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These are strange monetary times, with negative interest rates and central bankers deemed to be masters of the universe. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that politicians and central bankers are now waging a war on cash. That’s right, policy makers in Europe and the U.S. want to make it harder for the hoi polloi to hold actual currency.

Mario Draghi fired the latest salvo on Monday when he said the European Central Bank would like to ban €500 notes. A day later Harvard economist and Democratic Party favorite Larry Summers declared that it’s time to kill the $100 bill, which would mean goodbye to Ben Franklin. Alexander Hamilton may soon—and shamefully—be replaced on the $10 bill, but at least the 10-spots would exist for a while longer. Ol’ Ben would be banished from the currency the way dead white males like him are banned from the history books.

Limits on cash transactions have been spreading in Europe since the 2008 financial panic, ostensibly to crack down on crime and tax avoidance. Italy has made it illegal to pay cash for anything worth more than €1,000 ($1,116), while France cut its limit to €1,000 from €3,000 last year. British merchants accepting more than €15,000 in cash per transaction must first register with the tax authorities. Fines for violators can run into the thousands of euros. Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister recently proposed a €5,000 cap on cash transactions. Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan predicted last month that cash won’t survive another decade.

The enemies of cash claim that only crooks and cranks need large-denomination bills. They want large transactions to be made electronically so government can follow them. Yet these are some of the same European politicians who blew a gasket when they learned that U.S. counterterrorist officials were monitoring money through the Swift global system. Criminals will find a way, large bills or not.

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

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash

February 1, 2016

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash

In a moment of curious serendipity, a little over 90 minutes after we showed what a dystopian, centrally-planned, cashless society unleashed in a negative interest rate world would look like (“by forcing people and companies to convert their paper money into bank deposits, the hope is that they can be persuaded (coerced?) to spend that money rather than save it because those deposits will carry considerable costs”), and briefly after we laid out the countless recent warnings from “very serious people” that cash is evil and should be banned:

… while warning to await a full-on coopted media assault about the dangers of cash “which is an anacrhonysm from a bygone era, and that the world will be so much better if only everyone dutifully exchanges the physical currency in their pocket for digital, traceable, and deletable 1s and 0s”, none other than Bloomberg issued an editorial Op-Ed in which it had one simple message: “Bring On the Cashless Future.”

For those who were amused by our warning that a cashless world may be coming, here is precisely why the warning was issued, in Bloomberg’s digital ink:

Bring On the Cashless Future

Cash had a pretty good run for 4,000 years or so. These days, though, notes and coins increasingly seem declasse: They’re dirty and dangerous, unwieldy and expensive, antiquated and so very analog.

Sensing this dissatisfaction, entrepreneurs have introduced hundreds of digital currencies in the past few years, of which bitcoin is only the most famous.

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

Helicopter Money Arrives: Switzerland To Hand Out $2500 Monthly To All Citizens

January 29, 2016

Helicopter Money Arrives: Switzerland To Hand Out $2500 Monthly To All Citizens

With Citi’s chief economist proclaiming “only helicopter money can save the world now,” and the Bank of England pre-empting paradropping money concerns, it appears that Australia’s largest investment bank’s forecast that money-drops were 12-18 months away was too conservative. While The Finns consider a “basic monthly income” for the entire population, Swiss residents are to vote on a countrywide referendum about a radical plan to pay every single adult a guaranteed income of around $2500 per month, with authorities insisting that people will still want to find a job.

The plan, as The Daily Mail reports, proposed by a group of intellectuals, could make the country the first in the world to pay all of its citizens a monthly basic income regardless if they work or not. But the initiative has not gained much traction among politicians from left and right despite the fact that a referendum on it was approved by the federal government for the ballot box on June 5.

Under the proposed initiative, each adult would receive $2,500 per months, and each child would also receive 625 francs ($750) a month.

The federal government estimates the cost of the proposal at 208 billion francs ($215 billion) a year.

Around 153 billion francs ($155 bn) would have to be levied from taxes, while 55 billion francs ($60 bn) would be transferred from social insurance and social assistance spending.

That is 30% of GDP!!!

The action committee pushing the initiative consists of artists, writers and intellectuals, including publicist Daniel Straub, former federal government spokesman Oswald Sigg and Zurich rapper Franziska Schläpfer (known as “Big Zis”), the SDA news agency reported. Personalities supporting the bid include writers Adolf Muschg and Ruth Schweikert, philosopher Hans Saner and communications expert Beatrice Tschanz. The group said a new survey showed that the majority of Swiss residents would continue working if the guaranteed income proposal was approved.

