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Introductory Remarks: The “Anti-Politician” Godfrey Bloom, by PT

Most of our readers will probably remember former UKIP chief whip and European Parliament representative Godfrey Bloom. As far as we know, he is the only politician who ever raised the issue of the workings of the fractionally reserved central bank-directed monetary system in the EU parliament. This system is of course central to the phenomenon of the recurring boom-bust sequences plaguing the global economy.

Godfrey Bloom (left) and interviewer Claudio Grass

It is also a major means of redistributing wealth from the poor and the middle classes to those who are already rich and own most of the assets likely to appreciate in price due to monetary inflation (an unavoidable side-effect, irrespective of their wishes). Moreover, it creates an insidious, hidden “inflation tax” that benefits the State to the detriment of all those engaged in real wealth creation, from workers to entrepreneurs.

It is probably no wonder that the ruling caste is usually quite reluctant to discuss the issue openly. Besides, it seems likely that most of what Bloom said went right over the heads of most of his colleagues in Strasbourg anyway. On one occasion he also had a few choice words on the nature of the State and pointed out “who the real tax avoiders are” – which they surely didn’t want to hear, since he noted they were right in there in the room with him.

Godfrey Bloom on the scam of fractional reserve banking

Bloom quotes Rothbard: “The State is an institution of theft”

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

The Degrading Facts of a Fake Money Hole in the Head

September 1, 2018

The Degrading Facts of a Fake Money Hole in the Head

Squishy Fact Finding Mission

Today we begin with the facts. But not just the facts; the facts of the facts. We want to better understand just what it is that is provoking today’s ludicrous world. To clarify, we are not after the cold hard facts; those with no opinions, like the commutative property of addition. Rather, we are after the warm squishy facts; the type of facts that depend on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.

Fact-related pleas… [PT]

The facts, as far as we can tell, are that we are presently living in a land of extreme confusion. The genesis of this extreme confusion is today’s fake money system. And the destructive effects of this fake money system have spread out like a virus into nearly all aspects of daily life.

Plain and simple, central bank fiat money creation, multiplied by commercial banks through fractional-reserve banking, propagates financial and economic chaos. The experience of long periods of money supply expansion punctuated by abrupt, episodic contractions, has the effect of whipsawing the working stiff’s efforts to get ahead. This trifecta of offenses has debased the rewards of hard work, saving money, and paying one’s way.

Quite frankly, these facts are insulting. In particular, they are insulting for those running in the rat race for their family’s daily bread. These facts are also insulting for retirees, who worked for four decades only to have their life savings extracted by the depredations of the fake money system.

Early rat race conditioning [PT]

Short-Sighted Decisions

The facts are that on August 15, 1971, Tricky Dick Nixon stiffed the world unconditionally. He defaulted on the Bretton Woods system, and terminated the agreement that allowed member nations to redeem their paper dollars, acquired through trade, for gold. But that’s not the half of it…

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

Not Just Fangs: Manias and Echo Bubbles Abound

August 5, 2018

Not Just Fangs: Manias and Echo Bubbles Abound

It’s not just the FANGs investors should be worried about. A Tweet and an article explain.

✔

“With the FANG stocks faltering lately investors are starting to become concerned about their impact on the broader market. And there is certainly something to this.”https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/69386-it-s-more-than-just-fang-stocks-investors-should-be-worried-about?type=guest-contributors …

6:17 PM – Aug 3, 2018

It’s More Than Just FANG Stocks Investors Should Be Worried About

What investors really should be worried about then is the possibility that the reappraisal of the FANG stocks is representative of a much wider reappraisal that began back in February.

app.hedgeye.com

Echo Bubbles Abound

Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man discusses Stock Market Manias of the Past vs the Echo Bubble.

The Big Picture

The diverging performance of major US stock market indexes which has been in place since the late January peak in DJIA and SPX has become even more extreme in recent months. In terms of duration and extent, it is one of the most pronounced such divergences in history. It also happens to be accompanied by weakening market internals, some of the most extreme sentiment and positioning readings ever seen and an ever more hostile monetary backdrop.

The above combination is consistent with a market close to a major peak – although one must always keep in mind that divergences can become even more pronounced – as was for instance demonstrated on occasion of the technology sector blow-off in late 1999 – 2000.

Along similar lines, extremes in valuations can persist for a very long time as well and reach previously unimaginable levels. The Nikkei of the late 1980s is a pertinent example for this. Incidentally, the current stock buyback craze is highly reminiscent of the 1980s Japanese financial engineering method known as keiretsu or zaibatsu, as it invites the very same rationalizations.

