Tag Archives: QE

A Debt-Riddled System That Is Hitting The Wall

Financial Markets, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, U.S. Economy, ,

An elevated level of corporate debt, along with the high level of U.S. government debt, is likely to mean that the U.S. economy is much more interest rate sensitive than it has been historically. – Robert Kaplan, President of the Dallas Fed

Fed officials always understate risks embedded in the system. Translated, the statement above implies the Fed is worried about the amount of debt accumulated in the U.S. economic system over the last 8 years. Kaplan specifically referenced the $6.2 trillion in corporate debt outstanding as a reason for the Fed to stop raising the Fed funds rate. Non-financial corporate debt as a percentage of GDP is now at a record high:

More eye-raising for me was the warning issued by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements – the global Central Bank for central banks). The BIS warned that the surging supply of corporate debt, specifically the amount of BBB-rated debt, has left the credit market vulnerable to a crash once the economic weakness triggers ratings downgrades. A large scale ratings downgrade of triple-B issuers to junk would cause an avalanche of selling from funds which can’t hold non-investment grade debt. This has the potential to seize-up the credit markets.

The BIS would not issue a warning like this unless it was already seeing troubling developments in the numbers to which it has access. Recall that leveraged loan ETFs plunged in value the last two months of 2018. Same with high yield bond ETFs, though the drop in leveraged bank loans was more troubling given their status as senior secured and ahead of junk bonds in the legal pecking order.

As you can see from the chart below, it looks like the value of senior leveraged bank loans may be headed south again:

Just like the stock market, fixed income prices rallied sharply after the Fed and the Trump Government acted to arrest the sell-off in the stock market in late December. But this was always a short-term “fix,” as economic fundamentals continued to deteriorate, perhaps at a hastened pace because of the Government shutdown. But neither the shut-down nor the trade war are the causes of the collapsing global economy.

More evidence the consumer is tapped out – Deutsche Bank wrote a report detailing signs that the average U.S. household is running up against its willingness and ability to assume more debt and monthly interest expense. I have been suggesting this was the case for a few months in SSJ. One indicator I thought was interesting is a chart showing that the average hours worked in sectors selling “big ticket” items is now declining (home furnishings, travel arrangement and reservation services and used car dealers).

Another chart showed that, based on regional Fed surveys of senior loan officers at banks, demand for credit cards, auto loans and personal loans is declining:

One of the reasons for the drop in loans is simply that the average consumer simply can not afford the monthly cost of taking on additional debt, especially higher-cost credit card and auto debtl. Just as significant is the fact that interest rates on these types of loans are rising quickly – i.e. the average credit card interest rate is now 17% vs 14% a year ago. Deutsche Bank omits to explain why the interest rate on these types of loans is rising much faster than the Fed funds.

The interest rate charged on a loan reflects the “risk free” rate (Fed funds), the time value of money and – most important – the inherent risk associated with specific types of loans. Interest rates on credit cards and auto loans are rising to reflect the increased risk attached to these forms of credit – i.e. the rising delinquency and default rates.

Besides the rising cost of necessities, the average household is getting squeezed from higher interest payments on the record amount of household debt that has accumulated over the last 10 years. The chart below shows the year-over-year growth in household interest payments going back the 1960’s:

The aggregate household interest payment has soared at a 15% Y/Y rate. Interest payments as a share of total household spending have jumped to the highest level since the financial crisis. Virtually every prior time when interest payments spiked this much, a recession promptly followed.

Last but not least, as Treasury debt hits a new record every day, it was reported by the Treasury that the U.S. budget surplus in January, traditionally one of the only months of the year with a spending surplus because of tax receipt timing, was only $9 billion. This missed the consensus estimate of $25 billion and was far below the January 2018 surplus of $49 million. For the first 4 months of the Government’s fiscal year, the budget deficit was $310 billion, 77% higher than the $175.7 billion deficit for the same period last year.

The budget deficit will surely be much higher than the $1.2 trillion annualized rate recorded in the first four months of this FY. Federal interest expense hit a record high for the four-month period. Annualized, the projected $575 billion interest expense alone for FY 2019 would be more than the entire budget deficit in FY 2014.

Finally, the Deutsche Bank report showed two graphics showing the “current conditions” index for buying cars and homes for the top 33% of households by income. The index measures the intent to make a purchase. The current conditions index for car purchases was at its lowest since 2012. For home buying, the intent to purchase index was at its lowest since 2008.

