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Nikolay Dubovsky Became Silent 1890

“European Stocks Surge Celebrating New Spanish, Italian Governments”, says a Zero Hedge headline. “Markets Breathe Easier As Italy Government Sworn In”, proclaims Reuters. And I’m thinking: these markets are crazy, and none of this will last more than a few days. Or hours. The new Italian government is not the end of a problem, it’s the beginning of many of them.

And Italy is far from the only problem. The new Spanish government will be headed by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, who manoeuvred well to oust sitting PM Rajoy, but he also recently saw the worst election result in his party’s history. Not exactly solid ground. Moreover, he needed the support of Catalan factions, and will have to reverse much of Rajoy’s actions on the Catalunya issue, including probably the release from prison of those responsible for the independence referendum.

Nor is Spain exactly economically sound. Still, it’s not in as bad a shape as Turkey and Argentina. A JPMorgan graph published at Zero Hedge says a lot, along with the commentary on it:

The chart below, courtesy of Cembalest, shows each country’s current account (x-axis), the recent change in its external borrowing (y-axis) and the return on a blended portfolio of its equity and fixed income markets (the larger the red bubble, the worse the returns have been). This outcome looks sensible given weaker Argentine and Turkish fundamentals. And while Cembalest admits that the rising dollar and rising US rates will be a challenge for the broader EM space, most will probably not face balance of payments crises similar to what is taking place in Turkey and Argentina, of which the latter is already getting an IMF bailout and the former, well… it’s only a matter of time.

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

The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear

May 23, 2018

The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear

The acceleration of non-linear consequences will surprise the brainwashed, loving-their-servitude mainstream media.

Linear correlations are intuitive: if GDP declines 2% in the next recession, and employment declines 2%, we get it: the scale and size of the decline aligns. In a linear correlation, we’d expect sales to drop by about 2%, businesses closing their doors to increase by about 2%, profits to notch down by about 2%, lending contracts by around 2% and so on.

But the effects of the next recession won’t be linear–they will be non-linear, and far more devastating than whatever modest GDP decline is registered. To paraphrase William Gibson’s insightful observation that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”: the recession is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed– and its effects will be enormously asymmetric.

Non-linear effects can be extremely asymmetric. Thus an apparently mild decline of 2% in GDP might trigger a 50% rise in the number of small businesses closing, a 50% collapse in new mortgages issued and a 10% increase in unemployment.

Richard Bonugli of Financial Repression Authority alerted me to the non-linear dynamic of the coming slowdown. I recently recorded a podcast with Richard on one sector that will cascade in a series of non-linear avalanches once the current asset bubbles pop and the current central-bank-created “recovery” falters under its staggering weight of debt, malinvestment and speculative excess.

The Intensifying Pension Crisis (37-minute podcast)

The core dynamic of the next recession is the unwind of all the extremes:extremes in debt expansion, in leverage, in the explosion of debt taken on by marginal borrowers, in malinvestment, in debt-fueled speculation, in emerging market debt denominated in US dollars, in financial repression, in political corruption–the list of extremes that have stretched the system to the breaking point is almost endless.

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

Illinois to Impose 1% Property Tax on Top of Everything Annually for 30 Years

May 14, 2018

Illinois to Impose 1% Property Tax on Top of Everything Annually for 30 Years

In Illinois is a State that should just commit suicide and be emerged into surrounding states. It is following the EXACT pattern as the fall of the city of Rome itself. Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital from Rome to Constantinople around 330AD. Rome lost its status as corruption and taxes rose. More and more people just walked away from their property for there was NO BID.

Property values are already collapsing in Illinois. The Pension Crisis is worldwide, but Illinois is leading the charge. The words of Edward Gibbon from his Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire are very applicable to Chicago. This is how empires, nations, and city-states die. It is always the abuse of taxation that drives people from their homes. Illinois is the NUMBER ONE state that now has a NET loss of citizens and people are fleeing that state. Bureaucrats cannot see the trend any more than they can see their own nose. They only see raising taxes. To them there is just no other way. They come first. Gibbon wrote:

“Her primeval state, such as she -might–appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple, the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of Fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations.

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

Global Pension Gap Expected to Hit $400 Trillion: US Leads the Way

April 27, 2018

Global Pension Gap Expected to Hit $400 Trillion: US Leads the Way

The global pension gap of 8 nations is $70 trillion. The US alone is $38 trillion. By 2050 the total gap will hit $400T.

