Tag Archives: central bank policies

The Hannibal Trap Will Crush Global Wealth, by Egon von Greyerz

Posted on December 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

What goes up, especially that which goes up propelled by central bank helium and hopium, generally comes down. From Egon von Greyerz at goldswitzerland.com:

Is the global investment world about to be caught in the Hannibal trap?

Hannibal was considered as one of the greatest military tacticians and generals in history. He was a master of strategy and regularly led his enemies into excruciating defeats.

The trap that investors are now being led into has many similarities with Hannibal’s strategy in his victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 BC.

Hannibal was a general and statesman from Carthage (now Tunisia) who successfully fought against the Romans in the Second Punic War.

THE BATTLE AT LAKE TRASIMENE

In 218 BC Hannibal took his troops, with cavalry and elephants, over the Alps and into Italy. Hannibal enticed the Roman Consul Flaminius, and his troops, in 217 BC to follow him to Lake Trasimene in Umbria. The Romans followed Hannibal’s troops into a narrow valley on the northern shores of the lake. When the Roman troops were inside the valley, they were trapped. They had the Carthaginians ahead of them, the lake on their right and hills on their left.

What the Romans didn’t know was that Hannibal had hidden his light cavalry and part of his army up in the hills. So once the Romans were locked into the valley, they were attacked from both ends with nowhere to escape.

Over 15,000 Romans were killed and 10,000 captured in a catastrophic defeat.

So what has Hannibal got to do with the present world? Well, it is pretty obvious. It is all about being led into a fatal trap without even being aware.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Financial markets, Government, Money

Tagged ,

The Sisyphean Folly of Printing Press Money, by MN Gordon

Posted on November 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Central bankers believe that every economic ill can be cured with their fiat debt instruments, and if the ill isn’t cured, throw more fiat debt at it. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

Something remarkable happened on Tuesday.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) broke the 30,000 point barrier for the first time ever.  President Trump commemorated the feat by calling the number “sacred.”

Some Americans were especially grateful as they said their Thanksgiving Day grace.  These generally include wealthy owners of stocks and other financial assets.  Forty years of inflationary monetary policies have elevated their prosperity to holiness.

The remaining Americans, through no fault of their own, missed out on these sanctified blessings.  Perhaps they’ll get some leftover table scraps for Christmas.  These, indeed, are the questions being asked.

Will Washington make this a Merry Christmas for cash strapped Americans?  Will the Treasury send out a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks for the yuletide?  Will Congress be Ebenezer Scrooge or Mr. Fezziwig?

These are important questions as 2020 approaches its twilight.  And this is the season of giving.  After months of rolling lockdowns ordered by state and local governments Americans need relief.  Moreover, they must first receive from Uncle Sam so they can give to their fellow kindreds.

This was a recent finding of a Franklin Templeton-Gallup survey.  Specifically, the survey found that 16 percent of Americans plan to spend more on holiday gifts this year.  But with another $1,200 stimulus check, 22 percent of Americans say they will spend more this holiday season.

Somehow, Christmas spending has become dependent on government stimulus checks.  But, remember, government stimulus is dependent on printing press money.  And printing press money is dependent on the dollar retaining some semblance of value.

Thus, herein lies the sacred folly.  The more that printing press money’s emitted, the more value the dollar loses.  We’ll have more on what this means for you and your wealth in just a moment.  But first some context…

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy

Tagged ,

Global Inflation watch, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on November 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

Currency debasement is inflation, and governments and central banks are debasing their currencies with abandon. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

his article posits that fiat currencies are on the path to hyperinflation and looks at the evidence in the prices of financial assets and commodities. So far, gold has notably underperformed, which indicates that the early signals of hyperinflation are confined to the cryptocurrencies, whose participants broadly understand fiat debasement, to equities reflecting the desire not to maintain cash and deposit balances, and in international trade, where commodity prices of all stripes have risen in price.

Given that the early warnings of hyperinflation of money supply are here, the article then looks at the qualities required of a sound money to replace fiat currencies.

