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We Are All Lab Rats In The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

August 18, 2018

We Are All Lab Rats In The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

And how do things usually work out for the rat?

There are ample warning signs that another serious financial crisis is on the way.

These warning signs are being soundly ignored by the majority, though. Perhaps understandably so.

After 10 years of near-constant central bank interventions to prop up markets and make stocks, bonds and real estate rise in price — while also simultaneously hammering commodities to mask the inflationary impact of their money printing from the masses — it’s difficult to imagine that “they” will allow markets to ever fall again.

This is known as the “central bank put”: whenever the markets begin to teeter, the central banks will step in to prop/nudge/cajole the markets back towards the “correct” direction, which is always: Up!

It’s easy in retrospect to see how the central banks have become caught in this trap of their own making, where they’re now responsible for supporting all the markets all the time.

The 2008 crisis really spooked them. Hence their massive money printing spree to “rescue” the system.

But instead of admitting that Great Financial Crisis was the logical result of flawed policies implemented after the 2000 Dot-Com crash (which, in turn, was the result of flawed policies pursued in the 1990’s), the central banks decided after 2008 to double down on their bets — implementing even worse policies.

The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

It’s not hyperbole to say that the monetary experiment conducted over the past ten years by the world’s leading central banks (and its resulting social and political ramifications) is the largest-ever in human history:

(Source)

This global flood of freshly-printed ‘thin air’ money has no parallel in the historical records. All around the world, each of us is part of a grand experiment being conducted without the benefits of either prior experience or controls. Its outcome will be binary: either super-great or spectacularly awful.

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

Ronald Stoeferle: Gold Is Dirt Cheap Right Now

June 13, 2018

Ronald Stoeferle: Gold Is Dirt Cheap Right Now

And a new bull market for the metal is beginning

Fresh from releasing his exhaustive 230-page annual report titled In Gold We Trust, Ronald Stoerferle joins us to summarize his forecast for the yellow metal.

Stoerferle, an author of several books on Austrian economics and head of strategy and portfolio management at Incrementum AG, concludes that gold is extremely cheap right now in dollar terms. And he sees a new bull market beginning for the precious metal — one likely to quickly build momentum as the next (and long overdue) financial market correction arrives.

We’re at the beginning of a new stage of a bull market.

We’ve seen a massive correction with a big drawdown, but we’re now seeing the Commitment of Traders report suggesting that there’s been a washout. We’re seeing that sentiment is really negative. We’re seeing that nobody really cares about gold and mining stocks, and especially about silver. Silver is probably the biggest contrarian investment, though silver mining stocks are probably even more contrarian at the moment.

We all know that the herd behavior in the sector is getting more extreme. I think it has got to do with career risk in the financial industry, so nobody really wants to make a contrarian call. But once we go above this $1,360-$1,380 resistance, which is also the neckline of a large inverse head & shoulder formation, I think gold will hit $1,500, $1,600 pretty quickly.

The most important thing is: in comparison to all the monetary printing that we’ve seen in the last couple of years, gold got significantly cheaper. Gold, in monetary terms, is dirt cheap at the moment. We’re basically at the same levels like in 1971 when it comes to the gold backing of the US dollar. So gold is a bargain at this level.

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

Financial Markets Definitely Destabilizing – Charles Hugh Smith

February 18, 2018

Financial writer and book author Charles Hugh Smith has been watching the extreme movements in financial markets closely. Is he nervous? Smith says, “Oh yeah, it’s definitely destabilizing. In other words, it’s becoming not just more volatile, the whole underlying structure of our economy is destabilizing. What I mean by that is it’s becoming more brittle or fragile. That is fundamentally why we are seeing these wild swings. People are swinging between . . . keeping the money machine like it is for another nine years, and the other side of the coin says wait a minute, we have already had a weak expansion for nine years. It’s almost the longest expansion in U.S. history. A normal business cycle doesn’t run in one direction forever. . . .If you don’t allow your economy to have a business cycle recession, then you are simply making it more fragile by encouraging really marginal and risky investments, and that’s where we are now.”

