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What Will The Global Economy Look Like After The ‘Great Reset’?

What Will The Global Economy Look Like After The ‘Great Reset’?

A very common phrase used over the past couple years by the International Monetary Fund’s Christine Lagarde as well as other globalist mouthpieces is the “global reset.” Very rarely do these elites ever actually mention any details as to what this “reset” means. But if you take a look at some of my past analysis on the economic endgame, you will find that they do, on occasion, let information slip which gives us a general picture of where they prefer the world be within the next few years or even the next decade.

A few goals are certain and openly admitted. The globalists ultimately want to diminish or erase the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. They most definitely are seeking to establish the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights basket system as a replacement for the dollar system; this plan was even outlined in the Rothschild run magazine The Economist in 1988. They want to consolidate economic governance, moving away from a franchise system of national central banks into a single global monetary authority, most likely under the IMF or the Bank for International Settlements. And, they consistently argue for the centralization of political power in the name of removing legislative and sovereign barriers to safer financial regulation.

These are not “theories” of fiscal change, these are facts behind the globalist methodology. When the IMF mentions the “great global reset,” the above changes are a part of what they are referring to.

That said, much of my examinations focus on these macro-elements; but what about the deeper mechanics of the whole scheme? What kind of economic system would we wake up to on a daily basis IF the globalists get exactly what they want? This is an area in which the elites rarely ever comment, and I can only offer hypothetical scenarios.

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

Japan Prints Additional ¥10,000 Bills As People Scramble To Stash Away Cash

Japan Prints Additional ¥10,000 Bills As People Scramble To Stash Away Cash

Long before negative interest rates shifted from the monetary twilight zone into the mainstream (with some 30% of global government bonds now trading with a subzero yield), one organization wrote a report warning about the dangers of NIRP. The NY Fed. Back in 2012, NY Fed staffers wrote “If Interest Rates Go Negative . . . Or, Be Careful What You Wish For” it warned “if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.

Then, last October, Bank of America looked at the savings rates across European nations which had implemented NIRP and found something disturbing: instead of achieving what what central banks had expected, it was leading to precisely the opposite outcome: “household savings rates have also risen. For Switzerland and Sweden this appears to have happened at the tail end of 2013 (before the oil price decline). As the BIS have highlighted, ultra-low rates may perversely be driving a greater propensity for consumers to save as retirement income becomes more uncertain.”

The evidence:

Which was to be expected by most people exhibiting common sense: NIRP by definition is deflationary, and as such as prompts consumers to delay consumption, and as a result to save as much as possible, if not in the banks where their savings may soon be taxed under NIRP regimes, then in cash.

And nowhere if the failure of NIRP – and unconventional monetary policy in general – more evident than what just happened in Japan, where according to Japan Timesthe Finance Ministry plans to increase the number of ¥10,000 bills in circulation, amid signs that more people are hoarding cash.

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

Central Bank Economists: Bad Central Bank Policy Is INCREASING Inequality

Central Bank Economists: Bad Central Bank Policy Is INCREASING Inequality

BIS notes:

Our simulation suggests that wealth inequality has risen since the Great Financial Crisis. While low interest rates and rising bond prices have had a negligible impact on wealth inequality, rising equity prices have been a key driver of inequality …. Monetary policy may have added to inequality to the extent that it has boosted equity prices.

***

Inequality is back in the international economic policy debate. Evidence of a growing dispersion of income and wealth within major advanced and emerging market economies (EMEs) has sparked discussions about its economic consequences. Although there is no consensus on the relationship between inequality and growth, there are concerns that rising inequality may become a serious economic headwind. [Right.]

***

Moreover, the faster rise in remuneration at the very top of the income distribution relative to wage growth in the lower percentiles has been linked both to the rapid growth of the financial sector since the 1980s [correct] and to changes in the social norms that contribute to the determination of executive pay (Piketty (2014)).

***

The share of securities holdings, equity in particular, tends to be even higher at the top 5% or 1% of the distribution. [Obviously.]

Conversely, housing accounts for a higher share in the lowest net wealth quintile, for which low net wealth is in many cases a reflection of high levels of mortgage debt. In a number of cases, net wealth is negative, suggesting that liabilities, in the form of mortgage, consumer and other debt, exceed assets.

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

Secret Monetary Group Warns a Catastrophe Is Coming

Secret Monetary Group Warns a Catastrophe Is Coming

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Bank for International Settlements is nothing if not obscure. As the central bankers’ bank, it seems little-more than a back-door, private club for monetary elites to rub shoulders. And it’s located in Switzerland which has always carried a reputation for financial secrecy.

