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The 1987 stock market crash raised concerns for the dangers associated with mounting U.S. “twin deficits.” Fiscal and trade deficits were reflective of poor economic management. Credit excesses – certainly including excessive government borrowings – were stimulating demand that was reflected in expanding U.S. trade and Current Account Deficits. Concerns dissipated with the revival of the bull market. These days we’re confronting the consequences of 30-plus years of mismanagement.

Japan was the early major recipient of U.S. Bubble excess (throughout the eighties). The world today would be a much different place if the policy onus had fallen upon the Fed and congress to rein in U.S. borrowing excesses. Instead, enormous pressure was placed on Japan (and, later, others) to ameliorate trade surpluses with the U.S. by stimulating domestic demand. Such stimulus measures were instrumental in (repeatedly) stoking already powerful Bubbles to precarious extremes.

Fiscal and Current Account Deficits exploded in the early-nineties post-Bubble period. And as the nineties reflation gathered momentum, the boom in Wall Street and GSE finance pushed the Current Account to previously unimaginable extremes. Then, as the decade progressed, the associated global boom in dollar-based finance proved ever more destabilizing. Always ignoring root causes, each new crisis provided an excuse to further stimulate/inflate.

The fundamentally unsound dollar proved pivotal for European monetary integration, as the strong euro currency coupled with global liquidity abundance ensured runaway Bubble excesses throughout Europe’s periphery. If the U.S. could run perpetual Current Account Deficits, why not Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal? Having ignored problematic financial and economic imbalances for years, when European troubles erupted everyone turned immediately to pressure the big surplus economy (Germany) to further stimulate their Bubble economy.

Economists traditionally viewed persistent Current Account Deficits as problematic. But as New Paradigm and New Era thinking took hold throughout the nineties, all types of justification and rationalization turned conventional analysis on its head.

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

This Chart Shows the First Big Crash Is Likely Just Ahead

March 15, 2016

This Chart Shows the First Big Crash Is Likely Just Ahead

The story on Wall Street and CNBC continues to be that we’re in a correction and this is a buying opportunity. Even Warren Buffett joins the chorus of stock market cheerleaders for the skeptical public. Well, I agree with the skeptical public, not the experts here!

The bull market from early 2009 into May 2015 looks just like every bubble in history, and I’m getting one sign after the next that we did indeed peak last May. The dominant pattern in the stock market is the “rounded top” pattern:

S&P 500 rounded top

After trading in a steep, bubble-like channel from late 2011 into late 2014, with only 10% maximum volatility top to bottom, the market finally lost its momentum… just as the Fed finished tapering its QE. That’s because the Fed was the primary driver in this stock bubble in the first place!

But the first sign that the bubble had indeed peaked was the break of that upward channel last August. Surprise, surprise! Without the Fed’s stimulus, stocks started to sputter out!

With that sign we can point to what now looks like a series of major tops, in one major index after the next, since late 2014:

Dow Transports, November 2014.
Dow Utilities, January 2015.
The DAX in Germany and the FTSE in the UK: April, 2015.
The Dow and S&P 500: May 2015.
The Shanghai Composite: June 2015.
The Nasdaq, Biotech and the Russell 2000: July 2015.
And finally, the Nikkei in Japan: August 2015.

The Shanghai Index crashed 45% in 2.5 months, similar to the Dow in late 1929 on its first 2.5-month wave down. That one was so obvious that when I said it was about to burst, it peaked that day and rolled over the next!

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

Ryan McMaken: The European Central Bank Finally Throws in the Kitchen Sink

March 14, 2016

RYAN MCMAKEN: THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK FINALLY THROWS IN THE KITCHEN SINK

Back in January, ECB President Mario Draghi doubled down on his earlier commitment to do “whatever it takes” to prop up the European economy with easy money.” “There are no limits to how far we’re willing to deploy our instruments,” Draghi swore in January.

He wasn’t joking. Today, Draghi and the ECB resorted to what some are calling the “kitchen sink” option, and what others are calling the “bazooka.”

You don’t have to be an expert on monetary policy to understand what these metaphors are trying to tell you.

According to CNBC:

In light of cuts to the growth and inflation outlook, the ECB announced on Thursday that it had cut its main refinancing rate to 0.0 percent and its deposit rate to minus 0.4 percent.

