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If you don’t think the current central bank driven economic and financial bubble is going to end badly, recall a crucial historical fact. To wit, the worldwide race of central banks to the zero bound and NIRP and their $10 trillion bond-buying spree during the last seven years was the brain child of Ben S Bernanke.

He’s the one who falsely insisted that Great Depression 2.0 was just around the corner in September 2008. Along with Goldman’s plenipotentiary at the US Treasury, Hank Paulson, it was Bernanke who stampeded the entirety of Washington into tossing out the window the whole rule book of sound money, fiscal rectitude and free market discipline.

In fact, there was no extraordinary crisis. The Lehman failure essentially triggered a self-contained leverage and liquidity bust in the canyons of Wall Street, and it would have burned out there had the Fed allowed money market interest rates to do their work. That is, to rise sufficiently to force into liquidation the gambling houses like Lehman, Goldman and Morgan Stanley that had loaded their balance sheets with trillions of illiquid or long-duration assets and funded them with cheap overnight money.

There would have been no significant spillover effect. The notions that the financial system was imploding into a black hole and that ATMs would have gone dark and money market funds failed are complete urban legends. They were concocted by Wall Street to panic Washington into massive intervention to save their stocks and partnership shares.

The same is true of the claim that corporate payrolls would have been missed for want of revolving credit availability and that the entirety of AIG had to be bailed out to the tune of $185 billion in order to protect insurance and annuity holders.

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

The New Middle Kingdom Of Concrete And The Red Depression Ahead

April 12, 2016

The New Middle Kingdom Of Concrete And The Red Depression Ahead

No wonder the Red Ponzi consumed more cement during three years (2011-2013) than did the US during the entire twentieth century. Enabled by an endless $30 trillion flow of credit from its state controlled banking apparatus and its shadow banking affiliates, China went berserk building factories, warehouses, ports, office towers, malls, apartments, roads, airports, train stations, high speed railways, stadiums, monumental public buildings and much more.

If you want an analogy, 6.6 gigatons of cement is 14.5 trillion pounds. The Hoover dam used about 1.8 billion pounds of cement. So in 3 years China consumed enough cement to build the Hoover dam 8,000 times over—-160 of them for every state in the union!

Having spent the last ten days in China, I can well and truly say that the Middle Kingdom is back. But its leitmotif is the very opposite to the splendor of the Forbidden City.The Middle Kingdom has been reborn in towers of preformed concrete. They rise in their tens of thousands in every direction on the horizon. They are connected with ribbons of highways which are scalloped and molded to wind through the endless forest of concrete verticals. Some of them are occupied. Alot, not.

The “before” and “after” contrast of Shanghai’s famous Pudong waterfront is illustrative of the illusion.

The first picture below is from about 1990 at a time before Mr. Deng discovered the printing press in the basement of the People’s Bank of China and proclaimed that it is glorious to be rich; and that if you were 18 and still in full possession of your digital dexterity and visual acuity it was even more glorious to work 12 hours per day 6 days per week in an export factory for 35 cents per hour.

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

Yelling ‘Stay’ In A Burning Theater—–Yellen Ignites Another Robo-Trader Spasm

April 3, 2016

Yelling ‘Stay’ In A Burning Theater—–Yellen Ignites Another Robo-Trader Spasm

Simple Janet has attained a new milestone as a public menace with her speech to the Economic Club of New York. It amounted to yelling “stay” in a burning theater!

The stock market has been desperately trying to correct for months now because even the casino regulars can read the tea leaves. That is, earnings are plunging, global trade and growth are swooning and central bank “wealth effects” pumping has not trickled down to the main street economy. Besides, there are too many hints of market-killing recessionary forces for even the gamblers to believe that the Fed has abolished the business cycle.

So by the sheer cowardice and risibility of her speech, Simple Janet has triggered still another robo-trader spasm in the casino. Yet this latest run at resistance points on a stock chart that has been rolling over for nearly a year now underscores how absurd and dangerous 87 months of ZIRP and wealth effects pumping have become.

