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The Futility of Central Bank Policy

It is only now becoming clear to the investing public that the purchasing power of their currencies is declining at an accelerating rate. There is no doubt that yesterday’s announcement that the US CPI rose by 6.2%, compared with the longstanding 2% target, came as a wake-up call to markets.

Along with the other major central banks, the Fed’s reaction is likely to be to double down on interest rate suppression to keep bond yields low and stock valuations intact. The alternative will lead to a major financial, economic and currency shock sooner rather than later.

This article introduces the reader to some of the basic fallacies behind state currencies. It explains the misconceptions policy planners have over interest rates, and how central banks have become contracyclical lenders, replacing commercial banking’s credit creation for non-financial activities.

In effect, narrow money is being used by the major central banks in a vain attempt to shore up government finances and economic activity. The consequences for currency debasement are likely to be more immediate and profound than cyclical bank credit expansion.

Introduction

It is becoming clear that there has been an unofficial agreement between the US Fed, Bank of England, the ECB and probably the Bank of Japan not to raise interest rates. It is confirmed by remarkably similar statements from the former three in recent days. When, as the cliché has it, they are all singing off the same hymn sheet, those of us not party to agreements between our monetary policy planners are right to suspect they are doubling down on a market rigging exercise encompassing all financial markets.

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

«The Fed Reminds Me of a Speculator Who Is on the Wrong Side of the Market»

Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, warns of the rampant speculation in the stock market. He worries that the central banks are underestimating the threat of persistently high inflation and explains why gold has a bright future.

The financial markets are «high». In the U.S., the S&P 500 is up for seven straight days, closing on another record at the end of last week. Particularly in demand are red-hot stocks like Tesla and Nvidia with fantastically rich valuations. Together, the two companies have gained around $600 billion in market value in the past three weeks alone.

For Jim Grant, this is an environment that calls for increased caution. According to the editor of the iconic investment bulletin «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», investors have to beware of an explosive cocktail combining exceptionally easy monetary policy, a pronounced appetite for speculation, and the high degree of leverage. He also thinks that central banks are underestimating the risk of persistent inflation.

«We have one of the most speculative Zeitgeists on record»: Jim Grant.

«We have one of the most speculative Zeitgeists on record»: Jim Grant.

(Photo: Bloomberg)

«The Fed reminds me of a speculator who is on the wrong side of the market», says Mr. Grant. The fact that the Federal Reserve is now beginning to taper its bond purchases makes little difference in his view. «It’s like pouring a little less gasoline on the fire,» he thinks.

In this in-depth interview with The Market/NZZ, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, the outspoken market observer and contrarian investor compares today’s environment with the second half of the 1960s and explains why he expects persistently high inflation rates. He explains what this means for the dollar as well as for gold, and where the best investment opportunities are with respect to the challenge of global warming.

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

Gold-O-Mania is Coming

GOLD-O-MANIA IS COMING 

Scylla and Charybdis

The buoyancy of markets in recent years has lulled central bank heads into a false conviction that they had saved the world after the 2006-9 Great Financial Crisis.

But central bankers continue to navigate like drunken sailors between the evil forces of Scylla and Charybdis as in Homer’s Odyssey.

Few of the bankers have understood that printing unlimited and worthless paper money will not allow them a pass the strait of Messina without major, or more likely catastrophic, damage to the world economy.

As exuberance continues to dominate intoxicated stock market investors, they haven’t yet noticed that all is not well on the perilous seas.

Still, most markets continue to respond positively to the printing press rather than to the underlying fundamentals.

Printing presses don’t create real value, instead they create bubbles full of worthless air. But sadly intoxicated investors confuse air, which is free and has no value, with real, intrinsic values.

To take an example, what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin or BTC? How should BTC be valued?

Does the $60,000 price today reflect the real value or was the 10 cent price 10 years ago more correct?

BITCOINOMANIA

Are we today seeing Bitcoinomania similar to Tulipomania in the 1630s?

