From the land that gave us the Volvo and Greta Thunberg, comes news that the nation of Sweden has abandoned its five-year-long experiment with negative interest rates.
The news is actually about a week old, but, being that there was so much going on between the impeachment of President Trump, the China trade deal, and the public's general disinterest with anything not related to either the NFL or Christmas, that the Riksbank raising its overnight repo interest rate from -0.25% to 0.0% hardly warranted notice.
Nonetheless, the global response was as expected from the groupthink of the central bank community. Rates instantly rose, and a chorus of seemingly smart-sounding people recited verses calling for fiscal measures to be undertaken immediately, to counteract the anti-stimulative effect of cancelling out the negative rates that are, in turn, cancelling out currencies around the globe.
According to the central banking community, debt and spending must be promoted by governments as the bankers have done all they could do to alter the flow of goods and services and money in a positive direction. The Swedes have failed, and with that, so too the central banks of the Europe Union nations, Japan, Denmark, Hungary, and Switzerland.
What comes now is general consensus on the direction of economies and globalized financial repression. More spending must be undertaken by governments, on infrastructure, military hardware, green initiatives, social programs and anything else the politicians can get behind and garner more votes for themselves, virtue-signaling that they are the saviors of the free and not-so-free world.
Such a plan could not be concocted by a more smarmy gaggle of decrepit geezers and their enabling political hacks. The worldwide crackdown on savings was not efficient enough to erase decades of excess and misanthropic misadventures into economic dystopia. Now the banking and political community will expose the world to even more egregious profligate spending that will no doubt benefit few, mostly politicians and bankers.
While the Riksbank ponders life in the frozen wasteland formerly recognizable as a stable nation, the rest of the world trudges dangerously close to the financial abyss that negative interest rates have created. Reversing interest rates to a standard resembling something almost normal might prove a costly enterprise. After all, most corporations have been feasting upon low rates for so long, buying back their own stock and artificially raising equity share prices by a process of market starvation, a change that will ultimately cost more could very likely corrupt the process and actually foment a global recession.
Not to worry. The central bankers will no doubt have a solution for that as well while pointing their gnarly fingers the way of their political cronies as world economies lurch from bad policies to worse. With Christine Lagarde recently replacing Mario Draghi as president of the ECB, there's little doubt that the failed policies of her predecessor will be enhanced by more high-sounding rhetorical nonsense that will help speed the spiraling down of society into an inescapable morass.
Well, how about that. It's Christmas!
At the Close, Monday, December 23, 2019:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 28,551.53, +96.44 (+0.34%)
NASDAQ: 8,945.65, +20.69 (+0.23%)
S&P 500: 3,224.01, +2.79 (+0.09%)
NYSE Composite: 13,899.99, +10.74 (+0.08%)
Showing posts with label financial repression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial repression. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Thursday, October 20, 2016
Why Bother With This Yo-Yo Market?
Since Money Daily is still on the camping-off-the-grid-who-cares schedule, some readers (all three of you) might be wondering why.
The answer is simple. Just like the US electoral process, the stock market is rigged. It's been rigged since 2008 at least, when the wheels actually did fall off, but the central bank consortium, in association with various elected and unelected governments worldwide, managed to pull wool over the public's eyes (after a good and righteous fleecing of course) and get the global economy chugging along again.
One problem, however, remained, and remains until this very day.
The wheels fell off.
When stocks crashed in 2008 and banks were about to become entities controlled by conservators or administrators in receivership, the Federal Reserve swooped in and rescued them. All of them. Even banks and institutions in Europe. All except for Lehman Brothers, which was quickly bankrupted and sold piecemeal to entities such as Barclay's and Nomura. Other banks sucked up such failed entities as Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, and Indymac. Had they not, the bankruptcies would have proceeded as normal.