The Visual Capitalist reports The Pension Time Bomb: $400 Trillion by 2050. The above image is a small section of a huge pension infographic.

According to an analysis by the World Economic Forum (WEF), there was a combined retirement savings gap in excess of $70 trillion in 2015, spread between eight major economies: Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Japan, India, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The WEF says the deficit is growing by $28 billion every 24 hours – and if nothing is done to slow the growth rate, the deficit will reach $400 trillion by 2050, or about five times the size of the global economy today.
In the United States, it is expected that the Social Security trust fund will run out by 2034. At that point, there will only be enough revenue coming in to pay out approximately 77% of benefits.

Worse Than You Think

Lance Roberts at Real Investment Advice added to the report in his take The Pension Crisis Is Worse Than You Think.

What follows are excerpts of Roberts’ excellent presentation, withoutblockquotes. His name will mark the end of his report.

Problem 1: Demographics

With pension funds already wrestling with largely underfunded liabilities, the shifting demographics are further complicating funding problems. One of the primary problems continues to be the decline in the ratio of workers per retiree as retirees are living longer (increasing the relative number of retirees), and lower birth rates (decreasing the relative number of workers.) However, this “support ratio” is not only declining in the U.S. but also in much of the developed world. This is due to two demographic factors: increased life expectancy coupled with a fixed retirement age, and a decrease in the fertility rate.

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

The Fed is Raising Rates Because of the Pension Crisis

March 27, 2018

The Fed is Raising Rates Because of the Pension Crisis

QUESTION: The Fed says it will raise rates two or three times more this year. My question is this: If the stock market is crashing, why are they still raising rates?

ANSWER: The Fed is raising rates because they must be NORMALIZED given the pension crisis. They are trying to get then back up and if they could, they would jack them up to 8%. If you can imagine, a pension fund under normal conditions needs 8% annual. Even CalPERS came in at 7% and they were insolvent. Rates are rising because of the pension crisis, not because the economy is really heating up or the stock market is booming. The technical resistance stands at the Downtrend Line at the 3% level. Rates will double to reach that area faster than people suspect.

We have a Directional Change due in May and look at the August/September period where we also have a Panic Cycle. Things are not going to be as smooth-sailing as many believe. We have a very RARE Double Monthly Bullish Reversal at 2.25%. A monthly closing above that level and 5% will be seen in a matter of months.

The Way to Survive Hyperinflation

March 22, 2018

The Way to Survive Hyperinflation

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong; I just wanted to comment that I am from Venezuela. My father came here to visit me in Florida where I live with a Green Card. Everything he saved in life for his retirement is now worthless and it does not even pay to travel back to collect his pension. The hyperinflation is a collapse in the confidence of government as you have explained. Those who saved for their retirement and had pensions, lose everything. They will be paid the amount that they were promised, but it will not even buy a single night’s dinner and soon a beer.

Thank you for your contribution to society. I wish more people would listen to you. Experience is the root of knowledge. Opinion is the root of bias. You have proven that

REPLY: To survive hyperinflation requires the holding of tangible assets and never cash or pensions. The way pensions can be devalued is through inflation over the course of time and circumstance. What I paid into Social Security will never come back to me in terms of real purchasing power and that is without hyperinflation. I have stated before, I met with the Treasury back during the Reagan Administration and said these insane levels of interest rates will triple the national debt in less than 10 years. They simply responded; Yes but we will be paying back with cheaper dollars.

All promises of government are simply eroded with inflation. That is why Southern Europe fell into such chaos. The currency doubled instead of declining when they joined the Euro. That is why Europe has been a failure under this political-economic philosophy. The Euro first crashed, and then doubled in value. Southern Europe was used to inflation always reducing their debts. Suddenly, their debts doubled and deflation ruled. And people cannot figure out why the Euro is in such trouble?

I do like your saying though. It is spot on.

Is Volatility in Oil Price on the Way, Again ?

February 23, 2018

Is Volatility in Oil Price on the Way, Again ?

Experts say that you shouldn’t look at your pension investments too often as you might make unwise decisions. I don’t follow this advice. The reason that I’m drawn to tending my pension spreadsheet weekly, if not daily, is two-fold. First, I’m told by professionals who read the tea leaves on this sort of thing that I have Asperger’s syndrome. It turns out that pawing over columns of numbers in Excel is nirvana to certain of us oddball hues on the autism spectrum. Second, for ten years I have had a fascination, bordering on dread, for the incremental drama of two charts in my spreadsheet, both of which are shown below.