If not, can someone tell me at what price Bitcoin is fully and properly valued?

The Bitcoin aficionados will tell us that BTC is modern money and superior to any other currency. Well maybe they are right, but history must prove that. The 11 year history of Bitcoin is hardly sufficient to prove that it will fare better than any other money. We must remember that so far in history no currency has ever survived in its original form except for gold.

And the 5,000 year history of gold as money certainly makes it superior to all fiat currencies as well as cryptocurrencies.

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

Look Out Below: Why a Rug-Pull Flash Crash Makes Perfect Sense

Look Out Below: Why a Rug-Pull Flash Crash Makes Perfect Sense

It makes perfect financial sense to crash the market and no sense to reward the retail options marks by pushing it higher.

An extraordinary opportunity to scoop up mega-millions in profits has arisen, and grabbing all this free money makes perfect financial sense. Now the question is: will those who have the means to grab the dough have the guts to do so?

Here’s the opportunity: retail punters have gone wild for call options, churning $2.6 trillion in mostly short-term calls–bets on gains now, not later. This expansion of retail options exposure is unprecedented not just in its volume but in its concentration in short-term bets (options that expire in a few days) and in mega-cap tech companies that are commanding rich premiums for options.

Goldman Stunned By The Record $2.6 Trillion In Option Notional Traded Last Friday

The options market is like every other market only more so. The price of an option–a bet that a stock, ETF or index will go up or down before the option expires–is sensitive to the volatility of the underlying equity, the demand of other punters for options and the premium being demanded for time: the farther out the expiration date, the higher the cost of the option.

Recall that anyone with 100 shares of the underlying equity can write/originate an option. Each option controls 100 shares, so a call option that is listed at $1 costs the buyer of the call $100.

This is very sweet leverage if the market goes your way. You get all the gains of the 100 shares for a cost considerably less than buying the 100 shares outright. No wonder retail punters are going crazy for this cheap leverage to maximize gains in “can’t lose” trades.

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

How Long Can Lies & Control Supplant Reality & Free Markets?

How Long Can Lies & Control Supplant Reality & Free Markets?

The facts of surreal yet broken (and hence increasingly controlled and desperate) financial markets are becoming harder to deny and ignore. Below, we look at the blunt evidence of control rather than the fork-tongued words of policy makers and ask a simple question: How long can lies & control supplant reality?

The Great Disconnect: Tanking Growth vs. Supported Markets

It’s becoming harder to keep up with the increasingly downgraded GDP growth estimations from the Atlanta Fed.

As recently as August, its GDPNow 3q21 estimates for the quarterly percentage change was as high as 6%.

But within a matter of weeks, this otherwise optimistic figure was cut embarrassingly in half.

Last month their GDP forecast sank much further to 0.5%, and as of this writing, it has been downgraded yet again to 0.2%.

GDPNow Real GDP estimates

Needless to say, 6% estimated growth falling to effectively 0% growth is hardly a bullish indicator for the kind of strengthening economic conditions which one might otherwise associate with risk asset prices reaching all-time highs for the same period.

The current ratio of corporate equities to GDP in the U.S. (>200%) is the highest in history.

Markets are at an all-time high according to the buffett indicator

This growing yet shameful disconnect between market highs and economic lows is getting harder to explain, ignore or deny by the architects of the most artificial, rigged and dishonest market cycle in modern history.

In short, it is no longer even worth pretending that stock markets are correlated to such natural measurements as natural supply & demand or a nation’s economic productivity.

After all, who needs GDP in the New Abnormal?

By now, even Fed doublespeak can’t hide the fact that the only market force which the post-08 markets require is an accommodative central bank—i.e., a firehose of multi-trillion liquidity on demand.

The S&P 500 rises with central bank assets.

But as for this most recent GDP downgrade, it is being blamed on tanking US export data.