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The commentary above is partially excerpted from the latest Short Seller’s Journal. This is a weekly subscription service which analyzes economic data and trends in support of ideas for shorting market sectors and individual stocks, including ideas for using options. You can learn more about this here: Short Seller’s Journal information

MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) Thoroughly Disemboweled

Financial Markets, Gold, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , ,

The best I can figure is that some very liberal, trust-fund Phd Sociologist professors at Bennington hooked with a group of radical Public Policy students from Harvard somewhere in a cabin in Vermont and did a group analysis of John Maynard Keynes’ “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” after ingesting copious quantities of LSD. From out of that drug-addled assemblage, MMT sprung to life in “socially correct” political circles in NYC and DC.

Short of that explanation for the current obsession with MMT – also known as “Magical Money Tree” –  among the elitist intellectual trust-fund liberal political class, I have a hard time explaining the enthusiasm for this comic book version of economics.

A good friend of mine, who happens to be highly intelligent and obsessive about research, is thoroughly confounded by the idea anyone in their right mind would consider MMT as a serious policy tool other than as a mechanism to accelerate the confiscation of wealth and liberties from the public.

The best I could offer is that legitimizing MMT with academic endorsements is a precursor to the next round of QE, which will have to be Weimar in scale.  Occam’s Razor applies here. It’s that simple.  A Government unable  slow down its spending deficit has no other means of paying its bills other than to raise taxes to a level that will trigger mass revolt or use its printing press.  You see where this is going…

Interestingly, a writer/analyst who springs from the left, and who otherwise I would have thought to have been a proponent of MMT, thoroughly explores and disembowels the concept.  You can literally sense the author’s struggle to find a use for MMT:

We have a private economy driven by exploitation, overwork, asset stripping, and ecological destruction. MMT has little or nothing on offer to fight any of this. The job guarantee is a contribution, though a flawed one, and it’s not at the core of the theory, which proceeds from the keystroke fantasy. That fantasy looks like a weak response to decades of anti-tax mania coming from the Right, which has left many liberals looking for an easy way out. It would be sad to see the socialist left, which looks stronger than it has in decades, fall for this snake oil. It’s a phantasm, a late-imperial fever dream, not a serious economic policy.

Ordinarily I would have briefly skimmed through this essay. But if you are making an effort to be open-minded and understand the genesis, history and follies of MMT, it’s worth spending the time to read this piece in its entirety – then you can have a good laugh:  Modern Monetary Theory Isn’t Helping by Doug Henwood

Modern Monetary Theory isn’t just an insult to one’s intelligence, it’s a complete affront to common sense.

Why Housing Won’t Bounce With Lower Rates

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“Our advice is to own as little exposure U.S. equity exposure as your career risk allows.” – Martin Tarlie, member of portfolio allocation at Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo investment management

The following is an excerpt from the latest Short Seller’s Journal:

Economy is worse than policy makers admit publicly – Less than four months ago, the FOMC issued a policy statement that anticipated four rate hikes in 2019 with no mention of altering the balance sheet reduction program that was laid out at the beginning of the QT initiative. It seems incredible then that, after this past week’s FOMC meeting, that the Fed held interest rates unchanged, removed any expectation for any rate hikes in 2019, and stated that it might reduce its QT program if needed. After reducing its balance sheet less than 10%, the Fed left open the possibility of reversing course and increasing the size of the balance sheet – i.e. re-implementing “QE” money printing.

Contrary to the official propaganda the economy must be in far worse shape than can be gleaned from the publicly available data if the Fed is willing to stop nudging rates higher a quarter of a point at a time and hint at the possibility of more money printing “if needed.” Remember, the Fed has access to much more detailed and accurate data than is made available to the public, including Wall Street. The Fed sees something in the numbers that sent them retreating abruptly and quickly from any attempt to tighten monetary policy.

Housing market – As I suggested might happen after a bounce in the first three weeks of January, the weekly purchase mortgage index declined three weeks in a row, including a 5% gap-down in the latest week (data is lagged by 1 week).  This is despite a decline in the 10-yr Treasury rate to the lowest rate for the mortgage benchmark Treasury rate since January 2018.

Not surprisingly, the NAR’s pending home sales index – released last Wednesday mid-morning for December – was down 2.2% vs November and tanked nearly 10% vs. December 2017. Pending sales are for existing home sales are based on contracts signed. This was the 12th straight month of year-over-year declines. Remarkably, the NAR chief “economist” would not attribute the decline to either China or the Government shutdown. He didn’t mention inventory either, which has soared in most major metro areas over the past couple of months.

