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Deja Vu All Over Again
Deja Vu All Over Again
Janet Yellen will increase interest rates for the first time in nine years on Wednesday. She isn’t raising them because the economy is strengthening. The economy just happens to be weakening rapidly, as global recession takes hold. The stock market is 3% lower than it was in December 2014, and has basically done nothing since the end of QE3. Wall Street is throwing a hissy fit to try and stop Janet from boosting rates by an inconsequential .25%. Janet would prefer not to raise rates, but the credibility and reputation of her bubble blowing machine is at stake. The Fed has enriched their Wall Street benefactors over the last six years, while destroying the real economy and the middle class.
The quarter point increase will be reversed in short order as soon as we experience market collapse part two. It will be followed with negative interest rates and QE4, as these academics have only one play in their playbook – print money. They created the last financial crisis and have set the stage for the next – even bigger collapse. John Hussman explains how their zero interest rate policy has driven speculators into junk bonds as the only place to get any yield.
Over the past several years, yield-seeking investors, starved for any “pickup” in yield over Treasury securities, have piled into the junk debt and leveraged loan markets. Just as equity valuations have been driven to the second most extreme point in history (and the single most extreme point in history for the median stock, where valuations are well-beyond 2000 levels), risk premiums on speculative debt were compressed to razor-thin levels. By 2014, the spread between junk bond yields and Treasury yields had fallen to less than 2.4%. Since then, years of expected “risk-premiums” have been erased by capital losses, and defaults haven’t even spiked yet (they do so with a lag).
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George Orwell, Edward Bernays & Perpetual War
George Orwell, Edward Bernays & Perpetual War
Orwell’s essay on Perpetual War in “1984” is currently enjoying a revival in certain circles. Through the novel’s mysterious bogey man, Emmanuel Goldstein, Orwell avers that technological innovations have brought industry to such a level of efficiency that material abundance and leisure should be attainable to all. Widespread material comfort and spare time would allow the populace to develop intellectually and spiritually, and thus to achieve a kind of universal enlightenment. Orwell argues that with such leisure-based understanding, humanity would question the necessity for hierarchy and begin to threaten the arrangement that so benefits those at society’s pinnacle.
During the first half of the Twentieth Century those atop “1984”’s pyramid perceived this eventuality and identified a leisured, enlightened public as a threat to social stability and their dominant position. The ruling caste devised Perpetual War as a way of keeping industrial production humming. Orwell plainly states, “The primary aim of modern warfare… is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”
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This Is For The ‘Nothing Is Happening’ Crowd…
This Is For The ‘Nothing Is Happening’ Crowd…
A lot of people out there expected something to happen in September that did not ultimately happen. There were all kinds of wild theories floating around, and many of them had no basis in reality whatsoever. But without a doubt, some very important things did happen in September. As I warned about ahead of time, we are witnessing the most significant global financial meltdown since the end of 2008. All of the largest stock markets in the world are crashing simultaneously, and so far the amount of wealth that has been wiped out worldwide is in excess of 5 trillion dollars. In addition to stocks, junk bonds are also crashing, and Bank of America says that it is a “slow moving trainwreck that seems to be accelerating“. Thanks to the commodity price crash, many of the largest commodity traders on the planet are now imploding. I wrote about the death spiral that has gripped Glencore yesterday. On Tuesday, the stock price of the largest commodity trader in Asia, the Noble Group, plummeted like a rock and commodity trading giant Trafigura appears to be in worse shapethan either Glencore or the Noble Group. The total collapse of any of them could easily be a bigger event than the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008. So I honestly do not understand the “nothing is happening” crowd. It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.
Within the last 60 days, we have seen some things happen that we have never seen before.
For example, did you know that we witnessed the greatest intraday stock market crash in U.S. history on August 24th?
During that day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged from a high of 16,459.75 to a low of 15,370.33 before rebounding substantially. That intraday point swing of 1,089 points was the largest in all of U.S. history.
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The Next Thing Might Be Helicopter Money
The Next Thing Might Be Helicopter Money
«I dare to say that we have not yet seen the most radical brainwaves of the mandarins running our central banks.»
The global financial markets are under severe stress. The postponed interest rate hike in the United States, the fast cooldown of the Chinese economy and the crash in the commodity complex are causing a great amount of unease among investors. Fear is growing that the world slips into recession. «Central bank policy is intended to paper over the cracks in the systems. Seven years after the outbreak of the financial crisis we’re paying for this with a lack of growth», says James Grant. The sharp thinking editor of the iconic Wall Street newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer» draws worrisome parallels between the command based central planning of the Chinese economy and the economic policies in the West. He also doubts that Fed Chair Janet Yellen is the right fit for the top job at the world’s most powerful central bank. Looking for protection he points to gold and shares of gold miners
It seems longer ago, doesn’t it? Certain things have not changed. The first of those permanent things is the nature of human beings who operate in markets and their tendency to buy high and sell low. That is just as it was the day before Lehman failed and it’s just as it will be forever. What’s new and different is the larger than life presence of government in our markets, both with respect to regulation and with respect to the management and the production and the manipulation of money.
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Two Outs in the Bottom of the Ninth
Two Outs in the Bottom of the Ninth
The housing market peaked in 2005 and proceeded to crash over the next five years, with existing home sales falling 50%, new home sales falling 75%, and national home prices falling 30%. A funny thing happened after the peak. Wall Street banks accelerated the issuance of subprime mortgages to hyper-speed. The executives of these banks knew housing had peaked, but insatiable greed consumed them as they purposely doled out billions in no-doc liar loans as a necessary ingredient in their CDOs of mass destruction.