Instead of the orderly process of bankruptcy and the wholesale disposition of assets, the Fed and the banks (again, with help from the government, i.e., taxpayer money) bailed out the system, which is why it's still broken. There are pieces of failure floating all around the financial universe though rarely is a word spoken of them.
For just one instance, consider the fates of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-government mortgage institutions that are still under government receivership. Congress has been and continues to be unwilling to unwind these GSAs because all the bad would come out of them. The Fed is sitting on bad mortgages from a decade ago, the US housing market in many areas is in a shambles and interest rates have nowhere to go but down.
The Fed, the ECB and the bank of Japan - among others - have circled the wagons and there's no way out... for anybody. Prosperity is a word reserved for history books. Job growth is non-existent, wage growth is stagnant, GDP is a made up number that barely suffices to cover the ultimate fraud of excessive government and central bank intervention.
In case anyone wonders why stocks haven't budged since breaking out to new highs in July (a direct result of Brexit and resulting manipulation to hide the sins) it's precisely because there is no real market. There is no price discovery because that's been blown apart by the Fed. There's only guessing and manipulation.
What used to be the most robust and dynamic markets in the world have been reduced to pixie dust and unicorns. None of it is real. From the dollar bills we use for currency to the massive treasury bond auctions that fund the continued fantasy of a working financial system, it's all fake. Every price is contrived; there is no such thing as fundamental financial analysis.
There is only the Fed, the EU and the BOJ. And they're all phonies.
God, when will it all end?
The answer is simple. Just like the US electoral process, the stock market is rigged. It's been rigged since 2008 at least, when the wheels actually did fall off, but the central bank consortium, in association with various elected and unelected governments worldwide, managed to pull wool over the public's eyes (after a good and righteous fleecing of course) and get the global economy chugging along again.
One problem, however, remained, and remains until this very day.
The wheels fell off.
When stocks crashed in 2008 and banks were about to become entities controlled by conservators or administrators in receivership, the Federal Reserve swooped in and rescued them. All of them. Even banks and institutions in Europe. All except for Lehman Brothers, which was quickly bankrupted and sold piecemeal to entities such as Barclay's and Nomura. Other banks sucked up such failed entities as Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, and Indymac. Had they not, the bankruptcies would have proceeded as normal.
Instead of the orderly process of bankruptcy and the wholesale disposition of assets, the Fed and the banks (again, with help from the government, i.e., taxpayer money) bailed out the system, which is why it's still broken. There are pieces of failure floating all around the financial universe though rarely is a word spoken of them.
For just one instance, consider the fates of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-government mortgage institutions that are still under government receivership. Congress has been and continues to be unwilling to unwind these GSAs because all the bad would come out of them. The Fed is sitting on bad mortgages from a decade ago, the US housing market in many areas is in a shambles and interest rates have nowhere to go but down.
The Fed, the ECB and the bank of Japan - among others - have circled the wagons and there's no way out... for anybody. Prosperity is a word reserved for history books. Job growth is non-existent, wage growth is stagnant, GDP is a made up number that barely suffices to cover the ultimate fraud of excessive government and central bank intervention.
In case anyone wonders why stocks haven't budged since breaking out to new highs in July (a direct result of Brexit and resulting manipulation to hide the sins) it's precisely because there is no real market. There is no price discovery because that's been blown apart by the Fed. There's only guessing and manipulation.
What used to be the most robust and dynamic markets in the world have been reduced to pixie dust and unicorns. None of it is real. From the dollar bills we use for currency to the massive treasury bond auctions that fund the continued fantasy of a working financial system, it's all fake. Every price is contrived; there is no such thing as fundamental financial analysis.
There is only the Fed, the EU and the BOJ. And they're all phonies.
God, when will it all end?