As we have indicated repeatedly, S&P 500 earnings—–as measured by the honest GAAP accounting that the SEC demands on penalty of jail——-have now fallen 18.5% from their peak. The latter was registered in the LTM period ending in September 2014 and clocked in at $106per share.

As is shown in the graph below, the index was trading at 1950 at that time. The valuation multiple at a sporty 18.4X, therefore, was already pushing the envelope given the extended age of the expansion.

Indeed, even back then there were plenty of headwinds becoming evident. These included global commodity deflation, a rapid slowdown in the pace of capital spending and the vast build-up of debt and structural barriers to growth throughout China and its EM supply train, as well as Japan, Europe and the US.

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

A Scam Called Valeant——Why The Casino Is Going To Blow

March 24, 2016

A Scam Called Valeant——Why The Casino Is Going To Blow

If you need evidence that Wall Street is a financial time bomb waiting for ignition look no further than the recent meltdown of Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX). In round terms, its market cap of $90 billion on August 5th has suddenly become the embodiment of that proverbial sucking sound to the south, having plunged to less than $12 billion by Wednesday’s close.

That’s nearly a 90% haircut and VRX was no microcap penny stock. It was a giant inhabitant of a hedge fund hotel.

Needless to say, the cliff-diving pattern in the graph below provides evidence that the ticking bombs in the casino are of the neutron variety. In this case, the hotel may be still standing but the inhabitants have been ionized. On a single day last week, hedge funds lost $5.3 billion in value.

Condign justice, some might say, for the likes of rank gamblers like William Ackman (Pershing Square) and Jeffrey Ubben (ValueAct Holdings) who lost $700 million each that day. The fact that they have successfully promoted themselves for so long as masters of the universe, however, is the real moral of the story.

The financial markets and media have been so corrupted by central bank bubble finance that they did not even recognize that Valeant was a monumental scam and that Ackman and Ubben are snake oil salesman in $5,000 suits. Presently it will become clear that the hedge fund hotels are heavily occupied by many more of the same.

Alas, Valeant wasn’t caught selling poisoned pills or torturing kittens during the last seven months. What it was doing for the past seven years——aggressively pursuing every one of the financial engineering strategies that are worshipped and rewarded in the Wall Street casino——finally came a cropper.

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

Impaled On Its Own Petard——The Fed’s Folly Festers Further

March 17, 2016

Impaled On Its Own Petard——The Fed’s Folly Festers Further

Listening to even a small portion of Simple Janet’s incoherent babble makes very clear that the nation’s central bank is well and truly impaled on its own petard. According to the dictionary, the latter term refers to…..

…….. a small bomb used for blowing up gates and walls when breaching fortifications. It is of French origin and dates back to the 16th century. A typical petard was a conical or rectangular metal device containing 2–3 kg (5 or 6 pounds) of gunpowder, with a slow match for a fuse.

Maybe that’s what they have been doing all along—–that is, waiting for their slow match monetary fuse to finally ignite the next financial conflagration.

After all, the Fed is now 87 months into its grand experiment with the lunacy of zero interest rates. If our monetary central planners still can’t see their way clear to more than 38 bps of normalization, then, apparently, they intend to keep the casino gamblers in free carry trade money until they finally blow themselves up——just like they have already done twice this century.

In fact, by Yellen’s own bumbling admission the inhabitants of the Keynesian puzzle palace—-into which the Eccles Building has long since morphed—–can’t see their way to much of anything. They couldn’t even decide if the risks to the outlook are balanced to the upside or downside. And that roundhouse kind of judgment isn’t even remotely measureable or exacting; it requires nothing more than a binary grunt.

As a practical matter, the joint has lapsed into a state of mental entropy——apparently under the risible assumption that they have abolished the business cycle and have limitless time to normalize. Yet we are already at month 81 of this so-called expansion, and the signs of approaching recession are cropping up daily.