For me, the explanation is pretty simple: The average household’s cost to service debt has reached a point at which it will become more difficult to find buyers who can qualify for a conventional mortgage (FNM, FRE, FHA):

The chart above shows personal interest payments excluding mortgage debt. As you can see, the current non-mortgage personal interest burden is nearly 20% higher than it was just before the 2008 financial crisis. It’s roughly 75% higher than it was at the turn of the century.  Fannie Mae raised the maximum DTI (debt-to-income ratio – percentage of monthly gross income that can be used for interest payments) to 50% in mid-2017 to qualify for a mortgage. This temporarily boosted home sales. That stimulus has now faded. And despite falling interest rates, the housing market continues to contract.

That said, the Census Bureau finally released new home sales for November. It purports that new homes on a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate basis rose a whopping 16.9% from October. I just laughed when I saw the number. The calculus does not correlate either with home sales data reported by new homebuilders or with mortgage purchase applications during that time period (new home sales are based on contract signings). 90% of all new home buyers use a mortgage.

The November number was a 7.7% decline from the November 2017 SAAR. According to the Census Bureau, the months’ supply of new homes is at 6, down from October’s 7 but up from November 2017’s 4.9. A perusal of homebuilder balance sheets would show inventories near all-time highs (homebuilders do not always list finished homes on MLS right away if a community already has plenty of inventory). The average sales price of a new home dropped to 8.4% from $395,000 in October to $362,000 in November. Anyone who purchased a new home with a less than 9% down payment mortgage during or prior to October is now underwater on the mortgage.

Absent more direct Government subsidy and Fed stimulus, the housing market is going to continue contracting, with prices falling. Anyone who bought a home with less than a 10% down payment mortgage over the last 3-5 years will find themselves underwater on their mortgage.  I expect home equity mortgage delinquencies and default to begin rising rapidly in the 2nd half of 2019.

In the last issue of the Short Seller’s Journal, I presented my favorite homebuilder shorts along with put option and short selling call option ideas. You can learn more about this newsletter here:   Short Seller’s Journal information

 

The Fed Blinked – Gold And Silver Are Going Higher

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Price inflation has been badly misrepresented by CPI figures and have been averaging closer to about 8% annually since gold topped in Sept 2011. Since then the purchasing power of the dollar has declined by about 43%, so that in 2011 dollars the gold price is $740. No one seems to have noticed, leaving gold extremely cheap. – Alasdair Macleod, “Ten Factors To Look For In Gold In 2019”

The following is an excerpt from the latest issue of the Mining Stock Journal, which included an analysis of a  highly undervalued, relatively new and unknown junior mining company advancing a gold-silver project in Mexico.

As I have suggested in the past (in more detail in the Short Seller’s Journal), the Fed is retreating quickly from rate hikes and balance sheet reduction (QT). The Fed deferred on raising rates at its FOMC meeting this week. What I found somewhat shocking, however, was the removal of reference to “further gradual rate increases.”

Perhaps more shocking was the reference to the possibility of re-starting the money printing press:  “…the Committee would be prepared to use its full range of tools, including altering the size and composition of its balance sheet, if future economic conditions were to warrant a more accommodative monetary policy…” That statement translated means, “we’ll have to print more money eventually.”

This should be extremely bullish for the precious metals sector. The only issue is the timing of the next big move higher. That depends on the degree to which the banks can continue controlling the price with gold and silver derivatives.  No one knows that answer, not even the banks. At some point, as occurred from 2008-2011, the western banks will be unable to suppress the natural price rise of gold/silver. That said, the Chinese and the Russians could pull the rug out from under the western manipulation if and when they want. That will happen eventually as well.

Alasdair Macleod wrote a brief and insightful essay from which I quoted and linked above describing key factors in 2019 that could push the price of gold significantly higher. Most of the factors are familiar, especially for subscribers to my Short Seller’s Journal. First and foremost will be the Fed, along with Central Banks globally,  reverting to easy monetary policy.

Notwithstanding official propaganda to the contrary, the U.S./global economy is rapidly slowing down. Many areas are contracting. Government spending deficits will soar as tax revenues fall behind the rate at which Government spending is increasing.