“While very low or even negative inflation rates are unavoidable over the next few months as a result of movement in oil prices, it is crucial to avoid second-round effects,” Draghi said in his regular media conference after the ECB statement.

The bank also extended its monthly asset purchases to 80 billion euros ($87 billion), to take effect in April. In addition, the ECB will add corporate bonds to the assets it can buy — specifically, investment grade euro-denominated bonds issued by non-bank corporations. These purchases will start towards end of the first half of 2016.

Eighty billion euros? That’s a huge number. Some may remember that during QE3 — the largest of the Quantitative Easing programs — in 2013, the Fed was making $85 billion per month in asset purchases.

It eventually trimmed back to $75 billion and then $65 billion. In that time, the Fed amassed a balance sheet of more than $4 trillion.

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

Central Banks Are About To Leave Fiat Addicted Stock Markets In Agony

March 9, 2016

Central Banks Are About To Leave Fiat Addicted Stock Markets In Agony

Many investors today are not very familiar with market history and tend to live only in the day-to-day mainstream narrative while watching little red and green graphs move up and down. This is not so much an issue in a relatively stable economic environment. The problem is, today we live in the most unstable economic conditions possible.

These investors and analysts are simply not aware that some of the most exciting stock rallies occur during the most volatile crises, and so they interpret every rally of a few days to a few weeks as a signal for recovery. However, in this kind of fiscal environment, all the gains made in a few weeks can be lost in moments.

After the Great Depression began to take hold in U.S. markets, massive rallies unfolded over the span of weeks and sometimes months, only to end in a collapse to even lower depths. For example, in 1930 the Dow Jones enjoyed historic rallies twice, gaining 48% only to lose it all, then gaining more than 16% and crashing down to a 50% loss for the year. Each consecutive year there were multiple rallies of more than 25% and each time they disintegrated. By 1932 stocks were only worth approximately 20% of what they were worth in 1929. Bear market rallies continued to give false hope to investors and the public throughout the crisis, and mainstream banks and economists continued to exploit such rallies to capitalize on those false hopes.

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

Playing Around With Prices Is a Bad Idea

March 8, 2016

Playing Around With Prices Is a Bad Idea

Call me old fashioned, but I still think prices matter. I vividly recall the first time I studied those simple supply-and-demand graphs as a college freshman, and today, far too many years later, their basic logic remains undeniable. When prices are right, money flows to the most productive endeavors and economies work efficiently. When prices are wrong, crazy things eventually happen, with potentially dire consequences.

That’s why we should be very worried about Japan, where things are getting crazy. On March 1, the Japanese government sold benchmark, 10-year bonds at a negative yield for the first time ever. Think about that for a minute. The investors who bought these bonds not only loaned the Japanese government their money. They’re paying for the privilege of doing so.

Abenomics

Why would any sane person do such a thing? A government with debt equivalent to more than 240 percent of national output — the largest load in the developed world — should surely have to pay investors a tidy sum to convince them to part with their money, not the other way around. But the bond market in Japan has become so distorted that investors believe it’s in their interests to lend money at a cost to themselves. The only explanation is that prices in Japan have gone horribly, horribly awry, and that has made the illogical logical.

The culprit is the Bank of Japan. The entire purpose of its unorthodox stimulus programs — quantitative easing, negative interest rates — is, in effect, to get prices wrong: to press down interest rates below where they would normally go and force banks to lend money in ways they normally wouldn’t. The BOJ, in other words, is trying to alter prices to change the incentive structure in the economy in order to engineer certain results — to increase inflation, encourage investment and spark growth.

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

The Lull Before The Storm—–It’s Getting Narrow At The Top, Part 2

December 2, 2015

The Lull Before The Storm—–It’s Getting Narrow At The Top, Part 2

The danger lurking in the risk asset markets was succinctly captured by MarketWatch’s post on overnight action in Asia. The latter proved once again that the casino gamblers are incapable of recognizing the on-rushing train of global recession because they have become addicted to “stimulus” as a way of life:

Shares in Hong Kong led a rally across most of Asia Tuesday, on expectations for more stimulus from Chinese authorities, specifically in the property sector…….The gains follow fresh readings on China’s economy, which showed further signs of slowdown in manufacturing data released Tuesday (which) remains plagued by overcapacity, falling prices and weak demand. The dimming view casts doubt that the world’s second-largest economy can achieve its target growth of around 7% for the year. The central bank has cut interest rates six times since last November.