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

Here Comes The Big Flush—–Recession Pending, Fed ‘Put’ Ending

March 16, 2016

Here Comes The Big Flush—–Recession Pending, Fed ‘Put’ Ending

Talk about sheep being led to the slaughter. The S&P 500 is up 11% from its February 11th intra-day low (1812) because Wall Street still has inventory to unload. That much is par for the course.

Yet the signs of an impending macroeconomic and profits implosion are now so overwhelming that it is truly remarkable that there are any bids left in the casino at all. This morning’s release of business sales for January, for example, showed another down month and that the inventory-to-sales ratio for the entire economy is now at 1.40X—–a ratio last recorded in May 2009.

As Zero Hedge so aptly put it:

“Look at this chart!”

Once upon a time, real economists, investors and traders knew that business sales, wages and profits are the heart of the matter. No longer. The self-referential sentiment surveys, financial conditions indices and bullish spin on Fed word clouds which animate today’s casino muffle the fundamentals almost entirely.

Yesterday on Bloomberg TV, for example, my downbeat view was challenged with a chart showing that Goldman’s financial conditions index had perked up during the last 5-weeks. Where, I was asked, is the recession?

How about the quarter century of history shown below? Business sales reported this morning were down by 5.1% from their July 2014 cyclical peak. Self-evidently, declines of that magnitude have occurred only twice since 1992, and both of them bear the shaded imprint of recession.

The chart also bears something else. Namely, real economic meat and potatoes. Even at their slumping January level, business sales came in at a $15.5 annual trillion rate. That’s something; it measures the entire churn of manufacturing, wholesale and retail sales from coast-to-coast

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

David Stockman: Thanks for the Corporate Bond Bubble, Fed

March 11, 2016

DAVID STOCKMAN: THANKS FOR THE CORPORATE BOND BUBBLE, FED

Once upon a time businesses borrowed long term money—-if they borrowed at all—-in order to fund plant, equipment and other long-lived productive assets. That kind of debt was self-liquidating in the sense that it usually generated a stream of income and cash flow that was sufficient to service and repay the debt, and to kick some earned surplus into the pot as well.

Today American businesses are borrowing like never before—-but the only thing being liquidated is there own equity capital. That’s because trillions of debt is being issued to fund financial engineering maneuvers such as stock buybacks, M&A and LBOs, not the acquisition of productive assets that can actually fuel future output and productivity.

So it amounts to a great financial shuffle conducted entirely within the canyons of Wall Street. Financial engineering deals invariably shrink the float of outstanding stock among the companies visiting underwriters. Likewise, they invariably leave with the mid-section of their balance sheets bloated with fixed obligations, while the bottom tier of shareholder equity has been strip-mined and hollowed out.

At the same time, none of this vast flow of capital leaves a trace on the actual operations—-such as production, marketing and payrolls—of the businesses involved. Instead, prodigious sums of debt capital are being sold to yield-hungry bond managers and homegamers via mutual funds and then recycled back into windfall gains for stock market gamblers who chase momo plays and the stock price rips that usually accompany M&A, LBO or stock buyback announcements.

Needless to say, central bank financial repression is responsible for this destructive transformation of capital market function.

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

The World Economy Wreckers Of Beijing

March 10, 2016

The World Economy Wreckers Of Beijing

The desperate suzerains of the Red Ponzi are incorrigible. There appears to be no insult to economic rationality that they will not attempt in order to perpetuate their power, privileges and rule.

So now comes the most preposterous gambit yet. Namely, a veritable tsunami of state handouts to foster, yes, capitalist entrepreneurs!

That’s right. As described by Bloomberg, Premier Li Keqiang gave the word, and, presto, nearly $340 billion poured into an instantly confected army of purported venture capital funds run by local government officialdom all over the land.

China is getting into the venture capital business in a big way. A really, really big way.

The country’s government-backed venture funds raised about 1.5 trillion yuan ($231 billion) in 2015, tripling the amount under management in a single year to 2.2 trillion yuan ($340 billion), according to data compiled by the consultancy Zero2IPO Group. That’s the biggest pot of money for startups in the world and almost five times the sum raised by other venture firms last year globally, according to London-based consultancy Preqin Ltd.