Introduction

Figure 1 shows how prices have moved from the Friday before the Fed’s announcement on 23 March that it would go all-in on its support for the US economy with unlimited quantitative easing. It amounted to a commitment to hyperinflate the money supply if needed. Before the Fed cut its funds rate to zero on 16 March nearly all these prices were falling.


Screen Shot 2020 11 27 at 7.04.52 AM
Since late-March every category has seen increases in prices. Sector and specialist analysts will always claim that there are identifiable reasons why prices for an individual category or commodity have risen. But the fact is that with the exception of the dollar and the other fiat currencies listed in the table all prices have risen. This cannot happen without the dollar and these currencies losing purchasing power.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Governments, Money

Tagged , ,

A New World Monetary Order Is Coming, by Stefan Gleason

Posted on October 28, 2020 | 1 comment

The envisioned monetary order will be, like the whole coronavirus and climate change scams, just another means by which the Davos Crowd will rule the world. At least that’s how the Davos Crowd imagines things. From Stefan Gleason at activistpost.com:

The global coronavirus pandemic has accelerated several troubling trends already in force. Among them are exponential debt growth, rising dependency on government, and scaled-up central bank interventions into markets and the economy.

Central bankers now appear poised to embark on their biggest power play ever.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in coordination with the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), is preparing to roll out central bank digital currencies.

The globalist IMF recently called for a new “Bretton Woods Moment” to address the loss of trillions of dollars in global economic output due to the coronavirus.

In the aftermath of World War II, the original Bretton Woods agreement established a world monetary order with the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency.

Importantly, the dollar was to be pegged to the price of gold. Foreign governments and central banks could also redeem their dollar reserves in gold, and they started doing so in earnest in the 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, effectively ushering in a new world monetary order based solely on the full faith and credit of the United States. An inflation crisis followed a few years later.

In response, the Federal Reserve took the painful step of jacking up interest rates to defend its wilting Federal Reserve Note and tame rising prices.

Fast forward to 2020, and the Fed has assumed for itself novel policy mandates that are a precursor to a new monetary system.

But the monetary masters aren’t contemplating a return to sound money. Rather, they’re planning for even more debt, more inflation, and picking of winners and losers in the economy.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Banking, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Governments

Tagged ,

How to Tackle the Depression Head On, by MN Gordon

Posted on September 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

To tackle a depression head on, the first step is to admit its inevitability, and to pretend that government and central bank debt and spending will prevent one only makes the problem worse. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

I want to see people get money.” – Donald J. Trump, U.S. President, September 17, 2020

“Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet.” – Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, September 14, 2020

Money for the People

The real viral contagion that has infected the American populace is not an illness of the body.  It’s something far worse than COVID-19.  The American populace is suffering from an illness of the mind.

The general malady, as we diagnose it, is the unwavering belief that the government has an endless supply of free money, and the expectation that everyone, except the stinking rich, has claim to it.  Why pursue self-reliance and independence when a series of stimulus acts promises the more abundant life?  This viral contagion’s really ripped through the population in 2020.

For example, just a year ago, the American populace thought they could all live off the forced philanthropy of their neighbors.  That to pay Paul you had to first rob Peter.  The CARES Act proved to Boobus americanus that, without a shadow of a doubt, there’s free ‘money for the people’ in Washington.  Sí se puede!

This week the Congress did its part to further the greatest show on earth.  The people want stimulus.  Congress intends to get to them, in good time.

Of course, the need to sprinkle the Country with printing press money was already a foregone conclusion.  There was no discussion of the wisdom of not having a stimulus bill.  The debate at hand was centered on how much.

Crazy Nancy wants $3.4 trillion.  Senate Republicans want $500 billion.  Something called the House Problem Solvers Caucus wants $2 trillion.

President Trump wants Republicans to “go for the much higher numbers.”  His rationale: “it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).”

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Debt, Economy, Government

Tagged , ,

The 21st Century Is Marked By Crisis and Political Division, by Bill Bonner

Posted on September 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

We’re twenty percent into the 21st century and it hasn’t been a great start. From Bill Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

Week 26 of the Quarantine

In this bright future, you can’t forget your past.