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

It’s The “Most Honest Market We Have” – Peter Thiel Warns Bitcoin Exposes Our Current “Crisis Moment”

It’s The “Most Honest Market We Have” – Peter Thiel Warns Bitcoin Exposes Our Current “Crisis Moment”

Outspoken billionaire Peter Thiel said this week at at the National Conservatism Conference that the high price of bitcoin is an indicator of U.S. inflation, which has also recently touched a 13-year high.

“You know, $60,000 bitcoin, I’m not sure that one should aggressively buy,” Thiel said, according to Bloomberg.

“But surely what it is telling us is that we are having a crisis moment.”

These comments come a week after the tech visionary – who recently opined on the origins of bitcoin – offered an even more ominous projection:

“[Bitcoin]’s the canary in a coal mine. It’s the most honest market we have in the country and it’s telling us that this old regime is about to explode.”

Thiel also slammed The Fed, claiming that they were not acknowledging the seriousness of the problem, and mentioned that the prices were not coming down any time soon, adding that Powell and his pals are in a state of “epistemic closure,” meaning close-mindedness, and they were of the view that printing money to resolve market issues will not impact inflation.

Finally, Thiel reiterated the fact that he wished he had bought more bitcoin, adding now that he thinks inflation is here to stay; something that Goldman has recently noted as a driver of upside from crypto

Which fits with a recent report from JPMorgan analysts who noted that “we believe the perception of bitcoin as a better inflation hedge than gold is the main reason for the current upswing, triggering a shift away from gold ETFs into bitcoin funds since September.”

“We’re Near The Very End”: Lawrence Lepard On Bitcoin, Gold & The Coming Crash

“We’re Near The Very End”: Lawrence Lepard On Bitcoin, Gold & The Coming Crash

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

This is part 1 of an exclusive Fringe Finance interview with fund manager Lawrence Lepard, where we discuss the state of the economy, gold, bitcoin, catastrophic outcomes for the market, the supply chain in the country and more.

Lawrence Lepard (Photo: Kitco)

Larry manages the EMA GARP Fund, a Boston based investment management firm. Their strategy is focused on providing “Monetary Debasement Insurance”. He has 38 years experience and an MBA from Harvard Business School. On Twitter he is @LawrenceLepard.

Q: Hi, Larry. Thanks for joining me today. I wrote earlier this week about why I thought the NASDAQ could be primed for a crash. Let’s get right into it off the bat: what do you think could be the most likely catalyst for a market crash right now?

A: Very hard to say, think of it as like an avalanche. What snowflake is going to be the last one before it breaks free?

The market is insanely overvalued, but until now has proven that what is insane can become more insane. So you can’t short it. Frankly all price signals are broken and we could be in a “crack up boom”.

I do see signs of weakness (Evergrande, yield curve heading toward inversion, Fed reducing QE won’t help). Personally I think we are near the end and close to a crash, but I have thought that for some time and have obviously been wrong.

Inflation coming in hot and being persistent is probably the most likely catalyst. Inflation will reduce profit margins and will make the current multiples look even more insane. Catalyst: psychology changes. Technically upward momentum has slowed. I think we are very near the end.

What do you think could be the LEAST noticed cause for a crash?

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

Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It

Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It

Covid. Gamma. Options. Is it any wonder we haven’t noticed that we are teetering on the edge just yet?

It would certainly take a special confluence of factors for us to be staring down the barrel of a an unprecedented crash in tech stocks without noticing it’s coming. But I’m starting to entertain the idea that that is exactly where we are, we may not know how much pain we are truly in for – and we might not fathom how quickly it could come on and surprise us.

For a little while now my friend on Twitter @rosemontseneca has been quietly pontificating that we are living 1999 all over again, we just don’t notice it yet. I’m starting to seriously agree with him and I have been thinking to myself over the past week: “Why aren’t other people making this comparison yet? Stocks are extremely overvalued. What’s ‘different this time’?”