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

Why the Black Hole of Deflation Is Swallowing the Entire World … Even After Central Banks Have Pumped Trillions Into the Economy

January 24, 2016

Why the Black Hole of Deflation Is Swallowing the Entire World … Even After Central Banks Have Pumped Trillions Into the Economy

Deflation Threatens to Swallow the World

Many high-powered people and institutions say that deflation is threatening much of the world’s economy …

China may export deflation to the rest of the world.

Japan is mired in deflation.

Economists are afraid that deflation will hit Hong Kong.

The Telegraph reported last week:

RBS has advised clients to brace for a “cataclysmic year” and a global deflationary crisis, warning that major stock markets could fall by a fifth and oil may plummet to $16 a barrel.

***

Andrew Roberts, the bank’s research chief for European economics and rates, said that global trade and loans are contracting, a nasty cocktail for corporate balance sheets and equity earnings.

The Independent notes:

Lower oil prices could push leading economies into deflation. Just look at the latest inflation rates – calculated before oil fell below $30 a barrel. In the UK and France, inflation is running at an almost invisible 0.2 per cent per annum; Germany is at 0.3 per cent and the US at 0.5 per cent.

Almost certainly these annual rates will soon fall below zero and so, at the very least, we shall be experiencing ‘technical’ deflation. Technical deflation is a short period of gently falling prices that does no harm. The real thing works like a doomsday machine and engenders a downward spiral that is difficult to stop and brings about a 1930s style slump.

Referring to the risk of deflation, two American central bankers indicated their worries last week. James Bullard, the head of the St Louis Federal Reserve, said falling inflation expectations were “worrisome”, while Charles Evans of the Chicago Fed, said the situation was “troubling”.

Deflation will likely nail Europe:

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

Austrians get (some) mainstream credibility

January 16, 2016

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

January 16, 2016

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.

…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

January 13, 2016

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…

It Begins: Desperate Finland Set To Unleash Helicopter Money Drop To All Citizens

December 7, 2015

It Begins: Desperate Finland Set To Unleash Helicopter Money Drop To All Citizens

Over the last few months, in a prime example of currency failure and euro-defenders’ narratives, Finland has been sliding deeper into depression. Almost 7 years into the the current global expansion, Finland’s GDP is 6pc below its previous peak. As The Telegraph reports, this is a deeper and more protracted slump than the post-Soviet crash of the early 1990s, or the Great Depression of the 1930s. And so, having tried it all, Finnish authorities are preparing to unleash “helicopter money” to save their nation by giving every citizen a tax-free payout of around $900 each month!

Just over two years ago, when the world was deciding who would be Bernanke Fed Chair replacement, Larry Summers or Janet Yellen (how ironic that Larry Summers did not get the nod just because a bunch of progressive economists thought he would not be dovish enough) we wrote about a different problem: with the end of QE3 upcoming and with the inevitable failure of the economy to reignite (again), we warned that there remains one option after (when not if) QE fails to stimulate growth: helicopter money.

While QE may be ending, it certainly does not mean that the Fed is halting its effort to “boost” the economy. In fact… the end of QE may well be simply a redirection, whereby the broken monetary pathway, one which uses banks as intermediaries to stimulate inflation (supposedly a failure according to the economist mainstream), i.e., “second-round effects”, is bypassed entirely and replaced with Plan Z, aka “Helicopter Money” mentioned previously as an all too real monetary policy option by none other than Milton Friedman and one Ben Bernanke. This is also known as the nuclear option.

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

A Stunning Admission From A BOE Central Banker: This Is What The Coming “Helicopter Money” Will Look Like

November 7, 2015

A Stunning Admission From A BOE Central Banker: This Is What The Coming “Helicopter Money” Will Look Like

Back in early 2009, just around the time the Fed announced it would unleash QE1, we warned that any attempt to reflate the debt (a pathway which ultimately leads to hyperinflation as monetary paradrops are the only logical outcome as a result of the deflationary failure of the intermediate steps) would fail, and instead would saddle the world with even more debt, making monetary financing, i.e., paradropping money, the inevitable outcome.

We said that instead, the right move would be to liquidate the excess debt, and start anew – a step which, however, would wipe out trillions in (underwater) equity, something which the status quo would never agree to, as that is where the bulk of its wealth is contained.

7 years later, debt is well over $200 trillion, having risen by more than $60 trillion in the interim, and we are rapidly approaching the peak of the world’s debt capacity as we noted a month ago in “The World Hits Its Credit Limit, And The Debt Market Is Starting To Realize That.”

Today, we find that none other than Adair Turner, a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee and a Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, wrote a long essay in Bloomberg which admits everything we have warned about.

To wit:

Advanced economies’ public debt on average increased by 34 percent of GDP between 2007 and 2014. More important, national incomes and living standards in many countries are 10 percent or more below where they could have been, and are likely to remain there in perpetuity.