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

Stock Market Manias of the Past vs the Echo Bubble

August 4, 2018

Stock Market Manias of the Past vs the Echo Bubble

The Big Picture

The diverging performance of major US stock market indexes which has been in place since the late January peak in DJIA and SPX has become even more extreme in recent months. In terms of duration and extent it is one of the most pronounced such divergences in history. It also happens to be accompanied by weakening market internals, some of the most extreme sentiment and positioning readings ever seen and an ever more hostile monetary backdrop.

Who’s who in the zoo in 2018

The above combination is consistent with a market close to a major peak – although one must always keep in mind that divergences can become even more pronounced – as was for instance demonstrated on occasion of the technology sector blow-off in late 1999 – 2000.

Along similar lines, extremes in valuations can persist for a very long time as well and reach previously unimaginable levels. The Nikkei of the late 1980s is a pertinent example for this. Incidentally, the current stock buyback craze is highly reminiscent of the 1980s Japanese financial engineering method known as keiretsu or zaibatsu, as it invites the very same rationalizations.

We recall vividly that it was argued in the 1980s that despite their obscene overvaluation, Japanese stocks could “never decline” because Japanese companies would prop up each other’s stocks. Today we often read or hear that overvalued US stocks cannot possibly decline because companies will keep propping up their own stocks with buybacks.

Of course this propping up of stock prices occurs amid a rather concerning deterioration in median corporate balance sheet strength, as corporate debt has exploded into the blue yonder (just as it did in Japan in the late 1980s).

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

Are You Prepared for the End of Fake Money?

July 21, 2018

Are You Prepared for the End of Fake Money?

What Is Money?

Today we begin with a fundamental question: What is money? This, no doubt, is an important question. And we ask it with clear intent and purpose. Namely, we want to better understand how it’s possible for America to rack up such a massive trade deficit with China.

China-US imports and exports of goods. It has to be stressed that the most often cited figure is the trade deficit in goods, which is the “scariest” figure. The US surplus in services with China has grown rapidly in recent years. It was $33 billion in 2015, doubling from $16.5 billion just four years earlier. By 2017 it had grown to $38.5 billion. The idea that a trade deficit is somehow “bad” is highly dubious. “Countries” do not trade with each other anyway – individuals and companies do, and they obviously do so because they deem it advantageous for both sides. Moreover, these aggregate statistics obscure more than they reveal. The global supply chain is extremely complex – a single $3 t-shirt “Made in China” will contribute to the incomes of people in some 15 to 20 countries before a consumer in the US plucks it off a shelf at Wal-Mart. If we were to talk incessantly about the US capital account surplus – which offsets the trade deficit – would anyone complain? [PT]

America’s trade deficit with China, in 2017 alone, was $375 billion. That’s a gap of over $31 billion a month – or $1 billion a day. We believe having a better grasp on what money is will bring clarity to the nasty trade deficit that’s motivating today’s burgeoning trade war.

With respect to our initial inquiry we turn to Victorian economist William Stanley Jevons for edification. In his 1875 work, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, Jevons stated that money has four functions. It’s a medium of exchange, a common measure of value, a standard of value, and a store of value.

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

Merger Mania and the Kings of Debt

June 24, 2018

Merger Mania and the Kings of Debt

Another Early Warning Siren Goes Off

Our friend Jonathan Tepper of research house Variant Perception (check out their blog to see some of their excellent work) recently pointed out to us that the volume of mergers and acquisitions has increased rather noticeably lately. Some color on this was provided in an article published by Reuters in late May, “Global M&A hits record $2 trillion in the year to date”, which inter alia contained the following chart illustrating the situation. This snapshot was taken shortly after a particularly busy “Merger Monday” in May, which saw $28 billion in takeover announcements:

Getting frisky: captains of industry and private equity funds evidently feel supremely confident again and have embarked on a major shopping spree. This mainly goes to show that no-one ever learns a thing in financial markets (presumably this goes for “learning from history” generally, but the remarkable thing in this case are the small time intervals between the markets teaching lessons and the subsequent collective forgetting exercise). The people responsible for all this breathless activity get paid more than at any other time in history, both in nominal and real terms – and one of their major characteristics is apparently that they have the attention span of gnats.

Almost needless to say, this is a nigh perfect medium to long term contrary indicator. When stocks are actually cheap, most of our corporate chieftains behave like deer in the headlights, i.e., they basically freeze and do nothing. The backdrop they prefer to see before they feel compelled to really swing into action full-speed-ahead with maximum recklessness is “one of the most overvalued markets in history”. Only then do they feel truly safe.