Friday, January 3, 2014
Reinhart and Rogoff Return: Debt Overhang, Financial Repression, Inflation and 'Saver's Tax'
Forgetting the day-to-day action of the stock market for a moment to focus on the really, really larger issue of macro-economics, comes this daft little piece of literature from the infamous duo of Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, prepared for the IMF, entitled, boorishly, "Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Those Forgotten," as though the central bankers of the world have forgotten their purposes in life, which would be, in no particular order:
1. Create and control all of the world's currency;
2. Put governments, businesses and individuals in debt;
3. Act like you're doing everyone a favor.
The authors of this [PDF] 21-page memo to the IMF bring up some old tomes familiar to those in the central banking business, which, more likely than not, they have NOT forgotten, not at all, such as financial repression, inflation (the central way central banks enrich themselves and impoverish the rest of the world), and outright debt defaults, this final theme one which the central banks will encourage sovereigns to pursue, in the best interest of everyone.
When one reads this little write-up and thinks it through, a couple of ideas immediately sprout forth from the pages.
One, inflation, the central banker's ally in its never-ending quest to eventually destroy the value of all currencies, has been latent and absent for some time, something the Fed head, Ben Bernanke, has openly whined about, and probably privately been chastised by his handlers in the global banking cartel. Inflation will have to make a big comeback, soon, lest the Fed and fellow central banks lose out on massive profits from the ongoing, recent economic crises gripping all nations.
They have the means to do so, and they certainly will, now that they've successfully re-capitalized their member banks (all the biggest ones, which were insolvent in 2008), through various means, the most obvious being the "taper," or winding down of their balance sheet, and higher interest rates, making money more expensive and credit all-but-impossible to get, which will have the desired result of pushing prices skyward while crashing the stock markets and making most citizens, now already poorer due to the stealth tax of low interest rates over a prolonged period, severe debt slaves.
The central banks, through their conduits in central sovereign governments, will also encourage defaults on massive amounts of debt, causing even more panic and a rush of cries from governments to individuals for the central banks to "save us," when in reality, it is they who are causing the pain.
While Reinhart and Rogoff are surely on the right track - though a bit opaque in their language - they are telegraphing the next moves for central bankers, who will, soon enough, declare that all their efforts have not succeeded in creating economic prosperity, so they will embark on, sorry, more austere measures. Governments will overtax and overburden their citizens (to some degree this is already occurring in Europe and Japan), but eventually - maybe in five years, or ten, or more - there will at last be a period of economic "normalcy" with interest rates on, say, 10-year notes at about 5%, inflation raging along at 5-8% (payback for the years of no or low inflation) and employment (with associated confiscatory taxes and fees) steadily declining for some countries, still high for others.
For most people and businesses, surviving this period will be tantamount to picking up nickels in front of a runaway steamroller: barely profitable, but highly risky. Many will be crushed; others wounded, the steamroller that is the Fed, the ECB, the IMF, World Bank and the BIS will grind nations, businesses and individuals into wretched little nothings.
That's the message from these authors, and, no, the central bankers of the world have not forgotten. It's coming. Not all at once, and not with any dramatic waving of wands or arms or hands, but slowly, gradually, eventually...
On the second day of trading for 2014, stocks took a bit of a roller-caster ride not dissimilar to those encountered during bear markets, but with a twist of day-trading irony, up at the open, crashing back to unchanged mid-day, rallying late before giving all of it back, the Dow being the only average on the positive side of the ledger today, the NASDAQ still down, the S&P marginally negative.
No, this was not a snap-back rally, and no, again, everybody's not waiting for Monday to "really" start trading. These first two sessions of 2014 were real and they count. Money is being pulled out of the market because money knows what's ahead, and it's seeking safe harbor.
Two things to note: the divergence of the a-d line from the headline close, and the continued low numbers of new highs and new lows.
Thanks for a week of hope and no change.