One very big problem is a dramatic loss in buying power of the U.S. dollar, but it’s not just the dollar. According to Smith, “All these currencies, there is nothing backing the currencies except the government’s force. That’s the yen, the euro, the dollar and the Chinese yuan. They are all going to have a catastrophic drop against real assets because they are all based on too much leverage, too much debt, too much money being pumped into the financial system that ends up in unproductive speculation. You can’t grow your debt at six times the rate of your economy. In other words, if you are creating $6, $8 or $10 of debt to eke out $1 of low productivity growth, you are dooming your currency, and all currencies are doing the same thing. All the currencies are going to take a big drop at some point . . . relative to real stuff. Real stuff is commodities we need: water, grains, food, oil, natural gas and, of course, precious metals. Everybody knows they have been money for 5,000 years, and I personally feel there is a role for crypto currencies.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Charles Hugh Smith, author of the new book “Money and Work Unchained” and the founder of the popular site OfTwoMinds.com.

Just Because the Hedge Fund Wise Guys Have Forgotten

September 29, 2017

JUST BECAUSE THE HEDGE FUND WISE GUYS HAVE FORGOTTEN

Today’s post will be about Japanese yen vol, but I am sure to bore some readers with that topic, so I am starting with something a little more interesting. As many of you know, I am a little bit of a bitcoin skeptic. At the end of the day, I have trouble investing in the ledger in the sky.

Call me old-fashioned, call me a troglodyte, call me a bitter gold bug, call me whatever you want, I just can’t bring myself to get long bits in the cloud. And before you send me messages how I don’t understand it, don’t forget I was mining bitcoin before most of Wall Street had ever heard of it. So I am much more than just some trade-a-saurus that refuses to get with the times, I am the knob who passed on bitcoin at $5.

Yet I have the privilege of counting Tony Greer from TG Macro as one of my pals, and his enthusiasm about using crypto currencies for micro-payments has piqued my interest. From Tony’s great letter the other day:

For selfish reasons, this is the article that gets me most excited about bitcoin and the blockchain. The streamlining of media distribution is going to kick the door open for individuals to compete with publishing powerhouses and main stream periodicals.

Publishing content on Amazon, iTunes, even YouTube is extremely costly for the author/artist. Youtubers can’t earn money until they get 10,000 views. Apple and Amazon take between 30% and 75% for the right to their distribution networks. Since media consumption has gone digital, it’s been difficult to charge on a PER ARTICLE basis because of high transaction costs making it prohibitively expensive. All that’s about to change.

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

Deflation Is Blowing In On An Eastern Trade Wind

July 3, 2016

Deflation Is Blowing In On An Eastern Trade Wind

Jack Delano “Lower Manhattan seen from the S.S. Coamo leaving New York.” 1941

Brexit is nowhere near the biggest challenge to western economies. And not just because it has devolved into a two-bit theater piece. Though we should not forget the value of that development: it lays bare the real Albion and the power hunger of its supposed leaders. From xenophobia and racism on the streets, to back-stabbing in dimly lit smoky backrooms, there’s not a states(wo)man in sight, and none will be forthcoming. Only sell-outs need apply.

The only person with an ounce of integrity left is Jeremy Corbyn, but his Labour party is dead, which is why he must fight off an entire horde of zombies. Unless Corbyn leaves labour and starts Podemos UK, he’s gone too. The current infighting on both the left and right means there is a unique window for something new, but Brits love what they think are their traditions, plus Corbyn has been Labour all his life, and he just won’t see it.

The main threat inside the EU isn’t Brexit either. It’s Italy. Whose banks sit on over 30% of all eurozone non-performing loans, while its GDP is about 10% of EU GDP. How they would defend it I don’t know, they’re probably counting on not having to, but Juncker and Tusk’s European Commission has apparently approved a scheme worth €150 billion that will allow these banks to issue quasi-sovereign bonds when they come under attack. An attack that is now even more guaranteed to occcur than before.

Still, none of Europe’s internal affairs have anything on what’s coming in from the east. Reading between the lines of Japan’s Tankan survey numbers there is only one possible conclusion: the ongoing and ever more costly utter failure of Abenomics continues unabated.

