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Hell To Pay

September 24, 2016

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Hell To Pay

The final condition for a market crash is falling into place 

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to run out of new things to say about the economy. Nothing interesting has happened in a long time.

Our liquidity-drunk “markets” remain over-priced due to the chronic intervention of the global central banking cartel, which has demonstrated over and over again that it won’t tolerate even the slightest drop in asset prices.

Those familiar with my writing know I put the word “markets” in quotes because we no longer have a financial system where legitimate price discovery is a regular — or even recognizable — feature.

It’s destined to fail. What more can be said about such a flawed system?

Well, a lot as it turns out.

And failure to pay attention at this stage of economic and ecological history will prove to be exceptionally painful.

The Beginning of the End

It’s been a long 7 years for those of us who believe fundamentals matter.  For quite some time they have not.

So we reality-based fundamentalists have largely been reduced to pointing at the parade of policy failures and ham-fisted market manipulations and saying, essentially, That’s just dumb.

But ‘dumb’ mistakes have become ‘stupid’, and ‘stupid’ became ‘idiotic’, and now ‘idiotic’ mistakes are piling up, accumulating into a mountain of stored potential energy that will someday topple destructively across the global markets.  We’ve all known, deep down, that money printing is not the same as capital formation, and that prosperity never truly results from redistributing wealth from one group to another. And yet, far too many have been willing to play along and place their trust in the central banks.

Well, we’ve finally reached the beginning of the end.

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

With Over $13 Trillion In Negative-Yielding Debt, This Is The Pain A 1% Spike In Rates Would Inflict

July 10, 2016

With Over $13 Trillion In Negative-Yielding Debt, This Is The Pain A 1% Spike In Rates Would Inflict

Friday’s unprecedented surge to all time highs in both stock and treasury prices, has got analysts everywhere scratching their heads: which is causing which, and what happens if there is a violent snapback in yields like for example the infamous bund tantrum of May 2015.

But first, the question is what exactly will pause what the WSJ calls the “Black Hole of Negative Rates” which is dragging down yields everywhere.  Here is how the WSJ puts it:

The free fall in yields on developed-world government debt is dragging down rates on global bonds broadly, from sovereign debt in Taiwan and Lithuania to corporate bonds in the U.S., as investors fan out further in search of income. Yields in the U.S., Europe and Japan have been plummeting as investors pile into government debt in the face of tepid growth, low inflation and high uncertainty, and as central banks cut rates into negative territory in many countries. Even Friday, despite a strong U.S. jobs report that helped send the S&P 500 to a near-record high, yields on the 10-year Treasury note ultimately declined to a record close of 1.366% as investors took advantage of a brief rise in yields on the report’s headlines to buy more bonds.

As yields keep falling in these haven markets, investors are looking for income elsewhere, creating a black hole that is sucking down rates in ever longer maturities, emerging markets and riskier corporate debt.

“What we are seeing is a mechanical yield grab taking place in global bonds,” said Jack Kelly, an investment director at Standard Life Investments. ” The pace of that yield grab accelerates as more bond markets move into negative yields and investors search for a smaller pool of substitutes.”

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

Charting The Epic Collapse Of The World’s Most Systemically Dangerous Bank

July 10, 2016

Charting The Epic Collapse Of The World’s Most Systemically Dangerous Bank

It’s been almost 10 years in the making, but the fate of one of Europe’s most important financial institutions appears to be sealed.

After a hard-hitting sequence of scandals, poor decisions, and unfortunate events,Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank shares are now down -48% on the year to $12.60, which is a record-setting low.

Even more stunning is the long-term view of the German institution’s downward spiral.

With a modest $15.8 billion in market capitalization, shares of the 147-year-old company now trade for a paltry 8% of its peak price in May 2007.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

 

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

If the deaths of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were quick and painless, the coming demise of Deutsche Bank has been long, drawn out, and painful.

In recent times, Deutsche Bank’s investment banking division has been among the largest in the world, comparable in size to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup. However, unlike those other names, Deutsche Bank has been walking wounded since the Financial Crisis, and the German bank has never been able to fully recover.