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

The Fed’s “Inflation Target” is Impoverishing American Workers

June 21, 2018

The Fed’s “Inflation Target” is Impoverishing American Workers

Redefined Terms and Absurd Targets

At one time, the Federal Reserve’s sole mandate was to maintain stable prices and to “fight inflation.” To the Fed, the financial press, and most everyone else “inflation” means rising prices instead of its original and true definition as an increase in the money supply. Rising prices are a consequence – a very painful consequence – of money printing.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell apparently does not see the pernicious effects of inflation (at least he seems to be looking around… [PT]) Photo credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg

Naturally, the Fed and all other central bankers prefer the definition of inflation as a rise in prices which insidiously hides the fact that they, being the issuers of currency, are the real culprit for increased prices.

Be that as it may, the common understanding of inflation as rising prices has always been seen as pernicious and destructive to an economy and living standards. In the perverted world of modern economics, however, the idea of inflation as an intrinsic evil has been turned on its head and monetary authorities the world over now have “inflation targets” which they hope to attain.

America’s central bank is right in line with this lunacy. According to the Fed’s “May minutes”, it wants

Translated into understandable verbiage, the Fed wants everyone to pay at least 2% higher prices p.a. for the goods they buy.

Yes, by some crazed thinking US monetary officials believe that consumers paying higher prices is somehow good for economic activity and standards of living! Of course, anyone with a modicum of sense can see that this is absurd and that those who espouse such policy should be laughed at and summarily locked up in an asylum! Yet, this is now standard policy, not just with the Fed, but with the ECU and other central banks.

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

Chasing the Wind

June 17, 2018

Chasing the Wind

Futility with Purpose

Plebeians generally ignore the tact of their economic central planners. They care more that their meatloaf is hot and their suds are cold, than about any plans being hatched in the capital city. Nonetheless, the central planners know an angry mob, with torches and pitchforks, are only a few empty bellies away. Hence, they must always stay on point.

Watch for those pitchfork bearers – they can get real nasty and then heads often roll quite literally. [PT]

One of the central aims of central planners is to achieve effective public exhortation. While they pursue futility, in practice. They must do so with focus and purpose.

For example, economic reports with impressive tables and charts, including pie graphs, are important to maintaining the requisite public perception. Central planners know that financial scientism must always be employed as early and often as possible.

Statistics, with per annum projections, particularly those that show increasing exports and decreasing imports, are critical to maintaining the proper narrative. The USA’s embarrassing deficit in the balance of international payments will certainly diminish if it is sketched accordingly in an “official” report… right?

Yet the planners always disregard the simple observation that an economy is composed of countless, and variable, inputs. How is a new discovery or technology, and its effect on investment and labor, to be anticipated and forecast? How are the actions of 7 billion individuals to be modeled and displayed on a tidy diagram?

Good old Friedrich A. Hayek – depicted above – once coined the term “scientism” to describe the futile attempts of assorted social engineers and their academic advisors to express human action in the form of barren mathematical equations and statistics. Lettuce look at something one of his followers, the late Professor Austin L. Hughes, wrote in an article published in the autumn 2012 issue of “The New Atlantis” journal:

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

America Goes Full Imbecile

June 9, 2018

America Goes Full Imbecile

Credit has a wicked way

of magnifying a person’s defects. Even the most cautious man, with unlimited credit, can make mistakes that in retrospect seem absurd. But an average man, with unlimited credit, is preeminently disposed to going full imbecile.

Let us not forget about this important skill… [PT]

Several weeks ago we came across a woeful tale of Mike Meru. Somehow, this special fellow, while of apparent sound mine and worthy intent, racked up over $1 million dollars in student loan debt – all to become an orthodontist.

Surely, with several good text books, and a disciplined self-study program, Meru could have learned everything there was to possibly know about adjusting malpositioned teeth for roughly $200 bucks. Instead, with the full backing of Uncle Sam’s loan program, he went full imbecile.

Yet Meru isn’t alone. According to the Department of Education, there are 101 people in the U.S. who are a million dollars or more in federal student loan debt. What’s more, there are 2.5 million people who owe at least $100,000. What could they have possibly learned that could be so doggone valuable?

Did they discover how to turn nickels into dimes? Did they solve the geometry of a four-sided triangle? Did they learn the secrets of the universe? Did they get an insider’s peek at something more than what happens under the sun?

Delusions of Grandeur

Only at rare moments are people capable of understanding the full implications of the catastrophes of their making. These rare moments, often just before dawn, are the precise instants when they gain full clarity to the hopeless fact that they have gone full imbecile. That every decision they have ever made has led them to this exact place – where they find themselves to be completely and utterly screwed.