Then it has this going for it – John Keynes of “Keynesian economic theory” opposed its dissolution back in the 1940s. His was the kind of thinking that has largely influenced central banks to hijack our economies with manipulative monetary policies! So you’d probably think I hate these guys.

But you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The Bank for International Settlements is one of the few financial institutions that warned of dangers to the global financial system as early as 2003.

So by time the financial crisis struck, they’d been warning about it for years. Its former chief economist, William White, even dared to challenge former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan about cheap money policies that helped start the crisis!

Once again, this group is on the right side of history.

It just warned about a “gathering storm” in the global economy as central banks seem to be running out of options. They’ve seen right through this “recovery” and warned that unprecedented debt levels would put the world economy in worse shape than before the 2008 crash.

Because like with any addiction, there is a point where increased stimulus just doesn’t work anymore.

Just this week, China reported a 25.4% year-over-year decline in exports, despite continued strong economic stimulus from the government. Now, they simply pledge more stimulus like every central bank in the world.

Then there’s Japan, whose economy remains in a coma after the most aggressive QE of all developed nations. Four of the last seven quarters have been negative, including the fourth quarter of 2015.

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

The Market Has Lost Faith In Our Board, Bank Of International Settlements Laments

The Market Has Lost Faith In Our Board, Bank Of International Settlements Laments

The BIS’ Claudio Borio was vindicated in January – and it was a long time coming.

When last we checked in with Claudio, it was December and the bank’s Head of the Monetary and Economic Department was busy explaining what may befall $3.2 trillion in EM USD debt in the persistently strong dollar environment. “The stock of dollar-denominated debt, which has roughly doubled since early 2009 to over $3 trillion, is still there [and] in fact, its value in domestic currency terms has grown in line with the US dollar’s appreciation, weighing on financial conditions and weakening balance sheets,” he warned.

We also laid out the progression of Borio’s most recent warnings as delineated in the banks’ widely-read, if on occasion perfunctory, quarterly reports. Below, is a brief review.

From 2014, warning about the market’s dependence on central bank omnipotence:

To my mind, these events underline the fragility – dare I say growing fragility? – hidden beneath the markets’ buoyancy. Small pieces of news can generate outsize effects. This, in turn, can amplify mood swings. And it would be imprudent to ignore that markets did not fully stabilise by themselves. Once again, on the heels of the turbulence, major central banks made soothing statements, suggesting that they might delay normalisation in light of evolving macroeconomic conditions. Recent events, if anything, have highlighted once more the degree to which markets are relying on central banks: the markets’ buoyancy hinges on central banks’ every word and deed.

From March of 2015, speaking out about the dangers of increasingly illiquid secondary markets for corporate bonds:

As a result, market liquidity may increasingly come to depend on the portfolio allocation decisions of only a few large institutions. And, more broadly, investors may find that liquidating positions proves more difficult than expected, particularly in the context of an adverse shift in market sentiment.

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

The Global Run On Physical Cash Has Begun: Why It Pays To Panic First

The Global Run On Physical Cash Has Begun: Why It Pays To Panic First

Back in August 2012, when negative interest rates were still merely viewed as sheer monetary lunacy instead of pervasive global monetary reality that has pushed over $6 trillion in global bonds into negative yield territory, the NY Fed mused hypothetically about negative rates and wrote “Be Careful What You Wish For” saying that “if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.”

Well, maybe not… especially if physical currency is gradually phased out in favor of some digital currency “equivalent” as so many “erudite economists” and corporate media have suggested recently, for the simple reason that in a world of negative rates, physical currency – just like physical gold – provides a convenient loophole to the financial repression of keeping one’s savings in digital form in a bank where said savings are taxed at -0.1%, or -1% or -10% or more per year by a central bank and government both hoping to force consumers to spend instead of save.

For now cash is still legal, and NIRP – while a reality for the banks – has yet to be fully passed on to depositors.

The bigger problem is that in all countries that have launched NIRP, instead of forcing spending precisely the opposite has happened: as we showed last October, when Bank of America looked at savings patterns in European nations with NIRP, instead of facilitating spending, what has happened is precisely the opposite: “as the BIS have highlighted, ultra-low rates may perversely be driving a greater propensity for consumers to save as retirement income becomes more uncertain.”