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

Going… Going… Gone! The EU Begins to Splinter

June 25, 2016

Going… Going… Gone! The EU Begins to Splinter

Dark Social Mood Tsunami Washes Ashore

Early this morning one might have been forgiven for thinking that Japan had probably just been hit by another tsunami. The Nikkei was down 1,300 points, the yen briefly soared above par. Gold had intermittently gained 100 smackers – if memory serves, the biggest nominal intra-day gain ever recorded (with the possible exception of one or two days in early 1980). Here is a picture of Haruhiko Kuroda in front of his Bloomberg monitor this morning:

kuroda head This can’t be happening… please… let me wake up and realize that it was all just a bad dream…

Photo credit: Reuters

The War Street Journal immediately exhorted the poor man to “go big or go home” – in an article brimming with the usual Keynesian central planning clap-trap (we need more inflation, a strong currency is “bad”, rev up the printing presses, yada-yada…)

Touching less than 99 yen to the dollar, this brings Japan’s currency back to where it started just as Abenomics was ramping up in 2013. With interest rates already negative, a weak currency is one of the few tools Japan has at its disposal. A strong currency will be devastating for efforts to engineer inflation. Japan will need to prepare a response.

[…]

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda will be under pressure to go deeper on negative rates, even though doing so in the first place, in January, has seen the yen strengthen, not weaken.

[ed. note: yes, do more of what hasn’t worked! This is also straight from the Keynesian playbook…]

[…]

If negative rates aren’t the answer, what is? Increasing asset purchases of bonds and exchange-traded funds are an option, but there is limited room to expand those programs and the effect, only marginal at this point. Mr. Kuroda has been dismissive of more aggressive helicopter money-like moves that toe into fiscal policy.

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

Former IMF Chief Economist Admits Japan’s “Endgame” Scenario Is Now In Play

April 11, 2016

Former IMF Chief Economist Admits Japan’s “Endgame” Scenario Is Now In Play

Back in October 2014, just after the BOJ drastically expanded its QE operation, we warned that the biggest risk facing the BOJ (and the ECB, and the Fed, and all other central banks actively soaking up securities from the open market) was a lack of monetizable supply. We cited Takuji Okubo, chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors in Tokyo, who said that at the scale of its current debt monetization, the BOJ could end up owning half of the JGB market by as early as in 2018. He added that “The BOJ is basically declaring that Japan will need to fix its long-term problems by 2018, or risk becoming a failed nation.”

Which is why 17 months ago we predicted that, contrary to expectations of even more QE from Kuroda, we said “the BOJ will not boost QE, and if anything will have no choice but to start tapering it down – just like the Fed did when its interventions created the current illiquidity in the US govt market – especially since liquidity in the Japanese government market is now non-existent and getting worse by the day.”

As part of our conclusion, we said we do not “expect the media to grasp the profound implications of this analysis not only for the BOJ but for all other central banks: we expect this to be summer of 2016’s business.”

Since then, the forecast has panned out largely as expected: both the ECB and BOJ, finding themselves collateral constrained, were forced to expand into other, even more unconventional methods of easing, whether it be NIRP in the case of the BOJ, or the outright purchases of corporate bonds as the ECB did a month ago.

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

Krugman Goes To Japan, Scolds Abe For Worrying About Quadrillion Yen Debt Pile, Leaves

March 26, 2016

Krugman Goes To Japan, Scolds Abe For Worrying About Quadrillion Yen Debt Pile, Leaves

Much like BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda, Paul Krugman thinks that the key for Japan when it comes to overcoming decades of deflation is a positive outlook.

“Japan needs to reach a point where everyone believes that it has pulled out of deflation. And then if that can be believed, then it may be able to stay out of trouble thereafter,” he told an audience in Tokyo last September.

That rather ridiculous pronouncement is reminiscent of something Kuroda said last summer: “I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, ‘the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.’ Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction.”

In other words, Krugman and Kuroda believe that Japan can wish its way out of deflation. Krugman’s comments in Tokyo came around 10 months after he visited Japan in 2014. On that trip, he’s said to have helped convince PM Shinzo Abe to delay a planned sales tax hike. “That nailed Abe’s decision — Krugman was Krugman, he was so powerful,” Japanese economist Etsuro Honda said, recounting a meeting between the economist and the premier.