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

Reflections on Late-Stage Inflation

May 19, 2018

Reflections on Late-Stage Inflation

Without a doubt, we are in a period of late-stage inflation. But how long can it last?

A few days ago I noted that “inflation expectations” were the same or nearly the same for every period from seven years through thirty.

Actually, the thirty-year expectation was slightly less than the 10-year expectation. For discussion, please see Traders Expect Less Inflation Over a 30-Year Period than a 10-Year Period.

I do not think much of inflation expectations but the Fed strongly believes in them, and so do some others.

Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog commented “I agree . It is typical for the late stage of the business cycle, you get price inflation going, but it cannot last long. Note though that at some point (depending on central bank actions in response to the next bust and contingent circumstances) there could be a tipping point toward another stagflation period.”

Tenebrarum emailed two links where he discussed the setup.

Part 1 Snips

Ben Hunt, author of Epsilon Theory and chief risk officer of Salient Partners, mentioned a specific narrative that has accompanied quantitative easing for almost a decade now (even longer, if we take Japan into account). At first glance it appeared reasonable enough: central bankers argued that QE would help increase “inflation”. This is of course unequivocally true in terms of monetary inflation, but they referred to consumer price inflation. Alas, both CPI and inflation expectations obviously failed to respond appreciably to their ministrations. Ben posits that this narrative may be set to falter in a rather unexpected manner, by continuing to defy widespread expectations.

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

US Money Supply Growth Jumps in March , Bank Credit Growth Stalls

May 10, 2018

US Money Supply Growth Jumps in March , Bank Credit Growth Stalls

A Movie We Have Seen Before – Repatriation Effect?

There was a sizable increase in the year-on-year growth rate of the true US money supply TMS-2 between February and March. Note that you would not notice this when looking at the official broad monetary aggregate M2, because the component of TMS-2 responsible for the jump is not included in M2. Let us begin by looking at a chart of the TMS-2 growth rate and its 12-month moving average.

The y/y growth rate of TMS-2 increased from 2.68% in February to 4.85% in March. The 12-month moving average nevertheless continued to decline and stands now at 4.1%.

The sole component of TMS-2 showing sizable growth in March was the US Treasury’s general account with the Fed. This is included in the money supply because, well, it is money. The Treasury department will spend it, therefore this is not money that can be considered to reside “outside” of the economy (such as bank reserves).

We were wondering what was behind the spurt in the amount held in the general account. While there was a decline in the growth rate of US demand deposits, the slowdown in momentum did not really offset the surge in funds held by the Treasury.

This reminded us of a subject discussed by the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) in the second half of 2016 in the wake of the change in money market fund regulations. This led to a repatriation of money MM funds previously lent out in the euro-dollar market to European issuers of commercial paper (mainly European banks).

Readers may recall that there was a mysterious surge in the growth rate of the domestic US money supply (again, only visible in TMS 1 & 2) into November 2016, despite a lack of QE and no discernible positive momentum in the rate of change of inflationary bank lending growth.

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

Effects of Monetary Pumping on the Real World

May 4, 2018

Effects of Monetary Pumping on the Real World

As long time readers know, we are looking at the economy through the lens of Austrian capital and monetary theory (see here for a backgrounder on capital theory and the production structure). In a nutshell: Monetary pumping falsifies interest rate signals by pushing gross market rates below the rate that reflects society-wide time preferences; this distorts relative prices in the economy and sets a boom into motion – which is characterized by widespread malinvestment of scarce capital and over-consumption; eventually, the distorted capital structure proves unsustainable – interest rates begin to rise, and boom turns to bust. Many businessmen belatedly realize that the accounting profits of the boom were an illusion – in reality, capital was consumed. Many as yet unfinished investment projects have to be abandoned, as they either turn out to be unprofitable at higher rates and/or the resources needed to complete them are lacking.

When capital runs short: several of countless housing developments in Spain which had to be abandoned when the bust of 2007-2009 started. The image on the right hand side shows a Spanish construction machinery graveyard in 2010. Money supply growth in the US and the euro area exploded after the turn of the millennium, as central banks pumped heavily to combat the demise of the tech boom. In the process they egged on an even more dangerous bubble in real estate. In their great wisdom they have now replaced the expired real estate boom with an even larger, more comprehensive bubble in everything.

Below we show updates of a chart that depicts the effect of money supply and interest rate manipulation on the capital structure. The caveat to this is that such statistical data have to be viewed with a critical eye: one must always to ask to what extent the economy is actually amenable to “measurement” – often such aggregated data obscure more than they reveal.