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

Deutsche Bank Is Scared: “What Needs To Be Done” In Its Own Words

Deutsche Bank Is Scared: “What Needs To Be Done” In Its Own Words

It all started in mid/late 2014, when the first whispers of a Fed rate hike emerged, which in turn led to relentless increase in the value of the US dollar and the plunge in the price of oil and all commodities, unleashing the worst commodity bear market in history.

The immediate implication of these two concurrent events was missed by most, although we wrote about it and previewed the implications in November of that year in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed.”

The conclusion was simple: Fed tightening and the resulting plunge in commodity prices, would lead (as it did) to the collapse of the great petrodollar cycle which had worked efficiently for 18 years and which led to petrodollar nations serving as a source of demand for $10 trillion in US assets, and when finished, would result in the Quantitative Tightening which has offset all central bank attempts to inject liquidity in the markets, a tightening which has since been unleashed by not only most emerging markets and petro-exporters but most notably China, and whose impact has been to not only pressure stocks lower but bring economic growth across the entire world to a grinding halt.

The second, and just as important development, was observed in early 2015: 11 months ago we wrote that “The Global Dollar Funding Shortage Is Back With A Vengeance And “This Time It’s Different” and followed up on it later in the year in “Global Dollar Funding Shortage Intensifies To Worst Level Since 2012” a problem which has manifested itself most notably in Africa where as we wrote recently, virtually every petroleum exporting nation has run out of actual physical dollars.

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

F(r)actions Of Gold

F(r)actions Of Gold

The simple fact of the matter is that gold is no longer money and hasn’t been treated that way in decades. It is a frustrating and often woeful outcome, but deference isn’t a reason to color judgement. As an investment, which is more like what gold has become, it isn’t all that straight, either. Gold behaves in many circumstances erratically; often violently so. In 2008, gold crashed three times; but it also came back (and then some) three times. The metal remains stuck in some orthodox limbo of duality, sometimes acting an investment while at others, more rarely, as almost reclaiming its former status.

The junction of that dyad format is wholesale collateral. It is a difficult and dense topic because it plumbs the very depths of the wholesale arrangement – factors like leasing, swaps and collateralized lending through binary bespoke arrangements.It is there that I think it helps to form the narrative, however, starting by reviewing what the BIS was up to in late 2009 and early 2010. I am going to borrow heavily from an article I wrote in April 2013 that describes the events in question but this is one of those times when you should read the whole thing.

Back in July 2010, the Wall Street Journal caused some commotion when it happened to notice in the annual report for the Bank for International Settlements the sudden appearance of gold swap operations to the tune of 346 tons. Subsequent investigation by media outlets, including the Financial Times, reported that the BIS had indeed swapped in 346 tons of gold holdings from ten European commercial banks. That was highly unusual in that gold swaps are typically conducted between and among central banks.

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

Top Economist – Who Predicted the 2008 Crash – Confirms What Alternative Financial Sites Have Been Saying for a Decade

Top Economist – Who Predicted the 2008 Crash – Confirms What Alternative Financial Sites Have Been Saying for a Decade

William White is one of the world’s top economists.

He was the head economist for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – the world’s most prestigious financial institution, called the “central banks’ central bank – comprised of the world’s central banks.  He is now the chief economist for OECD, made up of most of the world’s richest and most powerful countries.

As chief economist for BIS, White predicted the 2008 crash.

While the mainstream financial media like CNBC has been trumpeting fake, happy news for many years, White confirmed yesterday what the best alternative financial sites have said for a decade, telling the Telegraph (at the World Economic Forum in Davos):

The global financial system has become dangerously unstable [he’s right] and faces an avalanche of bankruptcies that will test social and political stability …. [Uhhuh]

“The situation is worse than it was in 2007. [Accurate] Our macroeconomic ammunition to fight downturns is essentially all used up” …. [True]

***

“Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” he said.  [Indeed]

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something” [Yup]

***

“The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.” [Exactly!]

***

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

Austrians get (some) mainstream credibility

Austrians get (some) mainstream credibility 

Well, well: who would have believed it. First the Bank for International Settlements comes out with a paper that links credit booms to the boom-bust business cycle, then Britain’s Adam Smith Institute publishes a paper by Anthony Evans that recommends the Bank of England should ditch its powers over monetary policy and move towards free banking.

Admittedly, the BIS paper hides its argument behind a mixture of statistical and mathematical analysis, and seems unaware of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, there being no mention of it, or even of Hayek. Is this ignorance, or a reluctance to be associated with loony free-marketeers? Not being a conspiracy theorist, I suspect ignorance.