Stock market volatility follows clusters of spikes in oil price volatility

Figure 1 – Stock market volatility follows clusters of spikes in oil price volatility

Paradoxically, neither chart directly relates to my investments. However, they have guided the timing of when I move money around in my accounts – shifting between riskier stock indexes to safer bond funds. So far, my strategy has worked. For example, my pension fund suffered little during the 2008 financial crisis, and from lesser bouts of turbulence in 2011 and 2015.

So how does my investment approach work? It’s quite simple. The top graph in red shows a rolling 3-day standard deviation (SD) of daily oil price – specifically calculated from the Brent crude oil index. The chart below it in blue is a rolling 3-day SD calculated from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Whenever, the red chart (i.e., that of oil) develops a cluster of large spikes that is sustained for a few months or more, I’ve noticed that a similar cluster turns up a few months later in the stock market. More importantly, I’ve learned that you don’t want your money in stocks when this is happening, so when the warning signs occur in oil, I march my money off to the relative safety of the bond market.

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

Find The Sentence That Dooms Pension Funds (Don’t Worry, It’s Highlighted)

February 22, 2018

Find The Sentence That Dooms Pension Funds (Don’t Worry, It’s Highlighted)

The “pension crisis” is one of those things — like electric cars and nuclear fusion — that’s definitely coming but never seems to actually arrive. However, for pension funds the reason a crisis hasn’t yet happened is also the reason that it will happen, and soon:

The Risk Pension Funds Can’t Escape

(Wall Street Journal) – Public pension funds that lost hundreds of billions during the last financial crisis still face significant risk from one basic investment: stocks.That vulnerability came into focus earlier this month as markets descended into correction territory for the first time since February 2016. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the U.S., lost $18.5 billion in value over a 10-day trading period ended Feb. 9, according to figures provided by the system.

The sudden drop represented 5% of total assets held by the pension fund, which had roughly half of its portfolio in equities as of late 2017. It gained back $8.1 billion through last Friday as markets recovered.

“It looks like 2018 is likely to be more turbulent than what we have experienced the last couple of years,” the fund’s chief investment officer, Ted Eliopoulos, told his board last Monday at a public meeting.

Retirement systems that manage money for firefighters, police officers, teachers and other public workers are increasingly reliant on stocks for returns as the bull market nears its ninth year. By the end of 2017, equities had surged to an average 53.6% of public pension portfolios from 50.3% one year earlier, according to figures released earlier this month by the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Those average holdings were the highest on a percentage basis since 2010, according to the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service data, and near the 54.6% average these funds held at the end of 2007.

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

This tiny corner of Rhode Island shows us the future of Social Security

February 6, 2018

This tiny corner of Rhode Island shows us the future of Social Security

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit gave us an interesting glimpse of the future last week when it ruled on an obscure case involving government pension obligations.

Ever since the mid-1990s, police officers and fire fighters in the town of Cranston, Rhode Island had been promised state pension benefits upon retirement.

But, facing critical budget shortfalls over the last several years that the Rhode Island government called “fiscal peril,” the state legislature voted to unilaterally reduce public employees’ pension benefits.

Even more, these cuts were retroactive, i.e. they didn’t just apply to new employees.

The changes were applied across the board; workers who had spent their entire careers being promised certain retirement benefits ended up having their pensions cut as well.

Even the court acknowledged that these changes “substantially reduced the value of public employee pensions provided by the Rhode Island system.”

So, naturally, a number of municipal employee unions sued.

And the case of Cranston’s police and fire fighter unions made it all the way to federal court.

The unions’ argument was that the government of Rhode Island was contractually bound to pay benefits– these benefits had been enshrined in long-standing state legislation, and they should be enforced just like any other contract.

The state government disagreed.

In their view, the legislature should be able to change laws, even retroactively, whenever it suits them.

Last week the First Circuit Court issued a final ruling and sided with the state of Rhode Island: the government has no obligation to honor its promises.

News like this will never make major headlines.

But here at Sovereign Man our team pays very close attention to these obscure court cases because they often set very dangerous precedents.

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

The Pension Ponzi Scheme is Coming to an End

February 2, 2018

The Pension Ponzi Scheme is Coming to an End

Inevitably, all things must come to an end. Our entire problem with government is we have ZERO accountability and ZEROqualification standards to even run for office. The Democrats have put forth blacks and women, not because of their abilities, but simply because they want to score votes. The latest proposal was to put Oprah Winfrey up for president. She is black and a woman. This is the qualification requirement? This is like going to Jay Leno for brain surgery. This is why we are in such a crisis. Oprah may be a nice person, but that does not qualify her to make a decision in international relations no less economics.