At some point, the Government will plead with the Fed to help finance Treasury issuance (this will occur in the EU, Japan and China as well), creating another acceleration in monetary inflation/currency devaluation. This will act as a transmission mechanism to inflate the dollar price of gold. Smart investors understanding this dynamic, and who have the financial resources, will move dollars out of financial assets and into gold. See 2008-2011 for an example of this process.

Gold has outperformed almost every major asset class since 2000:

Gold has outperformed most other assets since 2000 because Central Banks globally began to implement extreme monetary policies in response to the global stock market crash in 2000 led by tech stocks. As John Hathaway, manager of the Tocqueville gold fund, describes it, “gold has been a winning strategy since monetary policy became unhinged nearly two decades ago.”

In addition to the fiscal and monetary policies implemented globally in response to deteriorating economic and financial conditions, Alasdair identifies four factors directly affecting the price of gold this year.

One factor not widely perceived or understood by the markets is the gradual and methodical shift away from using the U.S. dollar for trade and as a reserve asset by Russia and China. It’s clear that both countries are swapping dollar reserves for gold and conducting an increasing percentage of bi-lateral trade with their trading partners in each country’s sovereign currency.

As an aside, gold has been soaring in most currencies besides the dollar. At some point, this shift away from using the dollar as a reserve currency will remove the “safe haven asset” status of the dollar, causing a considerable decline in the dollar vs global currencies. Concomitantly, the dollar price of gold will soar.

Another factor identified by Macleod is price inflation: “price inflation has been badly misrepresented by CPI figures and has been averaging closer to about 8% annually since gold topped in Sept 2011. Since then the purchasing power of the dollar has declined by about 43%, so that in 2011 dollars the gold price is $740. No one seems to have noticed, leaving gold extremely cheap.”

In my view, the price inflation factor as it affects investor attitudes toward gold will be a “slowly then suddenly” process. Investors and the population in general tend to move in herds. Currently the headline Government CPI is accepted and discussed as reported. At some point,  a large contingent of mainstream institutional investors will decide the Government’s measurement of inflation is wrong and will begin to buy gold and silver. The masses will soon follow. We saw this dynamic leading up to the parabolic move by gold in 1979-1980.

The third factor is “monetary inflation.” Most people think of price when they see the term “inflation.” But the true economic definition of “inflation” is the rate of growth in the money supply in excess of the rate of growth in economic (wealth) output. This in essence reduces the value of each dollar. Think about it terms of an increasing amount of dollars made available to chase a fixed supply of goods and services. That’s the monetary inflation that causes “price” inflation. Rising prices are the manifestation of monetary inflation.

As discussed at the beginning, at some point the Fed will be forced to re-start the printing press or face the consequences of a rapid economic and financial collapse.  Macleod points out that “these are exactly the conditions faced by the German government between 1918 and 1923, and the likely response by the Fed will be the same. Print money to fund government deficits.”  Recall that the policies used by the Weimar Government eventually led to hyper price inflation. The hyperinflation did not occur until the early 1920’s. But the policies leading to this condition began in 1914, when Germany World War 1 started and Germany’s huge war debt began to pile up. This is strikingly similar to the huge U.S. Government debt outstanding currently.

The final factor mentioned by Macleod is simply, “Gold is massively under-owned in the West.” By 1980, institutional investors on average held 5% of their assets in gold. Currently the percentage allocation to gold (or fake gold like GLD) is well under 1%. All it would take for a massive price reset  in gold and silver is for institutions to allocate 1-2% of their assets to gold. I believe eventually that allocation percentage will move back to 3-5%, which will drive the price of gold well over $2000/oz.

The Stock Market Would Crash Without Central Bank Support

Financial Markets, Gold, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , , , ,

The mis-pricing of money and credit has also driven a terrible misallocation of capital and kept unproductive zombie debtors alive for too long. Saxo Bank, “Beware The Global Policy Panic”

“Mis-pricing of money and credit” refers to the ability of the Fed to control interest rates and money supply.  Humans with character flaws and conflicting motivations performing a role that is best left to a free market.   After the market’s attempt in December to re-introduce two-way price discovery to the stock stock market, the Fed appears ready to fold on its “interest rate and balance sheet normalization” policy, whatever “normalization is supposed to mean.

Tesla is the perfect example of terribly misallocated capital enabling the transitory survival of a defective business model. Access to cheap, easy capital has enabled Elon Musk to defer the eventual fate of the Company for several years. But as the equity and credit markets become considerably less tolerant, companies with extreme financial and operational flaws are exposed, followed by a stock price price that plummets.