Really? These are the same folks who built themselves a 1.2 billion ton steel industry in less than two decades, representing double what they can actually use and far more capacity than the rest of the world combined. That freakish industrial eruption is now tumbling into a red hole of losses, decay, abandonment and waste, but never mind. Now the Beijing comrades are going to seed venture capitalists at 5X the rate of the entire planet?

It puts you in mind of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which endeavored to put a steel furnace in every Chinese farmer’s back yard. Of course, when they melted down their plows and hoes for scrap, the resulting leap was not exactly forward.

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

Why This Sucker Is Going Down——The Case Of Japan’s Busted Bond Market

March 9, 2016

Why This Sucker Is Going Down——The Case Of Japan’s Busted Bond Market

The world financial system is booby-trapped with unprecedented anomalies, deformations and contradictions. It’s not remotely stable or safe at any speed, and most certainly not at the rate at which today’s robo-machines and fast money traders pivot, whirl, reverse and retrace.

Indeed, every day there are new ructions in the casino that warn investors to get out of harm’s way with all deliberate speed. And last night’s eruption in the Japanese bond market was a doozy.

The government of what can only be described as an old age colony sinking into certain bankruptcy sold 30-year bonds at an all-time low of 47 basis points. Let me clear here that we are talking about a record low not just for Japan but for the history of mankind.

To be sure, loaning any government 30-year money at 47 basis points is inherently a foolhardy proposition, but its just plain bonkers when it comes to Japan.

Here is its 30-year fiscal record in nutshell. Not withstanding years of chronic red ink and its recent 2014 consumption tax increase from 5% to 8%, Japan is still heading straight for fiscal oblivion. Last year (2015) it spent just under 100 trillion yen, but took in hardly 50 trillion yen of revenue, stacking the difference on its already debilitating mountain of public debt, which has now reached 240% of GDP.

That’s right. A government which is borrowing nearly 50 cents on every dollar of outlays should be paying a huge risk premium to even access the bond market. But a government with a 240% debt-to-GDP ratio peering into a demographic sinkhole would be hard pressed to borrow at any price at all on an honest free market.

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

The Price Isn’t Right——-How Central Banks Are Fixing To Ambush The Casino

March 8, 2016

The Price Isn’t Right——-How Central Banks Are Fixing To Ambush The Casino

The casino is incorrigible. After a monumental short squeeze that has lifted the averages right into the jaws of danger, Goldman Sachs has the temerity to print the following:

“Our model suggests SPX calls are more attractive than at any time over the past 20 years”.

There must have been a mullets’ breeding frenzy awhile back because it’s hard to fathom how Goldman has any real customers left. Then again, its current preposterous call is just indicative of the horrible threat heading menacingly toward what remains of main street’s 401k investments.

To wit, the Fed and other central banks have thoroughly falsified financial market prices and destroyed all of the ordinary mechanisms of financial discipline. Foremost among these are short sellers and a meaningfully positive cost of carry trades.

Markets are therefore unhinged from any connection to fundamental economic and financial reality, meaning that they are capable of an extended period of spasmodic deadcat bounces that will have only one end result.

Namely, the naïve and desperate among main street investors who still, unaccountably, frequent the casino will presently be taken out back and shot yet another time. The market technicians are pleased to call this “distribution”. Would that someone on Wall Street man-up and amend the phrase to read ” distribution…….of losses to the mullets” and be done with the charade.

The S&P 500 is heading through 1300 from above long before it ever again penetrates from below its old May 2015 high of 2130. And now that 97% of Q4 results are in, there is a single number that proves the case.

Reported LTM profits as of year-end 2015 stood at just $86.46 per S&P 500 share. That particular number is a flat-out bull killer. At a plausible PE multiple of 15X, it does indeed imply 1300 on the S&P 500 index.

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

The G-20s Big Fat Zero——Now Comes The Bubble’s Demise!