It’s ironic, because in 2009, the company’s CEO Josef Ackermann boldly proclaimed that Deutsche Bank had plenty of capital, and that it was weathering the crisis better than its competitors.

It turned out, however, that the bank was actually hiding $12 billion in losses to avoid a government bailout. Meanwhile, much of the money the bank did make during this turbulent time in the markets stemmed from the manipulation of Libor rates. Those “wins” were short-lived, since the eventual fine to end the Libor probe would be a record-setting $2.5 billion.

The bank finally had to admit that it actually needed more capital.

In 2013, it raised €3 billion with a rights issue, claiming that no additional funds would be needed. Then in 2014 the bank head-scratchingly proceeded to raise €1.5 billion, and after that, another €8 billion.

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

This Is The End: Venezuela Runs Out Of Money To Print New Money

April 27, 2016

This Is The End: Venezuela Runs Out Of Money To Print New Money

Back in February, when we commented on the unprecedented hyperinflation about the be unleashed in the Latin American country whose president just announced that he would expand the “weekend” for public workers to 5 days…

… we joked that it is unclear just where the country will find all the paper banknotes it needs for all its new physical currency. After all, central-bank data shows Venezuela more than doubled the supply of 100-, 50- and 2-bolivar notes in 2015 as it doubled monetary liquidity including bank deposits. Supply has grown even as Venezuela has fewer U.S. dollars to support new bolivars, a result of falling oil prices.

This question, as morbidly amusing as it may have been to us if not the local population, became particularly poignant recently when for the first time, one US Dollar could purchase more than 1000 Venezuela Bolivars on the black market (to be exact, it buys 1,127 as of today).

And then, as if on cue the WSJ responded: “millions of pounds of provisions, stuffed into three-dozen 747 cargo planes, arrived here from countries around the world in recent months to service Venezuela’s crippled economy. But instead of food and medicine, the planes carried another resource that often runs scarce here: bills of Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar.

The shipments were part of the import of at least five billion bank notes that President Nicolás Maduro’s administration authorized over the latter half of 2015 as the government boosts the supply of the country’s increasingly worthless currency, according to seven people familiar with the deals.

More planes were coming: in December, the central bank began secret negotiations to order 10 billion more bills which would effectively double the amount of cash in circulation. That order alone is well above the eight billion notes the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank each print annually—dollars and euros that unlike bolivars are used world-wide.

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

Eric Hunsader: The Financial System is ‘Absolutely, Positively Rigged’

April 19, 2016

Eric Hunsader: The Financial System is ‘Absolutely, Positively Rigged’

And the abuses are getting worse, not better

Eric Hunsader, founder of Nanex, has been at the vanguard of warning about the dangers and the rampant fraud that the rise of high-frequency trading (HFT) algorithims have let loose in today’s financial markets.

While he usually feels like a lone voice in a world happy to deceive itself, he was shocked to receive a $750,000 whistleblower award from the SEC for his efforts. He’s been sadly less shocked to see that since the award was publicly announced, the abuses he reported have only become more extreme and frequent.

Of the situation that led to his award, he says:

The folks at the NYSE were selling their direct feed for north of $30,000 a month versus the SIP which is under a thousand dollars a month. Their customers are not buying it because it has that much more rich data. The thing that makes it worth $29,000 more is that it is faster, but that is illegal. Up until this point they deny that that is the case. And somehow it works. So the exchanges make all their money from their highest paying customers which are the high frequency traders. And the high frequency traders pay the exchanges exorbitant amounts of money to have a slight advantage.

That’s how the whole system works. It is absolutely, positively rigged. There is no question about it. It is rigged on many different levels in many different ways — for example, no retail order ever gets to see the light of day of the stock exchange. That’s one of the many eye openers. People who aren’t pros in the market don’t realize that it’s all a rigged game.

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

Former Fed Advisor Asks “Has The Fed Bankrupted The Nation”

April 14, 2016

Former Fed Advisor Asks “Has The Fed Bankrupted The Nation”

Volcker, Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen.