DOW 16,469.99, +28.64 (+0.17%)
NASDAQ 4,131.91, -11.16 (-0.27%)
S&P 1,831.37, -0.61 (-0.03%)
10-Yr Note 97.90, +0.60 (+0.62%) Yield: 3.00%
NASDAQ Volume 1.56 Bil
NYSE Volume 2.76 Bil
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3577-2094
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 205-21
WTI crude oil: 93.96, -1.48
Gold: 1,238.60, +13.40
Silver: 20.21, +0.083
Corn: 423.50, +3.00
1. Create and control all of the world's currency;
2. Put governments, businesses and individuals in debt;
3. Act like you're doing everyone a favor.
The authors of this [PDF] 21-page memo to the IMF bring up some old tomes familiar to those in the central banking business, which, more likely than not, they have NOT forgotten, not at all, such as financial repression, inflation (the central way central banks enrich themselves and impoverish the rest of the world), and outright debt defaults, this final theme one which the central banks will encourage sovereigns to pursue, in the best interest of everyone.
When one reads this little write-up and thinks it through, a couple of ideas immediately sprout forth from the pages.
One, inflation, the central banker's ally in its never-ending quest to eventually destroy the value of all currencies, has been latent and absent for some time, something the Fed head, Ben Bernanke, has openly whined about, and probably privately been chastised by his handlers in the global banking cartel. Inflation will have to make a big comeback, soon, lest the Fed and fellow central banks lose out on massive profits from the ongoing, recent economic crises gripping all nations.
They have the means to do so, and they certainly will, now that they've successfully re-capitalized their member banks (all the biggest ones, which were insolvent in 2008), through various means, the most obvious being the "taper," or winding down of their balance sheet, and higher interest rates, making money more expensive and credit all-but-impossible to get, which will have the desired result of pushing prices skyward while crashing the stock markets and making most citizens, now already poorer due to the stealth tax of low interest rates over a prolonged period, severe debt slaves.
The central banks, through their conduits in central sovereign governments, will also encourage defaults on massive amounts of debt, causing even more panic and a rush of cries from governments to individuals for the central banks to "save us," when in reality, it is they who are causing the pain.
While Reinhart and Rogoff are surely on the right track - though a bit opaque in their language - they are telegraphing the next moves for central bankers, who will, soon enough, declare that all their efforts have not succeeded in creating economic prosperity, so they will embark on, sorry, more austere measures. Governments will overtax and overburden their citizens (to some degree this is already occurring in Europe and Japan), but eventually - maybe in five years, or ten, or more - there will at last be a period of economic "normalcy" with interest rates on, say, 10-year notes at about 5%, inflation raging along at 5-8% (payback for the years of no or low inflation) and employment (with associated confiscatory taxes and fees) steadily declining for some countries, still high for others.
For most people and businesses, surviving this period will be tantamount to picking up nickels in front of a runaway steamroller: barely profitable, but highly risky. Many will be crushed; others wounded, the steamroller that is the Fed, the ECB, the IMF, World Bank and the BIS will grind nations, businesses and individuals into wretched little nothings.
That's the message from these authors, and, no, the central bankers of the world have not forgotten. It's coming. Not all at once, and not with any dramatic waving of wands or arms or hands, but slowly, gradually, eventually...
On the second day of trading for 2014, stocks took a bit of a roller-caster ride not dissimilar to those encountered during bear markets, but with a twist of day-trading irony, up at the open, crashing back to unchanged mid-day, rallying late before giving all of it back, the Dow being the only average on the positive side of the ledger today, the NASDAQ still down, the S&P marginally negative.
No, this was not a snap-back rally, and no, again, everybody's not waiting for Monday to "really" start trading. These first two sessions of 2014 were real and they count. Money is being pulled out of the market because money knows what's ahead, and it's seeking safe harbor.
Two things to note: the divergence of the a-d line from the headline close, and the continued low numbers of new highs and new lows.
Thanks for a week of hope and no change.