– Bob Marley

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – What a colossal flop!

We’re talking about the 21st century. A failure in almost every way.

We now have 30 million people on unemployment – nearly 20% of the labor force.

We have a budget deficit of nearly 20% of GDP.

And, despite already spending $2 for every $1 they collect in taxes, the feds are planning to spend more.

We have phony “conservatives” waving the flag… and real radicals trying to tear it down. On both sides are more and more loonies, locked and loaded…

Even many of our own dear readers are ready to go to war with each other. This is from yesterday’s mailbag:

Hey Dude, we are at WAR! Trump leads the Win-the-War Party! The Neo Repubs are the “What? Me, worry?” Party. And you are like the pet dog nipping at the heels of the soldiers marching past!

No matter the cost, we must win the war against socialism and the Ds. There is time enough to purify ourselves after we win! If we lose, it will be a “thousand years” before our experiment is tried again… Meanwhile it is your obligation to support those who are fighting, regardless of technique and strategy… TRUMP!

Nasty Themes

It is hard to figure out how an administration that declares a moratorium on rent collection, stifles free trade, and runs a deficit of 20% of GDP could save us from socialism… But in this great 21st-century future, wonders never cease.

This week, in this “new normal,” we’ve been trying to remember what the “old normal” was like. And was it really better? Or is it just us?

We recalled what it must have been like when we were born. Of course, it was a very different world back then.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Government, Labor, Medicine

Tagged , ,

The Fed and the looming capital market meltdown, by Tuomas Malinen

Posted on August 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Massive fiat debt issuance is just digging the hole deeper. From Tuomas Malinen at gnseconomics.com:

The Federal Reserve system made a future financial panic or currency panic impossible. It made stable for the first time in the history of the United States the credit system of the people of the United States. – Senate Documents, 64th Cong., 1st Sess., December 6, 1916

We have been watching the “shock-and-awe” bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve with astonishment.  Never before has a central bank tried single-handedly to rescue both the financial system and a large proportion of U.S. corporations. We were taken aback then by Fed actions and are now just as worried about what it has given birth to.

We are unfortunately now in a situation where we cannot speak of “markets” anymore. The Fed has nurtured a dangerous, centrally controlled financial system, á la the Soviet Union. Like its ‘role model’, monolithic systems always fail, as the complexity of financial interactions and the economy will eventually overwhelm the central planners.

Alas, we fear that we are approaching the breaking point of the modern financial order.

The Federal Reserve

After the collapse of banks of the families Peruzzi and Bardi in 1343 and 1346 (the first financial crisis of the Middle Ages), a discussion about a ‘liquidity back-stop’ of the banking system began. The idea of the modern central bank emerged.

For the same reasons, the ‘Panic of 1907’ was a game-changer in an attempt to create a central bank in the US. To put a stop to the bank runs, a coalition led by the illustrious banker J.P. Morgan repeatedly intervened to restore the solvency of several New York banks, which in turn gave more impetus to demands that the U.S. banking system required a permanent institutional source of liquidity.

However, the creation of the Federal Reserve system, in 1913, was beset by worries that it would lead to the “socialization” of the economy. To calm these fears, the authority of the Fed to issue legal tender (or “currency”) was restricted by both the ‘real bills doctrine’ and the distribution of financial power.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Capitalism, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Government

Tagged ,

The Quiet American Reset, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on August 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

Why not just have the Fed stick its fiat debt instruments directly into people’s bank accounts or bank cards? From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The great de-coupling is here. The U.S. now has plan a to purge Chinese tech companies fully from America’s internet, creating what the Trump administration has dubbed the Clean Network. It mirrors the White House’s existing 5G Clean Path initiative to remove all Chinese components from systems ‘everywhere’, and which now extends it to everything tech on the ‘net.