More stimulus from China? Now that’s a true absurdity—-not because the desperate suzerains of red capitalism in Beijing won’t try it, but because it can’t possibly enhance the earnings capacity of either Chinese companies or the international equities.

In fact, it is plain as day that China has reached “peak debt”. Additional borrowing there will not only prolong the Ponzi and thereby exacerbate the eventual crash, but won’t even do much in the short-run to brake the current downward economic spiral.

That’s because China is so saturated with debt that still lower interest rates or further reduction of bank reserve requirements would amount to pushing on an exceedingly limp credit string.

To wit, at the time of the 2008 crisis, China’s “official” GDP was about $5 trillion and its total public and private credit market debt was roughly $8 trillion. Since then, debt has soared to $30 trillion while GDP has purportedly doubled. But that’s only when you count the massive outlays for white elephants and malinvestments which get counted as fixed asset spending.

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

What If The “Crash” Is as Rigged as Everything Else?

August 26, 2015

What If The “Crash” Is as Rigged as Everything Else?

Take your pick–here’s three good reasons to engineer a “crash” that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

There is an almost touching faith that markets are rigged when they loft higher, but unrigged when they crash. Who’s to say this crash isn’t rigged? A few things about this “crash” (11% decline from all time highs now qualifies as a “crash”) don’t pass the sniff test.

Exhibit 1: VIX volatility Index soars to “the world is ending” levels when the S&P 500 drops a relatively modest 11%. The VIX above 50 is historically associated with declines of 20% or more–double the current drop.

When the VIX spiked above 50 in 2008, the market ended up down 57%. Now that’s a crash.

Exhibit 2: The VIX soared and the market cratered at the end of options expiration week (OEX), maximizing pain for the majority of punters. Generally speaking, OEX weeks are up. The exceptions are out of the blue lightning bolts such as the collapse of a major investment bank.

Was a modest devaluation in China’s yuan really that unexpected, given the yuan’s peg to the U.S. dollar which has risen 20% in the past year? Sorry, that doesn’t pass the sniff test.

Exhibit 3: When the VIX spiked above 30 in October 2014, signaling panic, the Federal Reserve unleashed the Bullard Put, i.e. the Fed’s willingness to unleash stimulus in the form of QE 4. Markets reversed sharply and the VIX collapsed.

Now the VIX tops 50 and the Federal Reserve issues an absurd statement that it doesn’t respond to equity markets. Well then what was the Bullard Put in October, 2014? Mere coincidence? Sorry, that doesn’t pass the sniff test.

Why would “somebody” engineer a mini-crash and send volatility to “the world is ending” levels? There are a couple of possibilities.

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

Keynesians Wrong About Stimulus, Coming AND Going

July 29, 2015

Keynesians Wrong About Stimulus, Coming AND Going

In a previous post here at Mises CA I chronicled the hole Krugman keeps digging for himself regarding the botched warnings over the so-called “sequester” in 2013. Specifically, Krugman’s latest excuse is to say that when he argued back in 2013 that the sequester was a “fiscal doomsday machine” and “one of the worst policy ideas in our nation’s history,” he actually didn’t look carefully at the numbers. In retrospect, Krugman is now claiming, the Keynesian model wouldn’t have predicted a big impact from the budget sequester, because it was small potatoes compared to the overall size of the economy.

Besides the implicit admission that Krugman is throwing out such serious accusations (“fiscal doomsday machine” etc.) without checking the numbers, is the simple fact that Krugman is wrong. Back in 2013 there were plenty of Keynesian analysts who were very well-versed with the numbers, and were confident that the sequester would slow U.S. economic growth.

A great example of this is a March 1, 2013 post from Jared Bernstein. Here’s an excerpt:

Economists, including myself, agree on guesstimates about the magnitude of the sequester’s impact–it’s expected to suck about half-a-point off of growth this year and cost 500,000-1 million jobs. That’s not recessionary but it means more slogging along of the type I bemoaned yesterday.