We impose no qualifications to be a politician. Anyone can run for office. We are in serious trouble because we elect people who have no idea what is going on and just assume everything has been working so why change it? I have warned that the Central Banks in quantitative Easing set the stage for the next crisis. The excessive low-interest rates for nearly 10 years has undermined the pension system while all governments have borrowed like crazy never considering what happens if rates rise?

In Britain, two out of three pension funds are in the deficit. In total, some 3,710 pension schemes are in deficit according to the Pension Protection Fund watchdog. The entire Ponzi Scheme of pension is falling apart. We need crisis management right NOW and there isn’t a hope in hell of moving to such a position of a Crisis Manager. Millions of workers around the world who believed in government are going to see their futures wiped out.

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

Global Pension Ponzi – Carillion Collapse One Of Many To Come

January 22, 2018

Global Pension Ponzi – Carillion Collapse One Of Many To Come

Pension Crisis And Deficit of £2.6B At Carillion To Impact UK Pensions

– Carillion collapses leaving a £900 million debt pile and 30,000 pensions at risk
– Carillion PLC share price has collapsed 94% in last twelve months
– Private analysis of Carillion’s pension deficit reveals it to be as high as £2.6 billion
– Figure adds to the UK’s ongoing pension crisis, both private and state are severely underfunded
– UK’s Private Pension Fund already has a levy of £550 million for next twelve months
– UK state pension crisis as state fund to be ‘exhausted by 2033’
– Ensure your pension is funded and properly diversified with gold

Source: Wikimedia

The looming pension crisis has been signalled in the collapse of Carillion. The deficit of latest private sector dead-on-arrival Carillion is officially £580 million. However, private reports suggest it could be as high as £2.6 BILLION.

According to a Sky News investigation: ‘the £2.6 billion figure relates to the cost to Carillion of paying an insurance company to guarantee all of its pension liabilities, and is significant because it is likely to be the sum claimed on behalf of the pension schemes as part of the liquidation process.’

Nearly 30,000 UK workers’ pensions are at risk thanks to Carillion management’s total mismanagement of a company that has seen its share price collapse 94% in the last 12 months.

Carillion’s 27,500-member pension scheme was placed on an ‘at risk list’ in autumn 2017. Arguably, it like many other pension funds should have been there many months ago.

Sadly, Carillion is just the latest in a very long string of serious company collapses that have highlighted the major pension crisis in the UK and around the Western world. It also likely signals that we may be on the verge of many, many more very large corporate bankruptcies in the UK due to massive debt levels and unfunded liabilities.

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

Drastic Pension Cuts Will Hit California, Kentucky, Other States

January 16, 2018

Drastic Pension Cuts Will Hit California, Kentucky, Other States

The CA Supreme Court will rule on pension cuts. Curiously, the court’s ruling will be irrelevant in case of bankruptcy.

Please consider California’s Brown Raises Prospect Of Pension Cuts In Downturn.

California Governor Jerry Brown said legal rulings may clear the way for making cuts to public pension benefits, which would go against long-standing assumptions and potentially provide financial relief to the state and its local governments.

Brown said he has a “hunch” the courts would “modify” the so-called California rule, which holds that benefits promised to public employees can’t be rolled back. The state’s Supreme Court is set to hear a case in which lower courts ruled that reductions to pensions are permissible if the payments remain “reasonable” for workers.

“There is more flexibility than there is currently assumed by those who discuss the California rule,” Brown said during a briefing on the budget in Sacramento. He said that in the next recession, the governor “will have the option of considering pension cutbacks for the first time.”

That would be a major shift in California, where municipal officials have long believed they couldn’t adjust the benefits even as they struggle to cover the cost. They have raised taxes and dipped into reserves to meet rising contributions. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest public pension, has about 68 percent of assets needed to cover its liabilities. For the fiscal year beginning in July, the state’s contribution to Calpers is double what it was in fiscal 2009.

“In the next downturn, when things look pretty dire, that would be one of the items on the chopping block,” Brown said.

Pension Cuts Are Coming

It’s refreshing to hear a politician admit the obvious: Pension cuts are coming.

However, whether or not the cuts are “reasonable” is irrelevant in cases of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is under federal, not state law.