Which one does not belong? Logic dictates that Volcker should have been odd man out. After all, there is no legendary “Volcker Put.”

The towering monetarist made no bones about never being bound by the financial markets. The same can certainly not be said of his three successors. And yet, history contrarily suggests it is to Volcker above all others that the financial markets will forever be beholden.

Many of you will be familiar with Michael Lewis’ memoir, Liar’s Poker. Yours truly first read the book in a Wall Street training program much like the one Lewis survived to describe in his autobiographical work. The take-away then, in late 1996, was that Gordon Gekko was right — greed was good.

Recently, a second reading of Liar’s Poker, following nearly a decade inside the Federal Reserve, delivered a much different message than did that first youthful reading and was nothing short of an epiphany: Paul Volcker, albeit certainly inadvertently, created the bond market.

On Saturday, October 6, 1979. Volcker held a press conference and announced that interest rates would no longer be fixed and that further the Fed would begin to target the money supply in order to curb inflation and “speculative excesses in financial, foreign exchange and commodity markets.”

Alas, this new regime was not meant to be. In trying to introduce an alternative to interest rate targeting, the Fed replaced one guessing game with another. Predicting the demand for reserves and then buying or selling securities based on that demand proved to be just as dicey as a similar exercise to target a given level of interest rates had been.

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

Federal Regulators Accuse Banks Of Not Having Credible Crisis Plans, Would Need Another Bailout

April 13, 2016

Federal Regulators Accuse Banks Of Not Having Credible Crisis Plans, Would Need Another Bailout

Perhaps the biggest farce to result from the Dodd-Frank legislation designed to “rein in” banks was the ridiculous notion of “living wills” –  a concept that makes zero sense in an environment where the failure of even one bank assures a systemic crisis and could – as the Lehman financial crisis showed – lead to the collapse of all other interlinked financial institutions.

Which is why we were not surprised to read this morning that federal regulators announced that five out of eight of the biggest U.S. banks do not have credible plans for winding down operations during a crisis without the help of public money.

Which is precisely the point: now that the precedent has been set and banks know they can rely on the generosity of taxpayers (with the blessing of legislators) why should they even bother planning; they know very well that if just one bank fails, all would face collapse, and the only recourse would be trillions more in taxpayer aid.

As Reuters writes, the “living wills” that the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation jointly agreed were not credible came from Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, J.P. Morgan Chase, State Street, Wells Fargo. What is more impressive is that the Fed and FDIC found any living will to be credible.

Also amusing: it was only the FDIC which alone determined that the plan submitted by Goldman Sachs was not credible while the Goldman-dominated Fed gave its blessing; alternatively, the Federal Reserve Board on its own found that the plan of Morgan Stanley – Goldman’s arch rival in investment banking – not credible. Citigroup’s living will did pass, but the regulators noted it had “shortcomings.”

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

Bernanke’s Former Advisor: “People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned”

April 11, 2016

Bernanke’s Former Advisor: “People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned”

With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game.

Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly powerless to boost the global economy, even if they still have sway over capital markets. What is far more insidious to the Fed’s waning credibility is when former economists affiliated with the Fed start repeating mantras that until recently were only a prominent feature in the so-called fringe media.

This is precisely what happened today when former central bank staffer and Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, joined with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public.

Levin is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts.

All of that is not surprising. What he said to justify his new found cause, however, is.

“A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as “sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan.”

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

“It’s Probably Nothing”: Truck Orders Plunge 37% As Unsold Inventories Soar Most Since 2007

April 7, 2016

“It’s Probably Nothing”: Truck Orders Plunge 37% As Unsold Inventories Soar Most Since 2007

When we last looked at order of heavy, or Class 8, truck one quarter ago – that all-important, forward looking barometer of domestic trade – we said that even with 2015 in the history books, and as we start 2016 where the base effect was supposed to make the annual comps far more palatable, the latest, January data, as abysmal: “the drop continues to be one of Great Recession proportions, manifesting in yet another massive 48% collapse in truck orders in the first month of the year as demand appears to have gone in a state of deep hibernation.”