So how come on Larry Kudlow’s show last night it was one against four (about five minutes in) on this widely accepted point re the sequester’s impact on growth?…[U]nless you’ve got a good reason to think otherwise–and I heard nothing approach reason in the segment–you’ve got to go with the arithmetic, which in this case means subtraction of an estimated $66 billion in (calendar year!) 2013 outlays.

…Clearly, the Kudlow-crew refuses to accept this math…But here’s my question: under what micro-economics do such multipliers not exist?

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

Debt As Wealth; The Caution of Unfit Past Experience

February 15, 2015

Debt As Wealth; The Caution of Unfit Past Experience

With the G-20 recoiling itself back into the same kinds of mistakes made in the 1960’s, leading directly to the Great Inflation, we will have to take into account the other end of that, namely other forms of “stimulus.” With the global economy sinking, and worries about it beginning to resound beyond just inconvenient bears, there is growing official consensus on central banks taking a clearer approach but also that governments need to face up to “austerity.”

Paul Krugman has been leading the critique against what he sees is a disastrous and ignorant deformation against debt. In times like these, which he “predicted” based on too little government spending, Krugman derides fiscal sense as “cold-hearted.”

This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least…

People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!

The above quoted passage was taken from a column he wrote back on New Year’s Day 2012. While it has aged three years, given the global slowdown that was about to take place and the ineffectiveness of monetarism alone to dispel it, his words are being taken increasingly as both prescient and prescriptive. However, the logic behind his anti-austerity agenda is more of a sleight of hand than actual argument.

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

We Live In An Era Of Dangerous Imbalances

February 15, 2015

We Live In An Era Of Dangerous Imbalances

And history shows they correct painfully

The intervention by the world’s central banks has resulted in today’s bizarro financial markets, where “bad news is good” because it may lead to more (sorry, moar) thin-air stimulus to goose asset prices even higher.

The result is a world addicted to debt and the phony stimulus now essential to sustaining it. In the process, a tremendous wealth gap has been created, one still expanding at an exponential rate.

History is very clear what happens with dangerous imbalances like this. They correct painfully. Through class warfare. Through currency crises. Through wealth destruction.

Is that really the path we want? Because we’re for sure headed for it.

…click on the above link to see the video…

We Live In An Era Of Dangerous Imbalances

February 14, 2015

We Live In An Era Of Dangerous Imbalances

And history shows they correct painfully

The result is a world addicted to debt and the phony stimulus now essential to sustaining it. In the process, a tremendous wealth gap has been created, one still expanding at an exponential rate.

History is very clear what happens with dangerous imbalances like this. They correct painfully. Through class warfare. Through currency crises. Through wealth destruction.

Is that really the path we want? Because we’re for sure headed for it.

…click on the above link to view the video…

Operation Helicopter: Could Free Money Help the Euro Zone?

January 7, 2015

Operation Helicopter: Could Free Money Help the Euro Zone?

It sounds at first like a crazy thought experiment: One morning, every resident of the euro zone comes home to find a check in their mailbox worth over €500 euros ($597) and possibly as much as €3,000. A gift, just like that, sent by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt.

The scenario is less absurd than it may sound. Indeed, many serious academics and financial experts are demanding exactly that. They want ECB chief Mario Draghi to fire up the printing presses and hand out money directly to the people.

The logic behind the idea is that recipients of the money will head to the shops, helping to turn around a paralyzed economy in the common currency area. In response, companies would have to increase production and hire more workers, leading to both economic growth and a needed increase in prices because of the surge in demand.

ECB Has Lost Control

Currently, the inflation rate is barely above zero and fears of a horror deflation scenario of the kind seen during the Great Depression in the United States are haunting the euro zone. The ECB, whose main task is euro stability, has lost control.

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

How Asset Manager BlackRock Gave Me the Willies About 2015 | Wolf Street

December 28, 2014

How Asset Manager BlackRock Gave Me the Willies About 2015 | Wolf Street.

BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world and one of the big beneficiaries of the Fed’s policies, and of similar policies by other central banks, is in a bullish mood.