The fundamental problem is that modern financial systems inevitably create debt in excessive quantities. The debt they create doesn’t finance new capital investment but the purchase of existing assets, and above all real estate. Debt drives booms and financial busts. And it is a debt overhang from the last boom that explains why recovery from the 2007–2008 crisis has been so anemic.

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

Withdrawals Of Gold From NY Fed Jump To 20 Tons In September, Total 276 Tons Since 2014

October 31, 2015

Withdrawals Of Gold From NY Fed Jump To 20 Tons In September, Total 276 Tons Since 2014

First it was Germany who redeemed 120 tons of physical gold in 2014; then it was the Netherlands who “secretly” redomiciled 122 tons of gold; then this past May, we learned that Austria would be the third “core” European nation to repatriate most of its offshore gold, held primarily in the Bank of England, redepositing it in Vienna and Switzerland.

Thanks to the latest NY Fed data released yesterday, we now know that beginning in 2014 and continuing through yesterday, the gold “bleeding” from the vault located 90 feet below street level at 33 Liberty Street (and which may or may not be connected by a tunnel to the JPM gold vault located just across the street at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza) is not only continuing but accelerating.

As the chart below shows, while central banks assure the population that there is nothing to worry about when it comes to paper money, and in fact it is the evil ISIS terrorists who plot and scheme to crush the benevolent Fed with their terroristy “gold dinars” and if not that then their made in Hollywood propaganda movies, they have been quietly pulling gold from the biggest centralized depository of global gold in the world: the New York Federal Reserve.

According to the latest just released monthly update of foreign official assets held in custody at the NY Fed, in July the total holdings of foreign earmarked, i.e., physical, gold declined to just over $8 billion when evaluated at the legacy “price” of $42.22 per ounce. In ton terms, this means that after declining below 6000 tons in January, for the first time since FDR’s infamous gold confiscation spree…

… the total physical gold held at the NY Fed dropped another 19.9 tons in September, down to 5,919.5 tons.

This was a doubling in gold withdrawals from 10 tons in August, and
is the highest withdrawal since January.

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

Moneyweek: Hands Off Our Cash Petition

October 21, 2015

Moneyweek: Hands Off Our Cash Petition

Andy Haldane recently floated the idea of abolishing cash so that radical monetary policy like negative interest rates can be implemented.

You can sign the Moneyweek petition against this here:

http://moneyweek.com/wp/hands-off-our-cash-petition

Whereas the Bank of England’s Chief Economist Andrew Haldane announced on 18th September 2015 his intention to abolish use of cash in Britain in order to allow the bank to impose negative interest rates on savers;

Whereas this would allow banks to charge you to keep your money on deposit and make it impossible to remove your money as cash in response;

Whereas Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland have already imposed negative interest rates;

Therefore, we the undersigned, as concerned savers and investors of Great Britain, do call on Her Majesty’s British Government to:

1 Guarantee that cash will not be abolished from use in the UK

2 Guarantee that negative interest rates will not be imposed undemocratically on British savers

3 Establish a form of public consultation on the specific mandate and monetary policy limitations of the Bank of England

The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold

October 10, 2015

The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold

Belgium sold 1,098 tonnes of its official gold reserves since 1978.

For our global investigation how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, I decided to submit the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at the central bank of Belgium, de Nationale Bank van België (NBB), to obtain information about the amount of Belgian official gold reserves, the exact location of all gold bars, the type of gold accounts NBB holds at the Bank Of England (BOE) and how much is leased out and to whom. The outcome of this research was not what I had expected.

History Of The Official Gold Reserves Of Belgium

Some of the questions I directed at the NBB I used a stepping stone, as this information is publicly available in part. At the end of August 2015 NBB was holding 227.4 tonnes of gold, down 0.04 tonnes from 227.44 tonnes in July, according to data from the Bundesbank that publishes the gold holdings of 19 European central banks and the ECB in compliance with the IMF’s most recent version of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The Bundesbank (BuBa) publishes the fine troy ounces of the official gold reserves in ‘Gold bullion’ and ‘Unallocated gold accounts’. If we add up both categories the outcome for all countries equals the reserves disclosed by the World Gold Council.

From BuBa:

The balance of payments statistics will … be consistent with the framework set out in the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The application of the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6) is binding for EU member states by virtue of a regulation adopted by the European Commission.

Back in 1965 NBB was holding over 1,300 tonnes of gold. Since 1978 it has sold a whopping 1,098 tonnes, or 83 %.

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

Central Banks’ secrecy and silence on gold storage arrangements

October 2, 2015

Central Banks’ secrecy and silence on gold storage arrangements

Whereas some central banks have become more forthcoming on where they claim their official gold reserves are stored (see my recent blog post ‘Central bank gold at the Bank of England‘), many of the world’s central banks remain secretive in this regard, with some central bank staff saying that they are not allowed to provide this information, and some central banks just ignoring the question when asked.