Indeed, I believe the next crash is going to come as a breakneck-style surprise. If I had a chance to publish this piece before Halloween, I was going to make the analogy of somebody sneaking in the back door of the house and waiting around the corner in the kitchen to hack us to death when we went to make our “stoned-in-our-underwear at 2AM” bologna sandwich. But instead I wound up going with the gun analogy for the title because I was too lazy to get this article out in the month of October.

Halloween Kills' Review: A Nostalgic Mix Tape Of Previous Michael Myers  Sequels
“Bologna sandwich, anyone?” / Photo: Halloween Kills

But analogies aside,  the point is still the same: the next big market plunge could be any day now, and will likely be led by tech. Let me explain my reasoning.

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

Weekly Commentary: Losing Control

Weekly Commentary: Losing Control

Tesla’s market capitalization surpassed $1.1 TN this week, the first junk-rated company with a trillion-dollar valuation. Now the richest individual in the world, Elon Musk’s wealth this week reached a staggering $300 billion. The S&P500, Dow, Nasdaq100, and Nasdaq Composite ended the week at all-time highs. Microsoft retook the top spot as the world’s most valuable company.

October 29 – Reuters (Gaurav Dogra and Patturaja Murugaboopathy): “U.S. equity funds attracted large inflows in the week to Oct. 27… According to Lipper data, U.S. equities funds attracted investments worth a net $12.99 billion, which were the largest since the week to Aug. 18.”

Plenty to divert attention away from critical global market developments. Ominous Bond Market Convulsions.

October 28 – Reuters (Wayne Cole): “Australia’s central bank on Friday lost all control of the yield target key to its stimulus policy as bonds suffered their biggest shellacking in decades and markets howled for rate hikes as soon as April. An already torrid week for debt got even worse when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) again declined to defend its 0.1% target for the key April 2024 bond, even though its yield was all the way up at 0.58%. Scenting capitulation, speculators sent the yield sky-rocketing to 0.75% while yields on three-year bonds recorded their biggest monthly increase since 1994. All eyes were now on the RBA’s policy meeting on Nov. 2 where investors were wagering it would call time on yield curve control (YCC) and its guidance of no rate rises until 2024.”

October 29 – Financial Times (Hudson Lockett and Tabby Kinder): “The Reserve Bank of Australia declined to defend its bond-yield target, a pillar of its quantitative easing programme, unleashing what one trader described as ‘carnage’ in the country’s sovereign bond market…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Shortages & Hyperinflation Lead to Total Misery

SHORTAGES & HYPERINFLATION LEAD TO TOTAL MISERY

At the end of major economic cycles, shortages develop in all areas of the economy. And this is what the world is experiencing today on a global basis. There is a general lack of labour, whether it is restaurant staff, truck drivers or medical personnel.

There are also shortages of raw materials, lithium (electric car batteries), semi-conductors, food,  a great deal of consumer products, cardboard boxes, energy and etc, etc. The list is endless.

SHORTAGES EVERYWHERE

Everything is of course blamed on Covid but most of these shortages are due to structural problems. We have today a global system which cannot cope with the tiniest imbalances in the supply chain.

Just one small component missing could change history as the nursery rhyme below explains:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a 
horseshoe nail
.

Cavalry battles are lost if there is a shortage of horseshoe nails.

The world is not just vulnerable to shortages of goods and services.

BOMBSHELLS

Bombshells could appear from anywhere. Let’s just list a few like:

  • Dollar collapse (and other currencies)
  • Stock market crash
  • Debt defaults, bond collapse (e.g. Evergrande)
  • Liquidity crisis  (if  money printing stops or has no effect)
  • Inflation leading to hyperinflation

There is a high likelihood that not just one of the above will happen in the next few years but all of them.

Because this is how empires and economic bubbles end.

The Roman Empire needed 500,000 troops to control its vast empire.

Map of the Roman Empire.

Emperor Septimius Severus (200 AD) advised his sons to “Enrich the troops with gold but no one else”.