March 2, 2016

The G-20s Big Fat Zero——Now Comes The Bubble’s Demise!

The tens of millions of taxpayer money wasted at the G-20’s Shanghai soirée had a silver lining. The assembled masters of world finance came up with a big fat zero on the coordinated global stimulus front.

So doing, they essentially admitted that their money printing central banks are out of dry powder (“…but monetary policy alone cannot lead to balanced growth”) and that they are divided and confused on the fiscal front.

Indeed, the best result of the weekend is that the gaggle of G-20 statists acquiesced to Germany’s absolute “nein” on the foolish notion that a world self-evidently drowning in debt can still borrow its way back to prosperity. With respect to that ragged Keynesian shibboleth, Germany’s intrepid finance minister left nothing to the imagination:

Germany had made it clear it was not keen on new stimulus, with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble saying on Friday the debt-financed growth model had reached its limits.

“It is even causing new problems, raising debt, causing bubbles and excessive risk taking, zombifying the economy,” he said…….“Fiscal as well as monetary policy has reached their limit.”

So this is not about a failed G-20 meeting; its about the end of a vast, long-running policy scam conducted by global officialdom and their central bankers. In a word, they did not save the world in 2008-2009 with the “courage” of extraordinary policies. They just temporarily buried the symptoms by resort to crank monetary theories and fiscal snake oil.

Indeed, every bit of the financial rot owing to the mutation of financial markets into debt-fueled gambling casinos and the vast economic deformations and malinvestments fostered by massive central bank financial repression prior to the 2008 financial crisis is still with us. Except it has subsequently metastasized into an even more egregious and incendiary form.

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

Here Comes The Red Swan And Other Reasons To Be Very Afraid

February 26, 2016

Here Comes The Red Swan And Other Reasons To Be Very Afraid

The Red Chip casino took another one of its patented 6.5% belly flops last night. In fact, more than 1,300 stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell by 10%—the maximum drop permitted by regulators in one day—–implying that the real decline was far deeper.

This renewed carnage was the worst since, well, the last 6% drop way back on January 29, and It means that the cumulative meltdown from last June’s high is pushing 45%. And all this red chip mayhem did not come at an especially propitious moment for the regime, as the Wall Street Journal explained:

It comes at an awkward moment for the Chinese government, which is hosting the world’s leading central bankers and finance ministers starting Friday. China has been expected to use the G-20 meeting to address global anxiety about its economy and financial markets. Worries about China’s economic slowdown and the volatility of its markets have weighed on investment decisions around the world.

But if we are remarking on “awkward”, here’s awkward. The G-20 central bankers, finance ministers and IMF apparatchiks descending on Shanghai should take an unfiltered, eyes-wide-open view of the Red Ponzi fracturing all about them, and then make a petrified mad dash back to their own respective capitals. There is nothing more for G-20 to talk about with respect to China except how to get out of harms’ way, fast.

China is a monumental doomsday machine that bears no more resemblance to anything that could be called stable, sustainable capitalism than did Lenin’s New Economic Policy of the early 1920s. The latter was followed by Stalin’s Gulag and it would be wise to learn the Chinese word for the same, and soon.

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

Financial Time Bombs Hiding In Plain Sight

February 23, 2016

Financial Time Bombs Hiding In Plain Sight

The bear will soon be arriving in earnest, marauding through the canyons of Wall Street while red in tooth and claw. Our monetary central planners, of course, will once again—for the third time this century——be utterly shocked and unprepared. That’s because they have spent the better part of two decades deforming, distorting, denuding and destroying what were once serviceably free financial markets. Yet they remain as clueless as ever about the financial time bombs this inexorably fosters.

The sum and substance of Keynesian central banking is the falsification of financial prices. In essence, this means pegging interest rates below market clearing levels on the theory that more borrowing and spending will thereby ensue.

To this traditional credit channel of monetary policy transmission has been added in recent years the notion of an FX channel, which works through currency depreciation and export stimulus; and the wealth effects channel, which seeks to levitate the paper wealth of the top 10% of households so that they will feel emboldened to spend more at luxury retail emporiums, BMW showrooms and upscale vacation spots.