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

Paradise in LA LA Land

April 21, 2018

Paradise in LA LA Land

More is revealed with each passing day. You can count on it. But what exactly the ‘more is of’ requires careful discrimination. Is the ‘more’ merely more noise? Or is it something of actual substance? Today we endeavor to pass judgment, on your behalf.

Normally, judgment would be passed on a Thursday, but we are making an exception. [PT]

For example, here in the land of fruits and nuts, things are whacky, things are zany. Last month, State Senator, Dick Pan, introduced Senate Bill (SB) 1424, which would require California based websites to utilize fact checkers to verify news stories prior to publishing them.

Who exactly these fact checkers would be – the moral servants that would save the world from the ills of fake news – was conveniently missing from the bill. Ironically, the control freaks in California state government can’t control themselves; they want to muck around with people’s lives unconditionally.

Nonetheless, screwball proposals like this out of Sacramento fall into the mere noise category – for now. We estimate it will take another Presidential election cycle, or two, before such nonsense is taken seriously by the majority of state lawmakers.

At the local level, there are more demanding problems that require more demanding solutions. Here in Los Angeles County, according to something called the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, there is now a homeless population of precisely 57,794. For perspective, Chavez Ravine (i.e., the Dodger Stadium), has a capacity of 56,000.

This army of indigents, roaming about the LA LA land paradise, has become a significant embarrassment for local leaders. Haphazard urban campsites litter the bank tops of the colossal, concrete Los Angeles River Channel between Downtown Los Angeles and Downtown Long Beach. The massive collection of tents and makeshift shelters has become too much to ignore.

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

Broken Promises

March 4, 2018

Broken Promises

Demanding More Debt

Consumer debt, corporate debt, and government debt are all going up. But that’s not all. Margin debt – debt that investors borrow against their portfolio to buy more stocks – has hit a record of $642.8 billion. What in the world are people thinking?

A blow-off in margin debt mirroring the blow-off in stock prices. Since February of 2016 alone it has soared by ~$170 billion – this is an entirely new level insanity. The current total of 643 billion is more than double the level of margin debt at the tech mania peak and 15.4 times the amount of margin debt just before the crash of 1987. [PT]

Clearly, they’re not thinking. Because thinking takes work. Most people don’t like to work. They like to pretend to work.

Similarly, people may say they care about debt. But, based on their actions, they really don’t. When it comes to the national debt, the overarching philosophy is that it doesn’t matter. Government debt certainly doesn’t matter to Congress. Nor does it matter to the President. In fact, their actions demonstrate they want more of it.

Big corporations with big government contracts want more government debt too. Their businesses demand it. They’ve staked their success on the expectation that the debt slop will continue flowing down the trough where they consume it like rapacious pigs.

The higher education bubble is also based on a faulty foundation of debt. The business model generally requires signing credulous 18 year-olds up for massive amounts of government backed student loans. From what we gather, federal student loan debt is closing in on $1.4 trillion.

Total student loans outstanding (red line – the data are only available from 2007 onward) and total federal government-owned student loans (black line). The former figure was closing in on $1.5 trillion as of Q4 2017. [PT]

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

US Stock Market: Conspicuous Similarities with 1929, 1987 and Japan in 1990

March 4, 2018

US Stock Market: Conspicuous Similarities with 1929, 1987 and Japan in 1990

Stretched to the Limit

There are good reasons to suspect that the bull market in US equities has been stretched to the limit. These include inter alia: high fundamental valuation levels, as e.g. illustrated by the Shiller P/E ratio (a.k.a. “CAPE”/ cyclically adjusted P/E); rising interest rates; and the maturity of the advance.The end of an era – a little review of the mother of modern crash patterns, the 1929 debacle. In hindsight it is both a bit scary and sad, in light of the important caesura it represented. In many ways the roaring 20s were the last hurrah of a world in its death throes, a world that never managed to make a comeback. The massive expansion of the State that had begun in the years just before WW1 resumed in full force as soon as the post-war party on Wall Street ended. The worried crowd that formed in the streets around the NYSE in the week of the crash may well have suspected that the starting gun to profound change had just been fired. [PT]

Near the end of a bull market cycle there is always the question of when a decline will begin, and above all, how large will it be. I believe it possible that the retreat in prices will begin soon and that it could possibly even start out with a crash. I will explain in the following what led me to draw this conclusion.

2015 – 2018: the S&P 500 Index Moves Up Along a Well-Defined Trend Line

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

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