The Stock Market Would Crash Without Central Bank Support – A few weeks after Fed head, Jerome Powell, hinted that the Fed may hold off on more rate hikes, an article in the Wall St. Journal suggested that the Fed was considering halting its “Quantitative Tightening” program far sooner than expected, leaving the Fed’s balance sheet significantly a significantly higher level it’s original “normalization” plan.

But “normalization” in the context of leaving the Fed’s balance sheet significantly larger than its size when the financial crisis hit – $800 billion – simply means leaving a substantial amount of the money printed from “QE” in the financial system. This is a subtle acknowledgment by the Einsteins at the Fed that the U.S. economic and financial system would seize up without massive support by the Fed in the form of money printing.

I suggested in the January 13th issue of my Short Seller’s Journal that the Fed would likely halt QT: “The economy is headed toward a severe recession and I’m certain the key officials at the Fed and White House are aware of this (perhaps not Trump but some of his advisors). I suspect that the Fed’s monetary policy will be reversed in 2019. They’ll first announce halting QT. That should be bad news because of the implications about the true condition of the economy. But the hedge fund algos and retail day-trader zombies will buy that announcement. We will sell into that spike. Ultimately the market will sell-off when comes to understand that the last remaining prop in the stock market is the Fed.”

Little did I realize when I wrote that two weeks ago that the Fed would hint at halting QT less than two weeks later.

When this fails to re-stimulate economic activity, the Fed will eventually resume printing money. Assuming the report in the Wall Street Journal on Friday is true, this is a continuation of the “mis-pricing” of money credit alluded to above by Saxo Bank. Moreover, it reflects a Central Bank in panic mode in response to the recent attempt by the stock market to re-price significantly lower to a level that reflected economic reality.

Thoughts On Rate Hikes, Money Printing and Jim Rickards

Financial Markets, Gold, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , ,

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary act.  – George Orwell

A subscriber to my Mining Stock Journal sent me this correspondence a few days ago while the precious metals were being pushed lower by the bullion banks:

I read an article before the July 4th holiday from James Richards. He said that China would use the G20 meeting to push for the SDR. I kept this in the back of my head while the PMs were being smacked around in August. Zerohedge came out with this story today that more fiscal stimulus was coming:  LINK

There’s no question that Fed co-chairman Stanley Fisher floated his “rate hike coming” propaganda all week last week, starting with his useless speech at Jackson Hole, as a device to help the Comex banks smack gold with their fraudulent paper gold.

It’s now clear that gold was taken down ahead of the G20 meeting because the insiders knew that a call for more QE would emerge.  And that’s about the only thing that emerged other than the amusing abuse of Obama by China and Russia.

This was my response to the above subscriber inquiry – I thought it was worth sharing:

Rickards is controlled opposition. He appears to be friendly to anti-elitists like our crowd but he’s a front for the Deep State that is pushing hard for the SDR to replace the dollar because the dollar will still be largest component and it will enable the Deep State to maintain a high degree of control of the global economic system.

I believe China/Russia are using the SDR as an intermediate step toward getting rid of the dollar completely. That the SDR will play some type of role for awhile is already priced in to the market. That Chinese SDR bond issued is an example. Rickards is regurgitating information that is already obvious and absorbed into the markets. More interesting is to figure out what’s next.

You saw how China treated Obama at the G20 vs. Putin. The writing is on the wall on the for the dollar and the U.S.

If the big Central Banks resort to more QE to keep everything from collapsing, gold will soar. If they don’t resort to QE, everything will collapse and gold will soar in flight to safety.

The only strategy “they” have left is to create as much disinformation and confusion as possible. Rickards is part of that disinformation apparatus. Note the heavy onslaught of anti-gold propaganda the past few weeks, primarily Fed heads chirping like pre-programmed monkeys about rate hikes. Won’t happen.

Why Is This Big Hedge Fund Manager Terrified?