Fast forward one quarter when we now have another three months of Class 8 truck data, and unfortunately the orderbook has gone from bad to worse. As the WSJ reports, orders for new big rigs plunged and inventories of unsold trucks soared to their highest levels since just before the financial crisis, as uncertainty about future demand and a weak market for freight transportation weighed on truck manufacturers.

About 67,000 Class 8 trucks are sitting unsold on dealer lots, after sales in March dropped 37% from a year earlier to 16,000 vehicles, according to ACT Research. Class 8 trucks are the type most commonly used on long-haul routes. Inventories haven’t been this high since early 2007, said Kenny Vieth, president of ACT.

The number of March orders was the lowest since 2012.

The problem according to the WSJ? Simply not enough freight, or as some may call it, trade: “It boils down to, at present, there are too many trucks chasing too little freight,” Mr. Vieth said.

As the Journal adds, companies that placed large orders in late 2014, only for customers to move less freight than expected last year, are reluctant to buy more vehicles now, analysts said.

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

Triffin’s Paradox Revisited: Crunch-Time for the U.S. Dollar and the Global Economy

April 5, 2016

Triffin’s Paradox Revisited: Crunch-Time for the U.S. Dollar and the Global Economy

The reality is that we’re one panic away from foreign-exchange markets ripping free of central bank manipulation.

While all eyes on fixated on global stock markets as the measure of “prosperity” and “growth” (or is it hubris?), the larger force at work beneath the dovish cooing of central bankers is foreign exchange: the relative value of nations’ currencies, which are influenced (like everything else) by supply and demand, which is in turn influenced by interest rates, perceived risk, asset purchases and sales by central banks and capital flows seeking the lowest possible risk and the highest possible return.

Which brings us to Triffin’s Paradox, a topic I’ve covered for many years:

Understanding the “Exorbitant Privilege” of the U.S. Dollar (November 19, 2012)

The Federal Reserve, Interest Rates and Triffin’s Paradox (November 19, 2015)

The core of Triffin’s Paradox is that the issuer of a reserve currency must serve two entirely different sets of users: the domestic economy, and the international economy.

The U.S. dollar (USD) is the global economy’s primary reserve currency. When the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to zero (Zero Interest Rate Policy, ZIRP), it weakened the dollar relative to other currencies. In this ZIRP environment, it made sense to borrow dollars for next to nothing and use this free money to buy bonds and other assets in other currencies that paid higher yields. Many of these assets were in emerging market economies such as Brazil.

As a result of this enormous carry trade, an estimated $7 trillion was borrowed in USD and invested in other currencies/nations.

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

In 20 Words The ECB Explains The Business Model Of Every Central Bank

April 5, 2016

In 20 Words The ECB Explains The Business Model Of Every Central Bank

There were two notable things about a report released by the ECB this morning as part of its Occasional Paper Series titled “Profit distribution and loss coverage rules for central banks“, which purportedly analyzes “how profit distribution rules can affect the amounts distributed and the financial strength of central banks.”

The first highlight, was the very basic asymmetry at the core of the actual analysis – how can one talk of profit of there is no possibility of loss? Printing money to fill “loss” gaps by definition obviates any calculation of profit since the whole premise of risk/return does not exist.

The second highlight comes from footnote 7, which tells you all you need to know about the “business model” of all central banks, and specifically why they can never go “insolvent” – they can and will just print their way out. To wit:

“Central banks are protected from insolvency due to their ability to create money and can therefore operate with negative equity.”

And that, for those curious why every commercial bank in the world is now backstopped by central banks, is all you need to know.

Source: ECB

Jim Rickards: The New Case For Gold

April 4, 2016

Jim Rickards: The New Case For Gold

A powerful set of arguments for owning the yellow metal

Monetary expert Jim Rickards returns this week to share the insights from his latest work The New Case For Gold, a detailed and highly-researched study of the fundamentals likely to drive the price of gold bullion in the years to come.

Rickards is quite confident that the price is going higher — much higher in fact — as the current world fiat currency regimes falter, to be replaced by ones backed (at least in part) by bullion.