The Adam Smith Institute’s paper is not so shy, and includes both “sound money” and “Austrian” in the title, though the first comment on the web version of the press release says talking about “Austrian” proposals is unhelpful. So prejudice against Austrian economics is still unfortunately alive and well, even though its conclusions are becoming less so. The Adam Smith Institute actually does some very good work debunking the mainstream neo-classical economics prevalent today, and is to be congratulated for publishing Evans’s paper.

The BIS paper will be the more influential of the two in policy circles, and this is not the first time the BIS has questioned the macroeconomic assumptions behind the actions of the major central banks. The BIS is regarded as the central bankers’ central bank, so just as we lesser mortals look up to the Fed, ECB, BoE or BoJ in the hope they know what they are doing, they presumably take note of the BIS. One wonders if the Fed’s new policy of raising interest rates was influenced by the BIS’s view that zero rates are not delivering a Keynesian recovery, and might only intensify the boom-bust syndrome.

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

Austrians Get (Some) Mainstream Credibility

Well, well: who would have believed it. First the Bank for International Settlements comes out with a paper that links credit booms to the boom-bust business cycle, then Britain’s Adam Smith Institute publishes a paper by Anthony Evans [Editor’s note: Anthony is a Founding Fellow of The Cobden Centre] that recommends the Bank of England should ditch its powers over monetary policy and move towards free banking.

Admittedly, the BIS paper hides its argument behind a mixture of statistical and mathematical analysis, and seems unaware of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, there being no mention of it, or even of Hayek. Is this ignorance, or a reluctance to be associated with loony free-marketeers? Not being a conspiracy theorist, I suspect ignorance.

The Adam Smith Institute’s paper is not so shy, and includes both “sound money” and “Austrian” in the title, though the first comment on the web version of the press release says talking about “Austrian” proposals is unhelpful. So prejudice against Austrian economics is still unfortunately alive and well, even though its conclusions are becoming less so. The Adam Smith Institute actually does some very good work debunking the mainstream neo-classical economics prevalent today, and is to be congratulated for publishing Evans’s paper.

The BIS paper will be the more influential of the two in policy circles, and this is not the first time the BIS has questioned the macroeconomic assumptions behind the actions of the major central banks. The BIS is regarded as the central bankers’ central bank, so just as we lesser mortals look up to the Fed, ECB, BoE or BoJ in the hope they know what they are doing, they presumably take note of the BIS. One wonders if the Fed’s new policy of raising interest rates was influenced by the BIS’s view that zero rates are not delivering a Keynesian recovery, and might only intensify the boom-bust syndrome.

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

Albert Edwards Hits Peak Pessimism: “S&P Will Fall 75%”, Global Recession Looms

Albert Edwards Hits Peak Pessimism: “S&P Will Fall 75%”, Global Recession Looms

2016 has thus far been a year characterized by remarkable bouts of harrowing volatility as the ongoing devaluation of the yuan, plunging crude prices, and geopolitical uncertainty wreak havoc on fragile, inflated markets.

With asset prices still sitting near nosebleed levels after seven years of bubble blowing by a global cabal of overzealous central planners with delusions of Keynesian grandeur, some fear a dramatic unwind is in the cards and that this one will be the big one, so to speak.

December’s Fed liftoff may well go down as the most ill-timed rate hike in history Marc Faber recently opined, underscoring the fact that the Fed probably missed its window and is now set to embark on a tightening cycle just as the US slips back into recession amid a wave of imported deflation and the reverberations from an EM crisis precipitated by the soaring dollar.

One person who is particularly bearish is the incomparable Albert Edwards. SocGen’s “uber bear” (or, more appropriately, “realist”) is out with a particularly alarming assessment of the situation facing markets in the new year.

“Investors are coming to terms with what a Chinese renminbi devaluation means for Western markets,” Edwards begins, in a note dated Wednesday. “It means global deflation and recession,” he adds, matter-of-factly.

First, Edwards bemoans the lunacy of going “full-Krugman” (which regular readers know you never, ever do):

I have always said that if inflating asset prices via loose monetary policy were the route to economic prosperity, Argentina would be the richest country in the world by now ?and it is not! The Fed?s pursuit of negligently loose monetary policies since 2009 is a misguided attempt to boost economic growth via asset price inflation and we will now reap the whirlwind (the ECB, Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are all just as bad).

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

The Trouble With Financial Bubbles

The Trouble With Financial Bubbles

Very soon after the magnitude of the 2008 financial crisis became clear, a lively debate began about whether central banks and regulators could – and should – have done more to head it off. The traditional view, notably shared by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, is that any attempt to prick financial bubbles in advance is doomed to failure. The most central banks can do is to clean up the mess.

