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A Modest Plan
Rembrandt van Rijn The Storm on the Sea of Galilee 1633
On March 18, 1990, the painting was stolen by thieves disguised as police officers. They broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, MA, and stole this painting, along with 12 other works. The paintings have never been recovered, and it is considered the biggest art theft in history. The empty frames still hang in their original location.
It shouldn’t surprise you that bitcoin plays a cameo in his Modest -but actually quite grand- Plan as well.
But hold on: you have to remember, they’re politicians; they may be dishonest but they’re not stupid. Let’s try a scenario to see what they’re thinking:
We have a situation in the U.S. where 100 million people are out of the workforce, the real economy is on life-support, debt is crushing, and monetary velocity is at an all-time low. The Fed’s every effort at market-rigging, lowering rates and pumping in money, bailing out the banks and giving unearned interest for Fed deposits have run up both the housing market and the stock market, neither of which is their legal mandate. If either one goes higher, they’ll pop as workers, particularly millennials, have no income to buy houses, and stocks are levitating on just 5 insider-paid FAANG stocks.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Precipice
The Precipice
Global markets have found themselves again at the precipice. My sense is that everyone’s numb – literally dazed and confused from prolonged Monetary Disorder and the resulting perverted market backdrop. Repeatedly, “The Precipice” has signaled easy-money buying and trading opportunities. Again and again, selling, shorting and hedging at “The Precipice” guaranteed you were to soon look (and feel) like an absolute moron – for some, progressively poorer dunces the Bubble was pushing yet another step closer to serious dilemmas (financial, professional, personal and otherwise). A focus on risk became irrational. Fixation on seeking potential market rewards turned all-encompassing.
All of this will prove a challenge to explain to future generations. Keynes: “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” And paraphrasing the great Charles Kindleberger: Nothing causes as much angst as to see your neighbor (associate or competitor) get rich. In short, Bubbles are all powerful.
Going back to those darks days in late-2008, global policymakers have been determined to not let the markets down. Along the way they made things too easy. “Do whatever it takes!” “Shock and Awe!” “Ready to push back against a market tightening of financial conditions.” “Do what we must to raise inflation as quickly as possible.” Historic market excess and distortions were incentivized and, predictably, things ran amuck. “QE infinity.” Seven years of zero rates, massive monetary inflation and incessant market backstopping have desensitized and anesthetized. Rational thought ultimately succumbed to “perpetual money machine” quackery. And now all of this greatly increases vulnerability to destabilizing market dislocations, as senses are restored and nerves awakened.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
What Deflation Quacks Like
What Deflation Quacks Like
As yet another day of headlines shows, see the links and details in today’s Debt Rattle at the Automatic Earth, deflation is visible everywhere, from a 98% drop in EM debt issuance to junk bonds reporting the first loss since 2008 to corporate bonds downgrades to plummeting cattle prices in Kansas to China’s falling demand for iron ore and a whole list of other commodities.
The list is endless. It is absolutely everywhere. And it’s there every single day. But how would we know? After all, we’re being told incessantly that deflation equals falling consumer prices. And since these don’t fall -yet-, other than at the pump (something people seem to think is some freak accident), every Tom and Dick and Harry concludes there is no deflation.
But if you wait for consumer prices to fall to recognize deflationary forces, you’ll be way behind the curve. Always. Consumer prices won’t drop until we’re -very- well into deflation, and they will do so only at the moment when nary a soul can afford them anymore even at their new low levels.
The money supply, however it’s measured, may be soaring (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes the point every other day), but that makes no difference when spending falls as much as it does. And it does. The whole shebang is maxed out. And the whole caboodle is maxed out too. All of it except for central banks and other money printers.
Everyone has so much debt that spending can only come from borrowing more. Until it can’t. We read comments that tell us the global markets are reaching the end of the ‘credit cycle’, but can the insanity that has ‘saved’ the economy over the past 7 years truly be seen as a ‘cycle’, or is it perhaps instead just pure insanity? There’s never been so much debt on the planet, so unless we’re starting a whole new kind of cycle, not much about it looks cyclical.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Death Of The Petrodollar Was Finally Noticed
The Death Of The Petrodollar Was Finally Noticed
Three months ago, we wrote “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed“, in which we explained in painful detail why far from the simple macroeconomic dogma which immediately prompted the macro tourists to scream that “oil prices dropping are good for US consumers“, the collapse in the price of crude is not only a disaster for oil exporting nations – one which will lead to a series of violent “Arab Springs” across the oil-producing developed world – but far more importantly, have a massive impact on capital markets as a result of the plunge in the most financialized commodity in history.
On the death of the Petrodollar we commented that unlike previously, when petrodollar recycling funneled the proceeds from oil-exports into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, henceforth “oil producers will effectively import capital amounting to $7.6 billion.” We added that “oil exporters are now pulling liquidity out of financial markets rather than putting money in. That could result in higher borrowing costs for governments, companies, and ultimately, consumers as money becomes scarcer.”
The conclusion was simple: “net capital flows will be negative for EM, representing the first net inflow of capital (USD8bn) for the first time in eighteen years. This compares with USD60bn last year, which itself was down from USD248bn in 2012. At its peak, recycled EM petro dollars amounted to USD511bn back in 2006. The declines seen since 2006 not only reflect the changed global environment, but also the propensity of underlying exporters to begin investing the money domestically rather than save. The implications for financial markets liquidity – not to mention related downward pressure on US Treasury yields – is negative.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
