. Since it’s up to the shop to decide, the law sounds innocuous. But it would be another step to making money a purely electronic entity that can be seamlessly tracked anywhere. It would also be another step in granting the central bank the absolute power to inflict confiscatory monetary policies on any entity or person with money in the bank.

This law would come in handy. Danmarks Nationalbank has imposed a negative deposit rate of -0.75%, with the intent of flogging savers and confiscating their money until their mood improves and limiting the appreciation of the krone against the sagging euro. But to evade the wrath of negative deposit rates, savers can pull cash out of the bank and store it under their mattress. And this must be stopped – by making cash useless.

So, Der Spiegel asked, was this law in Denmark “a good idea?”

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

“Stop Being So Negative”: Putting It All Together

May 3, 2015

“Stop Being So Negative”: Putting It All Together

Putting it all together

Considering:

1) governments are unable to eliminate deficits

2) global government debt is increasing exponentially

3) 0% interest rates are allowing governments to borrow more to pay off old loans and fund deficits

4) Global growth is declining despite money printing and bailouts And, we’ve saved the latest and greatest fact for last: as stunning as 0% interest rates sound, the mathematically-challenged-fantasyland called Europe has just one upped everyone by introducing NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES.

As of writing, over 25% of all bonds issued by European governments has a guaranteed negative return for investors.

Germany can borrow money for 5 years at an interest rate of NEGATIVE 0.10%. Yes, instead of Germany paying you interest when you lend them money, you have to pay them interest.

These same negative interest rate conditions exist across many of the Eurozone countries, as well as Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.

Since the majority of the investment industry unequivocally supports world central banks, it has convinced itself that negative interest rates are actually good for the worldís economy and it will help the world along its sunny path to economic freedom.

Call us dumbstruck, dumbfounded or just plain dumb. But, our every analysis of these policy moves always brings us to the same conclusion ñ thereís a pretty big adjustment in financial markets on the horizon.

6 years ago, we were told that bailing out the banks and auto companies would save the world.

As this worked so well, we were next told that the world needed 0% interest rates. As this worked so well, we were next told we needed money printing.

As this worked so well, we were next told that Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece needed a bailout.

As this worked so well, next the IMF issued a report recommending a Global Wealth Tax of 10% be applied to help governments resolve their debt problems.

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

The Committee To Destroy The World

April 2, 2015

The Committee To Destroy The World

Last month, the world mourned the death of beloved actor Leonard Nimoy. Mr. Nimoy, of course, was renowned for his portrayal of the iconic character Mr. Spock on the 1960s television series Star Trek. One of the most memorable Star Trek inventions was the transporter that allowed human beings to be beamed through space and time like light and energy. Investors expecting central bankers to solve the world’s economic problems might as well believe that Janet Yellen is capable of beaming them straight into the Marriner S. Eccles Building in Washington, D.C. Their failure to acknowledge that the Fed is failing to generate sustainable economic growth while contributing to income inequality and crushing debt burdens is inexplicable. Central banks that purport to be promoting financial stability are actually undermining it – with the able assistance of regulators who have drained liquidity from the world’s most important markets.

Negative interest rates on $3 trillion of European debt are an obvious sign of policy failure, yet the policy elite stands mute. Actually that’s not correct – the cognoscenti is cheering on Mario Draghi as he destroys the European bond markets just as they celebrated Janet Yellen’s demolition of the Treasury market. Negative interest rates are not some curiosity; they represent a symptom of policy failure and a violation of the very tenets of capitalist economics. The same is true of persistent near-zero interest rates in the United States and Japan. Zero gravity renders it impossible for fiduciaries to generate positive returns for their clients, insurance companies to issue policies, and savers to entrust their money to banks. They are a byproduct of failed economic policies, not some clever device to defeat deflation and stimulate economic growth.

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

Australia To Start Taxing Bank Deposits

March 29, 2015

Australia To Start Taxing Bank Deposits

Up until now, the world’s descent into the NIRPy twilight of fiat currency was a function of failing monetary policy around the globe as central bank after desperate central bank implemented negative and even more negative (in the case of Denmark some four times rapid succession) rates, hoping to make saving so prohibitive consumers would have no choice but to spend the fruits of their labor, or better yet, take out massive loans which they would never be able to repay. However, nobody said it was only central banks who could be the executioners of the world’s saver class: governments are perfectly capable too. Such as Australia’s.

According to Australia’s ABC News, the “Federal Government looks set to introduce a tax on bank deposits in the May budget.”