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

Banks Disclose Tidbits of Hidden Stock Market Leverage of “Securities-Based Lending,” as Known Stock Market Leverage Surges

Banks Disclose Tidbits of Hidden Stock Market Leverage of “Securities-Based Lending,” as Known Stock Market Leverage Surges

No one knows total stock market leverage, but it’s huge and ballooning, as we see from the tidbits we’re allowed to see.

No one knows how much total leverage there is in the stock market. Only fragments are reported. Margin loans are reported monthly, and they provide a general idea of the trend in stock market leverage. Some types of leverage are not disclosed at all until something implodes spectacularly, such as Archegos. Other types of leverage are reported in bits and pieces, if at all, by a few banks and broker-dealers in their quarterly financial statements, if they so choose. This includes “securities-based lending.”

Some banks & brokers report securities-based lending, others don’t.

On Thursday and today, some Wall Street banks and broker filed their Q3 earnings reports and supplemental information with the SEC, and a few of them included in their supplemental filings some tidbits about their securities-based lending (SBL).

Securities-based lending is hot; people who want to cash out some of the gains in their portfolios – thank you halleluiah, Fed – but didn’t want to sell, can use their portfolios as collateral for loans by the broker, the proceeds of which can be used for anything – buy more securities, buy a house or a new vehicle, or pay for a divorce settlement.

When asset prices fall enough, the borrowers get a margin call and either have to either come up with some cash and put it into the account, or they have to sell securities and pay down their SBL balances, thereby turning into forced sellers.

Goldman Sachs didn’t disclose anything about its SBL; they’re lumped into a larger loan category.

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

Are We Really Crazy Enough to Believe This Is Going to Work?

Are We Really Crazy Enough to Believe This Is Going to Work?

Unbeknownst to the giddy participants, they’re not just betting on the omnipotence of the Fed Politburo, they’re also making a max-leverage bet that “the madness of crowds” will never end.

Imagine an economy so dominated by its central bank that all markets hang on every word of its priesthood as life or death. You know, like the Federal Reserve and the American economy.

Now imagine this central bank issues enormous sums of new money which supercharges speculative activity such as hundreds of billions of dollars in stock buybacks, special purpose acquisition casinos, oops, I mean companies, and so on. You know, like the Federal Reserve’s trillions in nearly free money for financiers.

Next, imagine that the central bank makes barely concealed promises that should any big gambler lose money in the casino, the bank will flood the financial system with even more nearly free money for financiers and bail out the loser.

Since flooding the system with nearly free money for financiers keeps the speculative frenzy going, the bank has implicitly promised that assets driven higher by speculative frenzy will never be allowed to drop. This promise naturally incentivizes even more speculative borrowing, leverage and risk, generating a titanic Everything Bubble in which risky assets skyrocket from pennies into dollars and dollars into fortunes.

Now imagine that this speculative frenzy spreads into every nook and cranny of the economy such that everyone is drawn into one casino or another, and previously sober, cautious people are seized by a quasi-religious fervor in which they become convinced that their gambling chips on NFTs, SPACs, meme-stocks, obscure alt-coins, homes, collectables and pretty much anything within the manic swirl of speculative frenzy is now a can’t lose path to carefree permanent wealth because the central bank guarantees it and anyone who questions this is in league with the Devil (or worse).

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

The Perfect Storm Is Bearing Down

The Perfect Storm Is Bearing Down

Time, the saying goes, is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once. So now, maybe, we’re at the event horizon where nature is suspended because everything seems to be happening at once.

The weeks ahead could determine whether we are a coherent society that can function on the basis of a firm consensual reality or just a collection of battling narratives designed to conceal anything that quacks like truth, all veering toward failure.

This is a very nervous country, and for a good reason. The collective sense of reality has commenced a momentous shift, the compass is spinning wildly, things are shaking loose in the national brain-pan, the gaslight has lost its sheen and the once-solid narrative is turning to vapor, starting with the unspooling riddles of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 engineered bioweapon is being used internationally to suppress formerly free citizens of formerly democratic republics. It becomes more obvious each day that everything connected to this extravaganza is other than it appears to be.