DOW 16,469.99, +28.64 (+0.17%)
NASDAQ 4,131.91, -11.16 (-0.27%)
S&P 1,831.37, -0.61 (-0.03%)
10-Yr Note 97.90, +0.60 (+0.62%) Yield: 3.00%
NASDAQ Volume 1.56 Bil
NYSE Volume 2.76 Bil
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3577-2094
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 205-21
WTI crude oil: 93.96, -1.48
Gold: 1,238.60, +13.40
Silver: 20.21, +0.083
Corn: 423.50, +3.00
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Welcome to the Age of Financial Repression; Markets Fall, Metals Gain
This was truly a strange day in US equity markets. On the heels of Wednesday's Fed announcement that the federal funds rate would stay at 0-0.25% until the latter part of 2014 (read: as long as we need ZIRP to keep the economy from collapse) and blow-out earnings from Caterpillar (CAT), stocks opened sharply higher, but then nose-dived right at 10:00 am, after the Commerce Dept. reported that new home sales in December fell by 2.2%, to an annualized rate of 307,000. Additionally, the median price of a new house purchased last month declined 12.8% from a year ago. 2010 now stands complete as the worst year for new home sales since records began being kept in 1963.
On top of the earlier-reported initial unemployment claims spiking back up to 377,000 from an upwardly-revised 356,000 last week, not even the hope of endless largesse from the Federal Reserve could keep stocks in positive territory. All major indices ended in the red. By contrast, gold and silver posted solid gains.
A term one won't be hearing much on mainstream media is "financial repression," and if it sounds harsh, it's because it is, and it is the reality of much of today's economic world.
Here's a definition of Financial Repression from Investopedia:
Bingo. Another term for the collusion of business and government is fascism.
Welcome to the new world order. For a glimpse of who and what are destroying the value of capital and thus, your money, just take some time to view the goings-on at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Surely, George Soros, Mark Zuckerman, Jamie Dimon and a gaggle of billionaires have the worming men and women of the world's best interests at heart.
Dow 12,734.63, -22.33 (0.18%)
NASDAQ 2,805.28, -13.03 (0.46%)
S&P 500 1,318.43, -7.62 (0.57%)
NYSE Composite 7,883.90, -30.91 (0.39%)
NASDAQ Volume 2,061,939,750
NYSE Volume 4,521,722,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2651-2944
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 332-21 (very extreme)
WTI crude oil: 99.70, +0.30
Gold: 1,726.70, +26.60
Silver: 33.74, +0.62
On top of the earlier-reported initial unemployment claims spiking back up to 377,000 from an upwardly-revised 356,000 last week, not even the hope of endless largesse from the Federal Reserve could keep stocks in positive territory. All major indices ended in the red. By contrast, gold and silver posted solid gains.
A term one won't be hearing much on mainstream media is "financial repression," and if it sounds harsh, it's because it is, and it is the reality of much of today's economic world.
Here's a definition of Financial Repression from Investopedia:
A term that describes measures by which governments channel funds to themselves as a form of debt reduction. This concept was introduced in 1973 by Stanford economists Edward S. Shaw and Ronald I. McKinnon. Financial repression can include such measures as directed lending to the government, caps on interest rates, regulation of capital movement between countries and a tighter association between government and banks. The term was initially used in response to the emerging market financial systems during the 1960s, '70s and '80s.
Bingo. Another term for the collusion of business and government is fascism.
Welcome to the new world order. For a glimpse of who and what are destroying the value of capital and thus, your money, just take some time to view the goings-on at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Surely, George Soros, Mark Zuckerman, Jamie Dimon and a gaggle of billionaires have the worming men and women of the world's best interests at heart.
Dow 12,734.63, -22.33 (0.18%)
NASDAQ 2,805.28, -13.03 (0.46%)
S&P 500 1,318.43, -7.62 (0.57%)
NYSE Composite 7,883.90, -30.91 (0.39%)
NASDAQ Volume 2,061,939,750
NYSE Volume 4,521,722,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2651-2944
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 332-21 (very extreme)
WTI crude oil: 99.70, +0.30
Gold: 1,726.70, +26.60
Silver: 33.74, +0.62
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