Ironically, the idea of a bank deposit tax was raised by Labor in 2013 and was criticized by Tony Abbott at the time. Much has changed in two years, and as ABC reports, assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has indicated an announcement on the new tax could be made before the budget.

Mr Frydenberg is a member of the Government’s Expenditure Review Committee but has refused to provide any details.

“Any announcements or decisions around this proposed policy which we discussed at the last election will be made in the lead up or on budget night,” he said.

Speaking at the Victorian Liberal State Council meeting Mr Abbott has repeated his budget message, focusing on families and small businesses.

“There will be tough decisions in this year’s budget as there must be, but there will also be good news.”

For the banks and creditors, yes. For anyone who is still naive enough to save money in the hopes of deferring purchases for the future, not so much.

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

The End of the Great Debt Cycle

March 11, 2015

The End of the Great Debt Cycle

“It’s the end of the great debt cycle,” says hedge fund manager Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, taking the words out of our mouth.

Bond fund manager Bill Gross adds context:

In the past 20 to 30 years, credit has grown to such an extreme globally that debt levels and the ability to service that debt are at risk. […] Why doesn’t the debt supercycle keep expanding? Because there are limits.

Neither Mr. Dalio nor Mr. Gross nor we know precisely where those limits are. But the Europeans and the Japanese are rushing toward them.

A Poke in the Eye for Lenders

In Europe, bond yields are lower than they’ve ever been. Between $2 trillion and $3 trillion in sovereign and corporate bonds now trade at negative nominal yields. We don’t need to tell you that it is unnatural and perverse for lenders to accept a poke in the eye for giving up their valuable savings. But that’s just part of the perversity of the present system – no real savings are involved. The money never existed in the first place. Getting a negative yield seems almost appropriate, if nevertheless incomprehensible.

Today, banks create “money” from thin air, in the form of new deposits, when they make loans.

As our friend Richard Duncan explains in his book The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, by the turn of the new millennium the reserve requirement – whereby banks are forced to hold some cash or gold in reserve against new loans – was so low that it played “practically no role whatsoever in constraining credit creation.”

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

ECB Will Cut Rates To Minus 3%: JP Morgan

March 5, 2015

ECB Will Cut Rates To Minus 3%: JP Morgan

A running theme here over the past several weeks has been that the ECB’s €1.1 trillion foray into quantitative easing will be severely hindered by a laundry list of constraints (some of which were unwittingly self-imposed). Another topic we’ve covered exhaustively is the idea that the world’s central banks will likely all, in relatively short order, run up against the natural limits of accommodative monetary policy (indeed, even some Japanese policy makers are starting to agree on this).

Thinking about these two things in conjunction raises an interesting question for the ECB: if a tail event comes rearing its ugly head and the global central bank race to the bottom accelerates, will Mario Draghi, effectively fighting with one hand tied behind his back by virtue of Q€’s limitations, be able to fend off an outright collapse?

Here’s FT with more:

…the ECB is now close to running out of ammunition. The true constraints on further ECB intervention lie in the 25 per cent issue limit and 33 per cent issuer limit on its sovereign bond purchases.

Except for Greek debt, the 25 per cent and 33 per cent caps should not prove binding in a scenario where the ECB keeps its monthly asset purchase pace of €60bn. However, the limits could be reached in worst-case scenarios where the ECB would have to boost the size of its QE programme or implement OMTs targeted on specific sovereigns.

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

In “Paranormal” Europe, Banks Will Pay You To Borrow, And Charge You To Save

February 28, 2015

In “Paranormal” Europe, Banks Will Pay You To Borrow, And Charge You To Save

A month ago, we wrote about a bizarre situation involving Denmark’s now totally broken monetary system, where as a result of an unprecedented scramble to weaken the currency in order to preserve the peg to the Euro the central bank unleashed a historic rate-cutting scramble, where in 4 consecutive rate cuts its pushed the interest rate to an unheard of -0.75% (while at the same time being the first modern central bank to unveil what we dubbed “Bizarro Backdoor QE“). The culmination of this series of events was the surreal realization by some debtors that the bank would now pay them the interest on their new or existing mortgage.

The insanity was only compounded when one considers that in the vast majority of European countries, depositors are already (or will soon) pay for the “privilege” of providing banks with unsecured funds (in the US, JPM recently also started charging some customers – mostly corporate and hedge funds- for holding their deposits).

In short, this is what Europe has become: savers – those who diligently put away the fruits of their labor – are now forced to pay, using banks as an intermediary, and subsidize the the debtor: spenders, who live beyond their means, and who in increasingly more frequent situations are now paid to take out even more debt! Call it monetary socialism.