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When I saw this comment from Ray Dalio I said to myself, “this isn’t someone trying to be a prognosticator or compassionate person, this is someone that has had an epiphany that his huge success probably had more to do with his rolodex and endless supply of free money more than anything else and is becoming depressed over that realization.”  His All Asset fund was down 7% in 2015 and negative 2 of the past 3 years.  –  A colleague who manages money in an email to IRD today

Ray Dalio has achieved “rock star” status in the hedge fund world.  Per a report sourced by Zerohedge, Dalio appears to be frightened by the prospects of the “normalization” of Central Bank monetary policy.  In fact, he penned an op-ed in the Financial Times in which he states:  “Since the dollar is the world’s most important currency, the Fed is the most important central bank for the world as well as the central bank for Americans, and as the risks are asymmetric on the downside, it is best for the world and for the US for the Fed not to tighten.”

What has Ray frightened?  There are several highly problematic assertions embedded in that comment by Dalio.  First and foremost is the idea that the dollar is the world’s most important currency.  I wonder how China might respond to that comment?  China has been methodically getting rid of its use of the dollar.  In fact, it can be argued that the world’s most important currency is gold, which is why China and Russia have been accumulating gold on a daily basis with both hands.  I find it interesting that Dalio can discuss currencies and monetary policy and not utter one word about gold.

Dalio has been making the argument that economic vitality is dependent on asset levels. This idea is endemic to the hubris behind Wall Street’s financialization of the monetary system.  The truth is the only outcome accomplished by a system based on fiat currency, fractional banking and the financialization of assets is the monarchical enrichment of money skimmers like Dalio and his Wall Street bank cohorts. If the Fed were to begin raising interest rates in earnest, it would remove Dalio’s ability to skim the system.

As I discussed in a blog post last week – LINK – contrary to Dalio’s assertion, financial assets do not create real economic growth.  If anything, the proliferation of financial assets creates nothing more than Wall Street-enriching bubbles which culminate with a systemic collapse that destroys everything.   To correlate the trading level of financial assets with the creation and support of economic growth is either an intentional misrepresentation of the truth for the purpose of self-interested preservation or naive ignorance.  My inclination is to dismiss the latter as beyond probable.

Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief…It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something.  – William White, former BIS chief economist – Telegraph UK

The debt referenced above by the former BIS chief economist are the credit market liabilities  to which Dalio refers.   It is the world’s inability to service or repay them that Dalio fears – not the contraction of economic activity.  Real economic growth has been contracting for at least 8 years.  Easy monetary policy only serves to exacerbate the predicament.  Of course, the removal of easy monetary policy sabotages Dalio’s ability to continue making a fortune off the inflation of financial assets.

A collapsing global financial system will take away Wall Street’s continued enrichment from QE and ZIRP.   This is what has Dalio frightened and this is why he is urging the Fed to refrain from raising interest rates.  Perhaps he’s also making an appeal for more QE.   What better way to re-inflate monetary assets than for the Fed to print more money?

Unfortunately QE will eventually lose its effectiveness as an asset inflator.  The old law of diminishing returns.  I have no doubt Mr. Dalio is familiar with that law of economics.  But he’s lost sight of this reality because he’s been blinded by wealth-induced hubris.  At some point that proverbial can being kicked by the Fed and the U.S. Government will no longer move.   That’s when the real fun begins and that’s when people will wonder why Dalio never discussed gold except in front of his elitist cohorts at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Entire System Is Fake

Financial Markets, Gold, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , ,

I woke up this morning knowing that, for whatever reason, the S&P 500 would be up a least 20 points.  Of course I flip on the telly and see the Spoos up 23 and gold down $5.

Upon investigating possible news triggers, I see that civil unrest is fomenting in China (we’ll investigate that later because the Shadow of Truth is hosting “our man on the ground in Beijing,” Jeff Brown today) and the military confrontation by proxy (ISIS) between Russia and the U.S. is escalating in Syria.

Those are obvious reasons for the stock markets around the world to retreat and for gold to be higher.

With a little further rummaging for news I see that bad economic reports in Japan and Europe have Wall Street clamoring for more QE.  So the S&P 500 futures spiked up on the expectation that the BOJ and ECB would expand their “QE” programs.

We know that QE has definitively not helped the real economy other than those closest to the money spigot: Wall Street’ers plus those who benefited from the Fed dumping $2 trillion in the mortgage market and enabling the re-birth of subprime garbage mortgages – real estate pimps, mortgage whores and the smart homeowners who sold into the bubble.

The bottom line is that the S&P has spiked up – and gold was slammed, now down $12 after the near-daily hit job on gold when the Comex opens – on the expectation that Central Banks will print more money in order to buy more stocks.   To put it another way, the financial system is totally fake.   More QE expected.  This  is expectation that should have, best case, kept stocks from falling and certainly not spiking higher AND should have launched gold to the moon.