The numbers don’t add up, starting with the fact that when you combine the official registered COVID cases (people with acquired natural immunity) with the people who already had some kind of immunity from previous lifelong coronavirus encounters with the number of people vaccinated, you have a population supposedly way beyond herd immunity.

Who’s getting sick now? Mostly people who are all vaxxed up.

A Ticking Time Bomb?

Contrary to the behavior and statements of public health officials and politicians, the news is out that the spike proteins produced by the vax’s mRNA genetic reprogramming are toxic agents that create disorder in the major organs and blood vessels.

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

Weekly Commentary: Contagion

Weekly Commentary: Contagion

Another big miss for non-farm payrolls, with September’s 194,000 jobs gain less than half the 500,000 forecast. But with the Unemployment Rate down to 4.8% and Average Hourly Earnings up 4.6% y-o-y (not to mention almost 11 million job openings), there’s ample evidence that much of the labor market has turned exceptionally tight. The Senate passed debt ceiling legislation that should kick the can until early December. But let’s skip immediately to the week’s pressing developments.

It’s turning into a debacle. Evergrande bonds ended the week at 20 cents on the dollar, with yields surging to 72.5%. China’s real estate sector was hammered this week following the surprise default by mid-sized developer Fantasia Holdings.

October 6 – Bloomberg (Rebecca Choong Wilkins): “China’s property industry has suffered its first default on a dollar bond since China Evergrande Group sank deeper into crisis in recent weeks, fueling investor concerns over other highly leveraged borrowers and about global contagion. Fantasia Holdings Group Co., which develops high-end apartments and urban renewal projects, failed to repay a $205.7 million bond that came due Monday. That prompted a flurry of rating downgrades late Tuesday to levels signifying default. Creditors are now scanning debt repayment calendars as they try to suss out where the next flashpoints across the increasingly strained property industry may be — nearly a dozen firms have debt maturing through early 2022.”

October 7 – Wall Street Journal (Frances Yoon and Quentin Webb): “Fantasia’s nonpayment surprised investors because the… developer had recently said it had no liquidity issues, and indicated it had enough cash to repay the outstanding amount on a five-year dollar bond it issued in 2016. Fantasia, like Evergrande, was an active issuer of high-yield dollar bonds in the last few years…

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

“Catastrophic” Property Sales Mean China’s Worst Case Scenario Is Now In Play

“Catastrophic” Property Sales Mean China’s Worst Case Scenario Is Now In Play

No matter how the Evergrande drama plays out – whether it culminates with an uncontrolled, chaotic default and/or distressed asset sale liquidation, a controlled restructuring where bondholders get some compensation, or with Beijing blinking and bailing out the core pillar of China’s housing market – remember that Evergrande is just a symptom of the trends that have whipsawed China’s property market in the past year, which has seen significant contraction as a result of Beijing policies seeking to tighten financial conditions as part of Xi’s new “common prosperity” drive which among other things, seeks to make housing much more affordable to everyone, not just the richest.

As such, any contagion from the ongoing turmoil sweeping China’s heavily indebted property sector will impact not the banks, which are all state-owned entities and whose exposure to insolvent developers can easily be patched up by the state, but the property sector itself, which as Goldman recently calculated is worth $62 trillion making it the world’s largest asset classcontributes a mind-boggling 29% of Chinese GDP (compared to 6.2% in the US) and represents 62% of household wealth.

It’s also why we said that for Beijing the focus is not so much about Evegrande, but about preserving confidence in the property sector.

But first, a quick update on Evergrande, which – to nobody’s surprise – we learned today is expected to default on its offshore bond payment obligations imminently according to investment bank Moelis, which is advising a group of the cash-strapped developer’s bondholders. Evergrande, which is facing one of the country’s largest defaults as it wrestles with more than $300 billion of debt, has already missed coupon payments on dollar bonds twice last month.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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