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

2017 Year In Review

December 27, 2017

Tortoon/Shutterstock

2017 Year In Review

Markets fiddle while Rome burns

Every year, friend-of-the-site David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception. As with past years, he has graciously selected PeakProsperity.com as the site where it will be published in full. It’s quite longer than our usual posts, but worth the time to read in full. A downloadable pdf of the full article is available here, for those who prefer to do their power-reading offline. — cheers, Adam

Introduction

“He is funnier than you are.”

~David Einhorn, Greenlight Capital, on Dave Barry’s Year in Review

Every December, I write a survey trying to capture the year’s prevailing themes. I appear to have stiff competition—the likes of Dave Barry on one extreme¹ and on the other, Pornhub’s marvelous annual climax that probes deeply personal preferences in the world’s favorite pastime.² (I know when I’m licked.) My efforts began as a few paragraphs discussing the markets on Doug Noland’s bear chat board and monotonically expanded to a tome covering the orb we call Earth. It posts at Peak Prosperity, reposts at ZeroHedge, and then fans out from there. Bearishness and right-leaning libertarianism shine through as I spelunk the Internet for human folly to couch in snarky prose while trying to avoid the “expensive laugh” (too much setup).³ I rely on quotes to let others do the intellectual heavy lifting.

“Consider adding more of your own thinking and judgment to the mix . . . most folks are familiar with general facts but are unable to process them into a coherent and actionable framework.”

~Tony Deden, founder of Edelweiss Holdings, on his second read through my 2016 Year in Review

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

~Joe Friday

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

The Greek Fraud Reads Like a Crime Novel

December 16, 2017

The Greek Fraud Reads Like a Crime Novel

Tamara de Lempicka The refugees 1937Note: I feel kind of sorry this has become such a long essay. But I still left out so much. You know by now I care a lot about Greece, and it’s high time for another look, and another update, and another chance for people to understand what is happening to the country, and why. To understand that hardly any of it is because the Greeks had so much debt and all of that narrative.

The truth is, Greece was set up to be a patsy for the failure of Europe’s financial system, and is now being groomed simultaneously as a tourist attraction to benefit foreign investors who buy Greek assets for pennies on the dollar, and as an internment camp for refugees and migrants that Europe’s ‘leaders’ view as a threat to their political careers more than anything else.

I would almost say: here we go again, but in reality we never stopped going. It’s just that Greece’s 15 minutes of fame may be long gone, but its ordeal is far from over. If you read through this, you will understand why that is. The EU is deliberately, and without any economic justification, destroying one of its own member states, destroying its entire economy.

A short article in Greek paper Kathimerini last week detailed the latest new cuts in pensions the Troika has imposed on Greece, and it’s now getting beyond absurd. For an economy to function, you need people spending money. That is what keeps jobs alive, jobs which pay people the money they need to spend on their basic necessities. If you don’t do at least that, there’ll be ever fewer jobs, and/or ever less money to spend. It’s a vicious cycle.

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

Politicians & Kicking the Can Down the Road

December 4, 2017

Politicians & Kicking the Can Down the Road

QUESTION: Hi Marty,

Thank you for replying to my earlier question about The Crash & No Bid. It as very insightful towards the mechanics of markets. I have a new question for you regarding how Politicians “kick the can” as long as they can expecting the next people in line to pick up the tab… and never pay!

I was told by my uncle that the reason why politicians were lowering interest rates was so that they could keep increasing their perpetual deficit. But- since we have hit the turning point in interest rates and that rates are on the rise do you foresee politicians promoting hyper-inflation while fixing payable amounts on things like “pensions”? I believe that if they can dilute / water down money through inflation that the pension funds would then appear to “be on budget” (kicking the can further down the road, and also creating civil unrest)?

The way I see it is that if politicians were using low-interest rates to create cheaper money, could their next move potentially be diluting the huge quantity of money ….. cause they have nowhere else to go! (along with the hunt for taxes)

NG From Vancouver Island, Canada

ANSWER: I completely understand that from the outside looking in, it appears that the politicians are kicking the can down the road because they KNOW what will happen. It also appears that they have created lower interest rates to allow them to reduce their borrowing costs and spend more. I hate to burst everyone’s bubble here, but the truth is MUCH WORSE. All of these assumptions and conspiracy theories are based upon the common foundation that they PRESUME the politicians even understand what they are doing. They are NOT that intelligent. Sorry!

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

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