On the way to that outcome, expect the price to be subjugated to the interests and aims of the largest players on the geopolitical chessboard:

Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely; there’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

I spoke to a PhD statistician who works for one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. I can’t mention the name but it’s a household name, you would know the fund. This guy is a PhD statistician. He looked at COMEX opening prices and COMEX closing prices for a 10-year period and he was dumbfounded. He said…This is the most blatant case of manipulation I’ve ever seen. He said if you went into the aftermarket, bought after the close and sold before the opening every day, you would make risk-free profits. He said statistically that’s impossible unless there’s manipulation going on.

I spoke to Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz at the New York University Stern School of Business. She is the leading expert on globe price manipulation. She actually testifies in some of these gold manipulation cases that are going on. She wrote a report reaching the same conclusions. It’s not just an opinion, it’s not just a deep, dark conspiracy theory. Here’s a PhD statistician and a prominent market expert lawyer, expert witness in litigation qualified by the courts, who independently reached the same conclusion.

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

Advantage U.S. In The Global Petroleum Showdown?

April 4, 2016

Advantage U.S. In The Global Petroleum Showdown?

Is the crude stock data in the EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report (Table 1 in the report) a useful tool for judging the prospects for the U.S. petroleum industry— and therefore for the global petroleum industry—or is it misleading?

With few interruptions, U.S. crude stocks increased steadily during 2015 and have continued this trend in 2016. According to weekly EIA data, average commercial crude stocks levels were 7.82 percent higher on average in March than on average in January 2016, and 13.16 percent higher than in 2015 in the week ending January 2, 2015:

With the Weekly Petroleum Status Report’s publication each Wednesday, these steady increases reinforce skepticism on the potential for balanced crude supply and demand and therefore for higher crude prices domestically and internationally. Last week, when the EIA on March 23 reported a 9.3 million barrel build in U.S. commercial crude stocks—around the same time several Federal Reserve officials were suggesting a faster pace for interest rate hikes—WTI and Brent prices fell and continued to fall in the following days.

This week, after the EIA on March 30 reported a smaller build (2.3 million barrels), prices fluctuated, both up and down, despite encouraging words from Fed Chair Yellen on the pace of interest rate hikes in a speech the previous day (of course, other factors, such as OPEC member pronouncements on output policy, influence prices).

Sources of Increasing Crude Stocks

The impetus for gains in crude stocks through March 2016 comes from imports (capacity utilization increased to 88.88 percent from 88.33 percent in the corresponding 2015 period). Average daily crude imports have surged, increasing over 10 percent in January and February compared to 2015’s average daily imports in those months, and 8.63 percent cumulatively year-to-date through March 25:

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

The Boomer Retirement Meme Is A Big Lie

April 4, 2016

THE BOOMER RETIREMENT MEME IS A BIG LIE

As the labor participation rate and employment to population ratio linger near three decade lows, the mouthpieces for the establishment continue to perpetuate the Big Lie this is solely due to the retirement of Boomers. It’s their storyline and they’ll stick to it, no matter what the facts show to be the truth. Even CNBC lackeys, government apparatchiks, and Ivy League educated Keynesian economists should be able to admit that people between the ages of 25 and 54 should be working, unless they are home raising children.

In the year 2000, at the height of the first Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 120 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, with 78 million of them employed full-time. That equated to a 65% full-time employment rate. By the height of the second Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 80 million full-time employed 25 to 54 year olds out of 126 million, a 63.5% employment rate. The full-time employment rate bottomed at 57% in 2010, and still lingers below 62% as we are at the height of a third Federal Reserve induced bubble.

Over the last 16 years the percentage of 25 to 54 full-time employed Americans has fallen from 65% to 62%. I guess people are retiring much younger, if you believe the MSM storyline. Over this same time period the total full-time employment to population ratio has fallen from 53% to 48.8%. The overall labor participation rate peaked in 2000 at 67.1% and stayed steady between 66% and 67% for the next eight years. But this disguised the ongoing decline in the participation rate of men.

In 1970, the labor participation rate of all men was 80%, while the participation rate of women was just below 43%.

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

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