China fears a financial ‘Iron Curtain’ is about to fall – a complete expulsion from the dollar sphere. In fact, soft capital control is already birthing, with Bloomberg reporting that the U.S. is now asking colleges and universities to divest from Chinese holdings in their endowments, “warning schools in a letter this last week, to get ahead of potentially more onerous measures [coming] on those holding the shares”.

Reportedly, the Chinese leadership annual August Beidaihe retreat, agreed (should the recommendations be subsequently endorsed at the Central Committee plenum in October) that China should prepare for war; build food and energy reserves; establish the Eurasian continental economic system, recover its overseas gold and broaden the global RMB settlement system (including its digital Yuan) – and prepare for the complete interruption of relations with the U.S.

Yet, whilst the media focus is all on this ‘tech’ and ‘sphere’ de-coupling, something profound – and quite separate – is already shaping the global monetary order (quite apart from likely Chinese exclusion). It is set, in the longer term, to be more revolutionary – and contentious – than even ‘de-coupling’. It is getting sparse attention.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Currencies, Debt, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments

Tagged ,

Doubling down on failed policies with central bank digital currencies, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on August 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

Whether it’s a piece of paper backed by nothing or a digital currency backed by nothing, phony-baloney money is still phony-baloney money. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Many central banks are researching retail digital currencies, which if implemented, would allow them to issue a new currency directly to the public, managed on a centralised ledger bypassing commercial banks. While there is an element of feeling the need to address new private sector currency developments which threaten central bank monopolies, specific objectives are beginning to emerge.

This article does not consider technology issues, confining its comments to the policy objectives identified in an IMF survey of central banks.[i] It points out the dangers to individual freedom and why the application of a monetary policy extended to include central bank digital currencies are bound to fail.

Introduction

Fiat currencies are failing — let’s try something different. This seems to be the logic partly behind the feverish research by central banks into digital currencies (CBDCs). The central banks of the Bahamas, Ecuador, Ukraine and Uruguay have conducted limited scale pilot projects, and China is also reported to have planned trials through Meituan-Dianping, an on-line food retailer and two further Tencent backed companies, though the status of these projects is at the moment unclear.

These are retail CBDCs. With a retail CBDC, the central bank issues the new CBDC to the public, either through agents, such as commercial banks, or directly to the public, bypassing the current financial system entirely. An advantage claimed over existing fiat is that it is capable of providing access through mobile technology to everyone, including the unbanked. But these advantages are already available through credit and debit cards and e-money, stored in apps such as M-Pesa and AliPay. They work perfectly well, replacing the need for cash where cash is not necessarily available or desired by transacting individuals. Perhaps further development of these facilities could be seen to pose a threat to the fiat monopoly.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Financial markets, Government

Tagged ,

The Tyranny of Groupthink, by David Stockman

Posted on August 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

As SLL recently said, “Your first duty is to think for yourself.” A lot of people are about to find out why. From David Stockman at lewrockwell.com:

The broad market (S&P 500) is trading at the highest forward PE multiples since November 1999, but the financial press is rife with mendacious piffle claiming there is no bubble. For example, in celebration of Tuesday’s all-time high on the S&P 500, one James Mackintosh of the Wall Street Journal minced no words:

Except, the Everything Bubble is in the imagination of the many investors complaining about it. First, it isn’t everything. Second, it isn’t a bubble….

Right. Supposedly, the above statement is true because energy sector stock prices are in the tank, but the market is being rationally led by the tech giants where allegedly solid prospects for earnings growth are being rewarded with higher PE multiples owing to ultra-low interest rates.

…. Lower rates mean profits further in the future matter more to the share price, so companies with steady earnings no matter what the economy does are worth more. Those that are sensitive to the economy are worth less, because future earnings are expected to be hit. Growth stocks do incredibly well, because their future earnings are expected to be higher and, at least for those thought immune to economic weakness, worth more as well thanks to lower rates.

Apply this framework and there’s no bubble. U.S. stocks are more highly valued than in the past because they are dominated by big growth stocks, themselves justifiably more highly valued thanks to low rates.

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Collapse, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Government

Tagged ,