Which is probably why with a one month delay, none other than the NYT decided to cover precisely this topic with “In Europe, Bond Yields and Interest Rates Go Through the Looking Glass.”

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

Sweden Central Joins The NIRP Club: Lowers Interest Rate To -0.1%, Launches QE

February 12, 2015

Sweden Central Joins The NIRP Club: Lowers Interest Rate To -0.1%, Launches QE

It’s a NIRP world and you are either in it, or are determined to lose the currency wars. And hours ago, the world’s oldest central bank, that of Sweden, announced that it too would join its NIRP peers in an attempt to preserve its currency’s fighting power in the global currency wars which make a mockery of what is going on in Ukraine, by lowering the benchmark interest rate to -0.1%, but also launch QE by buying SEK 10 billion of government bonds, thereby making sure that the stock of available debt in private hands is even lower and that central banks monetize even more than merely “all” of all net issuance in 2015.

From the press release:

There are signs that underlying inflation has bottomed out, but the situation abroad is now more uncertain and this increases the risk that inflation will not rise sufficiently fast. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has therefore decided to cut the repo rate by 0.10 percentage points, to -0.10 per cent, and to adjust the repo-rate path down somewhat. At the same time, the interest rates on the fine-tuning transactions in the Riksbank’s operational framework for the implementation of monetary policy are being restored to the repo rate +/- 0.10 percentage point. Moreover, the Riksbank will buy government bonds for the sum of SEK 10 billion. These measures and the readiness to do more at short notice underline that the Riksbank’ is safeguarding the role of the inflation target as a nominal anchor for price setting and wage formation.

Economic activity in Sweden strengthening but inflation is too low

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

Paul Singer Warns “The Consequences Of Monetary Manipulation Are Unknowable”

February 5, 2015

Paul Singer Warns “The Consequences Of Monetary Manipulation Are Unknowable”

The world believes it is in a sweet spot. There is global consensus that central banks know what they are doing and are in control, and that if economies falter, a bigger dose of QE or ZIRP or NIRP (negative interest rate policy – we just made that one up) will keep it from getting out of hand. Additionally, there seems to be a universally held belief that the U.S. is unquestionably the safe haven for the foreseeable future, that its financial crisis and long recession are behind it and that China has complete control over its own destiny. It may not surprise you to learn that we either disagree with or remain unconvinced about every one of the foregoing propositions.

Conditions in the global economy are clearly abnormal. The policymaker response to those conditions is extraordinary, with minimal focus on an all-out push for higher growth. Instead, the primary focus is on boosting “inflation” with repeated doses of bondbuying, stock-buying and super-low interest rates. We cannot appreciate why policymakers are not jumping up and down clamoring for structural pro-growth reforms and policies, and why there is a compliant consensus that the only policy that is possible is more monetary easing. Apparently, most politicians are happy to leave the hard economic and policy decisions to their central banks instead of introducing legislation to properly address the world’s economic problems. It is impossible to assess what will change or destroy the consensus that current policies will hold the global economy and financial system afloat forever, but when assessing the scope and shape of risks to our assets, it is most useful to match them to the size of the aberrations which could cause reversal or surprise. Today, those potential changes are strikingly large.

We have frequently said that real deflation (price and credit collapse, not a tiny downturn in aggregate prices or “insufficient” inflation) is impossible. Governments are too alert to that possibility, have no compunction about debasing their currencies and will simply not stand for seriously-falling prices. The issue of real inflation, at the other end of the spectrum, is deemed by just about everyone but us, plus a few beleaguered stragglers and fellow travelers who “didn’t get the memo,” to be a non-issue into the future as far as one can peer.

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

Swiss National Bank scraps euro cap

January 15, 2015

Swiss National Bank scraps euro cap

(Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank unexpectedly scrapped its cap on the franc on Thursday, sending the safe-haven currency crashing through the 1.20 per euro limit it set more than three years ago.

Minutes after the announcement the franc had soared by almost 30 percent in value against the euro. SNB vice-chairman Jean-Pierre Danthine had said as recently as Monday that the cap would remain the cornerstone of its monetary policy.

“This is a very risky move. You can see that in the market reaction that is extreme,” Sarasin economist Alessandro Bee said.

In its second surprise announcement in as many months, the SNB said it would discontinue the cap it introduced on Sept. 6, 2011 to fight recession and deflation threats after investors fleeing the euro zone crisis pushed the franc to record highs.

“This exceptional and temporary measure protected the Swiss economy from serious harm. While the Swiss franc is still high, the overvaluation has decreased as a whole since the introduction of the minimum exchange rate,” the SNB said in a one-page statement.

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

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