And no one outside of the GATA community ever questions why gold seems to get hit hard almost every morning when the Comex opens.

I got an email from colleague who tracks the non-farm payroll report expectations vs what might happen based on the past history the birth-death model plug number pattern.  Granted, his model has a good track record, but the whole exercise is patently absurd.

A bullshit number tells us that a bullshit number is going to “miss” expectations.  This concept is RETARDED. The Government’s employment report has been torn apart and proved to be a complete fiction time and again ad nauseum. It’s a complete joke that educated adults even bother analyzing the numbers as if they mean something, which they unequivocally do not.

Who cares if the employment report misses, beats or is in-line? It’s like debating whether or not the Star Trek Enterprise would get better mileage on hydrogren or natural gas.

This whole charade is beyond retarded.  The incredible volatility in the stock market tells us that the financial markets are starting to collapse, reflecting economic data from every non-Government source showing that the economy is starting collapse again. My personal view is that more money printing will not arrest this process this time around unless the Fed prints and directly buys stocks.  I’m sure Obama would happily sign an Executive Order allowing that to happen.

Of course, if the Government takes that direction, my best advice is for everyone to fold up their tent and start looking for a remote place outside of the U.S. to go live if you want to survive.  It’s getting that bad.

The Fed Will Not Raise Rates This Week – Here’s Why

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The eight-times-per year Fed circus is about to begin this week (Wednesday), for a two-day  freak show that will be accompanied by rumor-dependent market volatility and the appearance ad-nauseum of “experts” on the financial media propaganda conduits.  Their mouths always seem to be moving but nothing meaningful ever comes out.

Perhaps one of the comedic highlights is watching Steve Liesman grunting over the policy statement, sweat pouring from his navel orange some might call a bald head, as he strains to look for any punctuation marks that might have been added or removed from previous policy statement released in July.  The whole spectacle epitomizes theatre of the absurd.

I still believe that the Fed will find some reason to defer raising the Fed funds rate even just one-quarter of one percent off the zero-bound, to which it’s been anchored since December 2008.  The economy continues to show all the signs of contraction.  Today, for instance, the retail sales report for August showed a meager .2% rise from July, which means that, after adjusting for inflation, real retail sales declined.  What happened to the “bump” retail sales used get from “back-to-school” shopping?

In addition, the NY Fed manufacturing index literally collapsed to -14.67 vs. the -0.5 expected.  It is the worst reading on the index since August 2009.  Employment and number of hours worked plunged.  The new orders sub-index continues to show a greater level of contraction than the overall index.

So what’s the Fed to do.  In reality QE and ZIRP were never about a Keynesian attempt to stimulate economic growth and create jobs for the masses.  The massive money printing and trillions in Government banking industry subsidies were always about keeping the big banks from collapsing.  Everything else was straight out of the “textbooks” given to us by George Orwell and Ayn Rand.

I wrote an article for Seeking Alpha explaining my rationale for yet another deferral on moving the interest rate needle just one millimeter off zero, once again:

ROFLMAOIf the Fed were to increase the cost of borrowing by raising the Fed funds rate, in all likelihood private sector borrowing, which is about 71% of the systemic debt outstanding, would contract. It is my assertion that this would cause a severe economic contraction. In this scenario, I believe the Fed would be forced sometime in the near future to address the economic contraction caused by hiking interest rates with more QE.

You can read the rest of this article here:  No Interest Raise Hike This Month

How Bad Will The Financial Collapse Be This Time?

Financial Markets, Gold, Housing Market, Market Manipulation, Precious Metals, U.S. Economy, , ,

The comparisons between the economic indicators in 2008/2009 and now have been coming ad nauseum.  The only way you can avoid seeing them is if you are a Fed official, a CNBC/Bloomberg/Fox Business talking head or a complete moron.

I wanted to keep this simple and just look at what is considered perhaps the best barometer of global economic activity:

Untitled

You’ll note that the price of copper is headed lower and is back to the price level where it was in the middle of 2008, right before the great financial collapse.  You’ll note that $3.6 trillion in Federal Reserve money printing – on top of trillions in Bank of Japan, ECB and People’s Bank of China money printing – has not been able to keep the price of copper from crashing again.

Is there anything that can keep the global financial system from collapsing?  Hint…

NYSE circuit breaker