The millions in upfront fees, along with their lack of conscience in bribing Moody’s and S&P to get AAA ratings on toxic waste, while selling the derivatives to clients and shorting them at the same time, in order to enrich executives with multi-million dollar compensation packages, overrode any thoughts of risk management, consequences, or the impact on homeowners, investors, or taxpayers. The housing boom began as a natural reaction to the Federal Reserve suppressing interest rates to, at the time, ridiculously low levels from 2001 through 2004 (child’s play compared to the last six years).
Greenspan created the atmosphere for the greatest mal-investment in world history. As he raised rates from 2004 through 2006, the titans of finance on Wall Street should have scaled back their risk taking and prepared for the inevitable bursting of the bubble. Instead, they were blinded by unadulterated greed, as the legitimate home buyer pool dried up, and they purposely peddled “exotic” mortgages to dupes who weren’t capable of making the first payment. This is what happens at the end of Fed induced bubbles. Irrationality, insanity, recklessness, delusion, and willful disregard for reason, common sense, historical data and truth lead to tremendous pain, suffering, and financial losses.
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There Are Indications That A Major Financial Event In Germany Could Be Imminent
There Are Indications That A Major Financial Event In Germany Could Be Imminent
Is something about to happen in Germany that will shake the entire world? According to disturbing new intel that I have received, a major financial event in Germany could be imminent. Now when I say imminent, I do not mean to suggest that it will happen tomorrow. But I do believe that we have entered a season of time when another “Lehman Brothers moment” may occur. Most observers tend to regard Germany as the strong hub that is holding the rest of Europe together economically, but the truth is that serious trouble is brewing under the surface. As I write this, the German DAX stock index is down close to 20 percent from the all-time high that was set back in April, and there are lots of signs of turmoil at Germany’s largest bank. There are very few banks in the world that are more prestigious or more influential than Deutsche Bank, and it has been making headlines for all of the wrong reasons recently.
Just like we saw with Lehman Brothers, banks that are “too big to fail” don’t suddenly collapse overnight. The truth is that there are always warning signs in advance if you look closely enough.
In early 2014, shares of Deutsche Bank were trading above 50 dollars a share. Since that time, they have fallen by more than 40 percent, and they are now trading below 29 dollars a share.
It is common knowledge that the corporate culture at Deutsche Bank is deeply corrupt, and the bank has been exceedingly reckless in recent years.
If you are exceedingly reckless and you win all the time, that is okay. Unfortunately for Deutsche Bank, they have increasingly been on the losing end of things.
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Will Uncle Sam Confiscate Gold Again?
Will Uncle Sam Confiscate Gold Again?
Investors suffered financial losses in recent weeks as stocks globally came under pressure in August and had their worst month in the last three years.
In one of the most volatile trading periods since the global financial crisis, August saw a massive $5.7 trillion erased from the value of stocks worldwide. No major stock market was left unscathed and the risk of financial and economic contagion became evident again.
There are growing concerns internationally that in the event of another Wall Street or global stock market crash and a new systemic crisis – a Eurozone debt crisis or another Lehman Brothers collapse – there could be enforced bank closures or extended bank holidays in the EU and U.S. as seen in Greece recently.
In this scenario, deposit boxes and vaults in U.S. banks and financial institutions could be sealed and gold confiscated again.
There is a legal precedent for this. April 5th, 1933 – at the height of the Great Depression – was the day when U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instructed all American citizens to hand over all their gold coins and bars to the Federal Government.
Every coin, bar and certificate had to be handed in to Roosevelt’s government or else one would face a very large fine of $10,000 or 10 years in jail. That is whopping fine of $180,000 fine in today’s money.
Gold was money at the time as dollars were backed by gold so in effect Roosevelt was confiscating the safest and most valuable form of money that people owned for the benefit of the state. Under the Gold Confiscation Act of 1933 Roosevelt ordered all gold be handed to the authorities. At the time, gold was valued at $20 per ounce. Once the gold was confiscated from the citizens and in the government coffers they revalued gold and devalued the dollar to $35 per ounce.
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Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?
Why Are Exchange-Traded Funds Preparing For A ‘Liquidity Crisis’ And A ‘Market Meltdown’?
Some really weird things are happening in the financial world right now. If you go back to 2008, there was lots of turmoil bubbling just underneath the surface during the months leading up to the great stock market crash in the second half of that year. When Lehman Brothers finally did collapse, it was a total shock to most of the planet, but we later learned that their problems had been growing for a long time. I believe that we are in a similar period right now, and the second half of this year promises to be quite chaotic. Apparently, those that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in the entire world agree with me, because as you will see below they are quietly preparing for a “liquidity crisis” and a “market meltdown”. About a month ago, I warned of an emerging “liquidity squeeze“, and now analysts all over the financial industry are talking about it. Could it be possible that the next great financial crisis is right around the corner?
According to Reuters, the companies that run some of the largest exchange-traded funds in existence are deeply concerned about what a lack of liquidity would mean for them during the next financial crash. So right now they are quietly “bolstering bank credit lines” so that they will be better positioned for “a market meltdown”…
The biggest providers of exchange-traded funds, which have been funneling billions of investor dollars into some little-traded corners of the bond market, are bolstering bank credit lines for cash to tap in the event of a market meltdown.
Vanguard Group, Guggenheim Investments and First Trust are among U.S. fund companies that have lined up new bank guarantees or expanded ones they already had, recent company filings show.
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