Needless to say, currency trashing might work for a tiny export economy like New Zealand. But on a global scale among the big national economies, it’s just a recipe for a race to the bottom. Ultimately it leads to nothing more than the inflation of imported commodities and goods and the reallocation of income and wealth from domestic industries and households to exporters and their shareholders. Japan proves that in spades.

With respect to the false FX channel, even Black Rock’s chief big thinker, Peter Fisher, hit the nail on the head last week on Bloomberg:

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

David Stockman CNBC Interview: “I don’t Know What The Bulls Are Smoking”

February 22, 2016

David Stockman CNBC Interview: “I don’t Know What The Bulls Are Smoking”

Anyone who believes that the global economy isn’t crashing must be delirious, according to David Stockman.

The former director of the Office of Management and Budget argues that a rapidly deteriorating economic environment is going to send stocks and oil prices spiraling even lower than they already have.

“I think your traders are smoking something stronger than what I can legally buy here in Colorado,” Stockman said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”

The S&P 500 has fallen 6 percent year to date, and crude oil has plunged more than 17 percent. However, Stockman still sees a long way to go. He expects the S&P 500 to drop to 1,300 before making any new highs, and sees oil falling below $20.

Investors have been too optimistic about the U.S. economy because they are not factoring in global risk, said Stockman, who expects to see a recession by the end of the year.

“Everywhere trade is drying up, shipping rates are at all-time lows,” he said. “There is a recession that’s going to engulf the entire world economy, including the United States.”

Contributing to the turmoil is the ineptitude of central banks, he said. While Stockman doesn’t expect the Federal Reserve to adopt a negative interest rate policy, he said monetary policymakers have exhausted all other options.

“They should have the good graces to resign. They are lost. None of this is helping the economy,” he said.

Add in the 2016 presidential election, and Stockman said the markets will find themselves in a situation similar to that of the global financial crisis.

“The out-of-control election process will feed into and create an environment that we haven’t seen since the fall of 2008,” he said.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Stockman has been bearish. For years, he has been predicting a crash worse than 2008.

Silver Linings: Keynesian Central Banking Is Heading For A Massive Repudiation

February 20, 2016

Silver Linings: Keynesian Central Banking Is Heading For A Massive Repudiation

For several years now the small coterie of Keynesian academics and apparatchiks who have seized nearly absolute financial power through the Fed’s printing presses have justified the lunacy of unending ZIRP and massive QE on the grounds that there is too little inflation. The bureaucrats at the IMF even invented a lame-brained catch-phrase, calling the purported scourge of money which retains most of its value “lowflation”.

This whole consumer inflation targeting gambit, of course, is an inherently preposterous notion because there is not a scrap of evidence that 2% consumer inflation is better for rising living standards and societal wealth gains than is 0.2%. And there is much history and economic logic that points in exactly the opposite direction.

Between 1870 and 1913 in the United States, for example, real national income grew at 3.5% per year——the highest gain for any 43 year period in history. Yet the average inflation rate during that long period of capitalist prosperity was less than 0.0%. That was real “lowflation”, and it was a blessing for the average worker, not a scourge.

But this week the BLS itself let out a screaming, never mind! The core CPI for the 12 months ended in January rose by 2.21% and that’s actually a tad higher than the 1.98% annual average since the year 2000.

Please forgive the spurious accuracy of reporting the BLS’ noise-ridden, dubiously constructed CPI to the second decimal point, but it’s meant to underscore a crucial truth. Namely, there ain’t no inflation deficiency problem and never has been!

The whole 2% inflation mantra is just a smokescreen to justify the massive daily intrusion in financial markets by a power-obsessed claque of monetary central planners. They just made it up and then rode it to ever increasing dominance over the financial system—-even though as recently as 15 years ago the 2% inflation theory was unknown outside a small circle of neo-Keynesian academic scribblers led by Ben Bernanke.

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

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