In the ‘Central bank gold at the Bank of England’ article, I said that “A number of central banks refuse to confirm the location of their gold reserves. I will document this in a future posting.” As promised, this blog post explains what I meant by the above statement.

Some of those central banks may have made it into the Bank of England storage list if they had been more transparent in providing gold storage information. However, since they weren’t transparent, these banks make it into the alternative ‘non-cooperative’ list. One subset of this list is central banks, which to be fair to them, did actually respond and said that they cannot divulge gold storage information. The other subset is central banks which didn’t reply at all when I asked them about their official gold storage location details.

The below list, although not complete, highlights 7 central banks and 1 official sector financial institution (the BIS), which, when asked where do they store their gold reserves, responded with various similar phrases saying that they could not provide this information. Between them, these 7 central banks claim to hold 1,500 tonnes of gold. Adding in the BIS which represents another 900 tonnes, in total that’s 2,400 tonnes of gold where the central banks in charge of that gold will not provide any information as to its whereabouts. Much of this 2,400 tonnes is no doubt stored (at least in name) at the FRBNY and the Bank of England, with some stored in the home countries of some of the central banks.

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

Mark Carney wants business to calculate the fossil fuel future: Don Pittis

October 1, 2015

Mark Carney wants business to calculate the fossil fuel future: Don Pittis

Bank of England governor’s climate change warning puts the focus on the bottom line

No doubt Bank of England governor Mark Carney has personal views on whether or not climate change is a danger to his children’s future. Most thoughtful people do.

But when the former Bank of Canada governor spoke to a high-powered audience of insurance executives this week, unlike environmentalists such as Leonardo DiCaprio, he didn’t emphasize their moral obligation to future generations. Perhaps after the VW scandal, he realized there was a more direct way to a businessperson’s heart.

He appealed to their bottom line.

“Changes in policy, technology and physical risks could prompt a reassessment of the value of a large range of assets as costs and opportunities become apparent,” he told the group.

“Longer-term risks could have severe impacts on you and your policyholders.”

When New Democratic Party candidate Linda McQuaig raised some of the same issues in the current federal election campaign, saying part of Canada’s fossil fuel resources might have to be left in the ground, it played as a left-right issue.

Dwayne Roy checks an active well site near Lloydminster, Sask., this summer. Bank of England governor Mark Carney says investors must realize oil may have to be left in the ground. (Reuters)

“For the hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs are dependent on Canada’s energy sector, listen to what you just heard,” responded Conservative candidate Michelle Rempel.

Profit and loss, not left and right

But for Carney’s audience at a Lloyd’s of London black tie dinner, the issue is not a matter of left or right politics, but a matter of profit and loss.

Insurance companies often pay the bills when storms and flooding do their damage. Climate change is likely to make those insurable crises worse.

But perhaps more important, against those potential losses, insurance companies hold trillions of dollars in assets invested in all kinds of stocks and bonds. And Carney said those assets were threatened.

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

From ZIRP to NIRP

October 1, 2015

From ZIRP to NIRP

The sudden end of the Fed’s ambition to raise interest rates above the zero bound, coupled with the FOMC’s minutes, which expressed concerns about emerging market economies, has got financial scribblers writing about negative interest rate policies (NIRP).

Coincidentally, Andrew Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, published a much commented-on speech giving us a window into the minds of central bankers, with zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) having failed in their objectives.

Of course, Haldane does not openly admit to ZIRP failing, but the fact that we are where we are is hardly an advertisement for successful monetary policies. The bare statistical recovery in the UK, Germany and possibly the US is slender evidence of some result, but whether or not that is solely due to interest rate policies cannot be convincingly proved. And now, exogenous factors, such as China’s deflating credit bubble and its knock-on effect on other emerging market economies, are being blamed for the deteriorating economic outlook faced by the welfare states, and the possible contribution of monetary policy to this failure is never discussed.

Anyway, the relative stability in the welfare economies appears to be coming to an end. Worryingly for central bankers, with interest rates at the zero bound, their conventional interest rate weapon is out of ammunition. They appear to now believe in only two broad options if a slump is to be avoided: more quantitative easing and NIRP. There is however a market problem with QE, not mentioned by Haldane, in that it is counterpart to a withdrawal of high quality financial collateral, which raises liquidity issues in the shadow banking system. This leaves NIRP, which central bankers hope will succeed where ZIRP failed.

– See more at: http://www.cobdencentre.org/2015/09/from-zirp-to-nirp/#sthash.Qb02oWjj.dpuf

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