Well, 16 months has passed since that fateful visit and virtually nothing has changed in Japan. In fact, the Japanese have since taken a further plunge down the Keynesian rabbit hole by taking interest rates negative and not only is inflation still languishing at essentially zero, stocks are some 20% off their highs and this month the yen actually hit its highest levels since Kuroda announced the second round of QE two Octobers ago.

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

Japan Goes Full Krugman: Plans Un-Depositable, Non-Cash “Gift-Certificate” Money Drop To Young People

March 23, 2016

Japan Goes Full Krugman: Plans Un-Depositable, Non-Cash “Gift-Certificate” Money Drop To Young People

The Swiss, the Finns, and the Ontarians may get their ‘Universal Basic Income’ but the Japanese are about to turn the Spinal Tap amplifier of extreme monetary experimentation to 11. Sankei reports, with no sourcing, that the Japanese government plans to unleash “vouchers” or “gift certificates” to low-income young people to stimulate the “conspicuous decline” in consumption among young people. The handouts may not be deposited, thus combining helicopter money (inflationary) and fully electronic currency (implicit capital controls and tracking of spending).

Since Ben Bernanke reminded the world of the existence of government printing-presses, echoed Milton Friedman’s “helicopter drop” solution to fighting deflation, and decried Japan for not being as insane as it could be… it has only been a matter of time before some global central bank decided that the dropping of cash onto the populace was the key to economic recovery. Having blown their wad on QQE (and been left with a quintuple-dip recession) and unleashed NIRP, it appears Japan has reached that limit.

As Bloomberg reports,

The Japanese government plans to include gift certificates for low-income young people in its fiscal 2016 supplementary budget, Sankei reports, without saying who provided the information.

Recipients would be able to use them for daily necessities.

The government sees gift certificates as more effective in stimulating consumption than cash handouts, which may be deposited.

As Sankei reports (via Google Translate),

The government 23 days, as the centerpiece of the 2016 fiscal year supplementary budget to organize because of the economic stimulus, cemented the policy to include the low-income measures for young people. To examine the distribution of vouchers to be devoted to the purchase of such daily necessities.

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

Kuroda’s NIRP Backlash – Japanese Interbank Lending Crashes

February 28, 2016

Kuroda’s NIRP Backlash – Japanese Interbank Lending Crashes

Not only has the Yen strengthened and stocks collapsed since BoJ’s Kuroda descended into NIRP lunacy but, in a dramatic shift that threatens the entire transmission mechanism of negative-rate stimulus, Japanese banks (whether fearing counterparty risk or already over-burdened) have almost entirely stopped lending to one another. Confusion reigns everywhere in Japanese markets with short-term interest-rate swap spreads surging and bond market volatility spiking to 3 year highs (dragging gold with it).

As Bloomberg reports,

The outstanding balance of the interbank activity plunged 79 percent to a record low of 4.51 trillion yen ($40 billion) on Feb. 25 since Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Jan. 29 announced plans to charge interest on some lenders’ reserves at the monetary authority.

While Kuroda wants to lower the starting point of the yield curve to reduce borrowing costs and spur shift of funds into riskier assets, the interbank rate has fallen only about as far as minus 0.01 percent, above the minus 0.1 percent charged on some BOJ reserves. The swings on bond yields will make it harder for financial institutions to determine how much business risks they can take, weighing on lending in a weak economy even as they are penalized for keeping some of their money at the central bank.

It will take at least another month until the market finds a level where many dealings are settled, as financial institutions face uncertainty over how the new policy affects monthly fund flows, said Izuru Kato, the president of Totan Research Co. in Tokyo.

“Since past patterns don’t apply under the entirely new structure, financial institutions will take a conservative approach until the financing picture is nailed down,” Kato said. “If the funding estimate proves wrong, banks might lose by prematurely lending in negative rates. People are cautious and staying on the sidelines.”

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

HSBC Looks At “Life Below Zero,” Says “Helicopter Money” May Be The Only Savior

February 27, 2016

HSBC Looks At “Life Below Zero,” Says “Helicopter Money” May Be The Only Savior

In many ways, 2016 has been the year that the world woke up to how far down Krugman’s rabbit hole (trademark) DM central bankers have plunged in a largely futile effort to resuscitate global growth.