Bubble-pricking may indeed choke off growth unnecessarily – and at high social cost. But there is a counter-argument. Economists at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have maintained that the costs of the crisis were so large, and the cleanup so long, that we should surely now look for ways to act pre-emptively when we again see a dangerous build-up of liquidity and credit.

Hence the fierce (albeit arcane and polite) dispute between the two sides at the International Monetary Fund’s recent meeting in Lima, Peru. For the literary-minded, it was reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver finds himself caught in a war between two tribes, one of which believes that a boiled egg should always be opened at the narrow end, while the other is fervent in its view that a spoon fits better into the bigger, rounded end.

It is fair to say that the debate has moved on a little since 2008. Most important, macroprudential regulation has been added to policymakers’ toolkit: simply put, it makes sense to vary banks’ capital requirements according to the financial cycle. When credit expansion is rapid, it may be appropriate to increase banks’ capital requirements as a hedge against the heightened risk of a subsequent contraction. This increase would be above what microprudential supervision – assessing the risks to individual institutions – might dictate. In this way, the new Basel rules allow for requiring banks to maintain a so-called countercyclical buffer of extra capital.

Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/central-bankers-financial-stability-debate-by-howard-davies-2015-10#fXsDH7ISW0ku2b5s.99

 

The Numbers Say That A Major Global Recession Has Already Begun

The Numbers Say That A Major Global Recession Has Already Begun

Global - Public DomainThe biggest bank in the western world has just come out and declared that the global economy is “already in a recession”.  According to British banking giant HSBC, global trade is down 8.4 percent so far this year, and global GDP expressed in U.S. dollars is down 3.4 percent.  So those that are waiting for the next worldwide economic recession to begin can stop waiting.  It is officially here.  As you will see below, money is fleeing emerging markets at a blistering pace, major global banks are stuck with huge loans that will never be repaid, and it looks like a very significant worldwide credit crunch has begun.  Just a few days ago, I explained that the IMF, the UN, the BIS And Citibank were all warning that a major economic crisis could be imminent.  They aren’t just making this stuff up out of thin air, but most Americans still seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine.  The level of blind faith in the system that most people are demonstrating right now is absolutely astounding.

The numbers say that the global economy has not been in this bad shape since the devastating recession that shook the world in 2008 and 2009.  According to HSBC, “we are already in a dollar recession”…

Global trade is also declining at an alarming pace. According to the latest data available in June the year on year change is -8.4%. To find periods of equivalent declines we only really find recessionary periods. This is an interesting point. On one metric we are already in a recession. As can be seen in Chart 3 on the following page, global GDP expressed in US dollars is already negative to the tune of USD 1,37trn or -3.4%. That is, we are already in a dollar recession. 

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

The Endgame Takes Shape: “Banning Capitalism And Bypassing Capital Markets”

The Endgame Takes Shape: “Banning Capitalism And Bypassing Capital Markets”

One month ago we presented to readers that in the first official “serious” mention of “Helicopter Money” as the next (and final) form of monetary stimulus, Australia’s Macquarie Bank said that there is now about 12-18 months before this “unorthodox” policy is implemented. We also predicted that now that the seal has been broken, other banks would quickly jump on board with an idea that is the only possible endgame to 8 years of monetary lunacy, and sure enough, both Citigroup and Deutsche Bank within days brought up the Fed’s monetary paradrop as the up and coming form of monetary policy.

So while the rest of the street is undergoing revulsion therapy, as it cracks its “the Fed will hike rates any minute” cognitive dissonance and is finally asking, as Morgan Stanley did last week, whether the Fed will first do QE4 or NIRP (something we have said since January), here is what is really coming down the line, with the heretic thought experiment of the endgame once again coming from an unexpected, if increasingly credibly source, Australia’s Macquarie bank.

* * *

Would more QE make a difference? Have to move to different types of QE or allow nature to take its course

It seems that over the last week investor consensus swung from expecting Fed tightening and some form of normalization of monetary policy to delaying expectation of any tightening until 2016 and possibly beyond whilst discussion of a possibility of QE4 has gone mainstream.

Although “QE forever” and no tightening has been our base case for at least the last 12-18 months, we also tend to emphasize the diminishing impact of conventional QE policies. As the latest Fed paper (San Francisco) highlighted, “There is no work, to my knowledge, that establishes a link from QE to the ultimate goals of the Fed-inflation and real economic activity. Indeed, casual evidence suggests that QE has been ineffective in increasing inflation”.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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