In its 2015 Investment Outlook, BlackRock is gung-ho about the US economy. Dominant among the forces behind that miracle is the Fed’s “ultra-loose monetary policy” that has “inflated US equity and home values.” Monetary policy will likely “remain highly stimulatory.” And “even if the Fed were to hike by a full percentage point, real short-term interest rates would still be negative.” So savers would continue to get annihilated, at least until they entrust their money to BlackRock.

BlackRock is a fan of Abenomics and the Bank of Japan which has taken over where the Fed left off. The BoJ monetizes the entire deficit of the government. Japanese institutions, including the huge Government Investment Pension Fund, have been pressed to sell their JGBs to the BoJ and plow this money into stocks and other assets, expressly to inflate their values. BlackRock is licking its chops.

And it’s looking with fond expectations to the ECB, which has essentially promised, despite German opposition, a big load of QE starting in 2015, on top of the negative deposit rates it is already inflicting on banks and increasingly their depositors.

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

Keynesian Hit Men On The Road—–Krugman And Rogoff Peddling Toxic Advice | David Stockman’s Contra Corner

November 30, 2014

Keynesian Hit Men On The Road—–Krugman And Rogoff Peddling Toxic Advice | David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

Here are a couple of reasons why Keynesian economists are truly a menace in today’s bubble ridden and debt-impaled world. It seems that both Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff and Princeton’s Paul Krugman are on the global advice circuit, peddling what amounts to sheer snake oil to desperate politicians and policy-makers who have already buried themselves—-so far to no avail—-in unprecedented waves of fiscal and monetary “stimulus”.

But never mind. The professors have a three part solution, and its more, more……and moar! To make room for more monetary stimulus after six-years at the zero bound, therefore, Professor Rogoff has a truly juvenile solution. Namely, to abolish cash. That’s right, this Harvard windbag proposes to confiscate your kids’ piggy bank and any green stuff that may be left in your wallet.

Meanwhile, Krugman has made a quick circuit through Tokyo, where he apparently was instrumental in convincing Japan’s prime minister to cancel the next installment of the consumption tax increase—a move that was utterly necessary in order to stem the nation’s massive flow of red ink. But why not spend a few more years adding to Japan’s staggering debt burden, which is already at 230% of GDP and rising inexorably in a nation that is fast becoming the world’s foremost retirement colony? After all, Professor Rogoff has now perfected a scheme which will allow central banks to monetize all the debt that even the most profligate government can possibly issue.

So start with Professor Rogoff ‘s incredible assault on the peoples’ cash and coins—a necessary prelude to even more fantastic rates of central bank monetary expansion. Here is exactly what he recently advocated at a “prestigious” international policy forum:

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

OPEC Presents: Q4 and Deflation – The Automatic Earth

November 29, 2014

OPEC Presents: Q4 and Deflation – The Automatic Earth.

Thinking plummeting oil prices are good for the economy is a mistake. They instead, as I said only yesterday in The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy, point out how bad the global economy is doing. QE has been able to inflate stock prices way beyond anything remotely looking fundamental, but energy prices have now deflated instead of stocks. Something had to give at some point. Turns out, central banks weren’t able to inflate oil prices on top of everything else. Stocks and bonds are much easier to artificially inflate than commodities are.

The Fed and ECB and BOJ and PBoC may of course yet try to invest in oil, they’re easily crazy enough to try, but it will be too late even if they did. In that sense, one might argue that OPEC – or rather Saudi Arabia – has gifted us QE4, but the blessings of the ‘low oil price stimulus’ will of necessity be both mixed and short-lived. Because while the lower prices may free some money for consumers, not nearly all of the freed up ‘spending space’ will end up actually being spent. So in the end that’s a net loss as far as spending goes.

The ‘OPEC Q4′ may also keep some companies from going belly up for a while longer due to falling energy costs, but the flipside is many other companies will go bust because of the lower prices, first among them energy industry firms. Moreover, as we’re already seeing, those firms’ market values are certain to plummet. And, see yesterday’s essay linked above, many of eth really large investors, banks, equity funds et al are heavily invested in oil and gas and all that comes with it. And they are about to take some major hits as well. OPEC may have gifted us QE4, but it gave us another present at the same time: deflation in overdrive.

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

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