For whatever reason, Haruhiko Kuroda’s move into NIRP seemed to spark a heretofore unseen level of public debate about the drawbacks of negative rates. Indeed, NIRP became so prevalent in the public consciousness that celebrities began to discuss central bank policy on Twitter.

When we say “for whatever reason” we don’t mean that the public shouldn’t be concerned about NIRP. In fact, we mean the exact opposite. The ECB, the Nationalbank, the SNB, and the Riksbank have all been mired in ineffectual NIRP for quite sometime and the public seemed almost completely oblivious. Indeed, even the financial media treated this lunacy as though it were some kind of cute Keynesian experiment that could be safely confined to Europe which would serve as a testing ground for whether policies that fly in the face of the financial market equivalent of Newtonian physics could be implemented without the world suddenly imploding.

We imagine the fact that equity markets got off to such a volatile start to the year, combined with the fact that crude continued to plunge and at one point looked as though it might sink into the teens, led quite a few people to look towards the monetary Mount Olympus (where “gods” like Draghi, Yellen, and Kuroda intervene in human affairs when necessary to secure “desirable” economic outcomes) only to discover that not only has all the counter-cyclical maneuverability been exhausted, we’ve actually moved beyond the point where the ammo is gone into a realm where the negative rate mortgage is a reality.

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

G-20 Needs To “Man Up” Or Risk Sparking Market Chaos, Citi Warns

February 26, 2016

G-20 Needs To “Man Up” Or Risk Sparking Market Chaos, Citi Warns

Two days ago, the man who now signs your Federal Reserve notes threw cold water on hopes for a so-called “Shanghai Accord.”

Over the past month or so, anticipation has built among market participants for some manner of coordinated policy response at this weekend’s G20 summit in Shanghai. The hoped for agreement would ideally be something akin to the 1985 Plaza Accord between the United States, France, West Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, which agreed to weaken the USD to shore up America’s trade deficit and boost economic growth.

Calls for coordinated action come on the heels of a turbulent January in which collapsing crude, RMB jitters, and worries that central banks are out of bullets have sowed fear in the minds of investors. “We remain sellers into strength in coming weeks/months of risk assets at least until a coordinated and aggressive global policy response (e.g. Shanghai Accord) begins to reverse the deterioration in global profit expectations and credit conditions,” BofA said last week, ahead of the summit.

“Don’t expect a crisis response in a non-crisis environment,” Lew said in an interview broadcast Wednesday with David Westin of Bloomberg Television. “This is a moment where you’ve got real economies doing better than markets think in some cases.”

Whether or not you agree with Lew’s assessment of “real economies” or not, the message was clear. The US isn’t set to support some kind of joint statement on fiscal stimulus and may not even be willing to be part of a consensus on the need to implement emergency measures to juice global growth and trade.

On Friday, the soundbites are rolling in as the world’s financial heavyweights opine on the state of the decelerating global economy and the turmoil that likely lies ahead for markets.

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

Satyajit Das: This Is Why You Can Expect Another Global Stock Market Meltdown

February 26, 2016

Satyajit Das: This Is Why You Can Expect Another Global Stock Market Meltdown

Authored by Satyajit Das’, author of the new book “The Age Of Stagnation” (via MarketWatch),

The mispricing of assets across world markets has reached epidemic proportions.

Stock prices have made strong advances over the past several years, yet market analysts see further gains, arguing that the selloffs of August 2015 and early 2016 represent a healthy correction.

But this rise in stock values has been underpinned by financial engineering and liquidity — setting the stage for a global financial crisis rivaling 2008 and early 2009.

The conditions for a crisis are now firmly established:overvaluation of financial assets; significant leverage; persistent low-growth and deflation; excessive risk taking reliant on central banks for liquidity, and the suppression of volatility.

Steve Blumenthal, CEO of CMG Capital Management Group, tells Barron’s funds writer Chris Dieterich that his firm has been clinging to ultra-safe bonds and utility stocks during the market storm.

For example, U.S. stock buybacks have reached 2007 levels and are running at around $500 billion annually. When dividends are included, companies are returning around $1 trillion annually to shareholders, close to 90% of earnings. Additional factors affecting share prices are mergers and acquisitions activity and also activist hedge funds, which have forced returns of capital or corporate restructures.

The major driver of stock prices is liquidity, in the form of zero interest rates and quantitative easing.

To be sure, stronger earnings have supported stocks. But on average, 70% to 80% of the improvement has come from cost-cutting, not revenue growth. Since mid-2014, corporate profit margins have stagnated and may even be declining.

A key factor is currency volatility. The strong U.S. dollar is pressuring American corporate earnings. A 10% rise in the value of the dollar equates to a 4%-5% percent decline in earnings. Rallies in European and Japanese stocks have been driven, in part, by the fall in the value of the euro and yen respectively.

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

Why Did Japanese NIRP Cause Such Surprise In the Currency Market and Is It More Dangerous?

February 18, 2016

WHY DID JAPANESE NIRP CAUSE SUCH SURPRISE IN THE CURRENCY MARKET AND IS IT MORE DANGEROUS?

The Bank of Japan announcement of NIRP sent shock waves through currency markets
The Yen has strengthened on capital repatriation since the BoJ move
JGB 10 year yields turned negative this week
Longer-term the Yen will weaken

At the end of January the Bank of Japan (BoJ) shocked the financial markets by announcing that they would allow Japanese interest rates to become negative for the first time. USDJYP reacted with an abrupt rise from 118 to 121 which was completely reversed a global stock markets declined USDJYP is currently at 112.06 (11-02-2016). The three year chart below shows the extent of the move:-

USDJPY_-_3yr

Source: Big Charts

Here is an extract from the BOJ Announcement:-

The Introduction of “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) with a Negative Interest Rate”

The Bank will apply a negative interest rate of minus 0.1 percent to current accounts that financial institutions hold at the Bank. It will cut the interest rate further into negative territory if judged as necessary.

The Bank will introduce a multiple-tier system which some central banks in Europe (e.g. the Swiss National Bank) have put in place. Specifically, it will adopt a three-tier system in which the outstanding balance of each financial institution’s current account at the Bank will be divided into three tiers, to each of which a positive interest rate, a zero interest rate, or a negative interest rate will be applied, respectively.

“QQE with a Negative Interest Rate” is designed to enable the Bank to pursue additional monetary easing in terms of three dimensions, combining a negative interest rate with quantity and quality.

The Bank will lower the short end of the yield curve and will exert further downward pressure on interest rates across the entire yield curve through a combination of a negative interest rate and large-scale purchases of JGBs.

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

Japanese Trade Data Collapses, Crushes “Devalue Our Way To Prosperity” Dreams

February 17, 2016

Japanese Trade Data Collapses, Crushes “Devalue Our Way To Prosperity” Dreams

Seriously – how many more times can a central bankers’ policies be exposed for the total sham that they are?

Japanese trade data was just unleashed on the world… and it is abysmal.

*JAPAN JAN. EXPORTS FALL 12.9% Y/Y

Notably worse than the expected 10.9% drop and the biggest YoY plunge since October 2009.

Proving once and for all that the devaluation of the JPY did less-than-nothing to improve Japan’s competitiveness…

And then there is Imports – reflecting the “modest” improvement in the domestic economy…

*JAPAN JAN. IMPORTS FALL 18.0% Y/Y

Nope – complete carnage!! The biggest YoY drop since october 2009…

Is it any wonder Abe says no more stimulus and Kuroda did not unleash anymore QE – they know it’s over and now it’s desperation.

We leave it to Alhambra’s Jeff Snider to sum up… Japan is the very definition of insanity…

GDP fell 1.4% in Q4 2015, marking the fifth contraction out of the past nine quarters and yet the word “stimulus” remains attached to QQE, the Bank of Japan and Abenomics in general. At this point, how much more time and sample size is necessary before calling it a failure? In about six weeks, Kuroda’s massive “stimulus” will mark its third anniversary and the best that can be said of it is that GDP has gone nowhere. Two and three quarters years later, real GDP (SAAR) in the last three months of 2015 was the slightest bit higher than Q2 2013 when everyone was so sure “stimulus” was all so sure.

ABOOK Feb 2016 Japan GDP Real SAAR

The media provides all the evidence necessary as to why everything is so “unexpected.”

The data suggest Japan’s economy is still plagued by the weakness of domestic demand as it enters a fourth year of record monetary stimulus, with wages not rising fast enough to persuade consumers to spend.

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

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