ECB head Christine Lagarde is running into the reality that sooner or later she’s going to have to turn off the fiat debt machine. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
I know you probably get tired of me saying this but the Euro-zone is headed for a massive crisis. On Thursday, June 9th, the ECB came out with its policy statement, less than one week before the next FOMC meeting statement (June 14th).
It was a doozy. Christine Lagarde attempted early on to project that soothing calm central bankers are supposed to exude even when everything is collapsing around them.
But, truly this was Lagarde’s ‘Baghdad Bob’ moment. She stood up there and read the ECB’s policy statement off the teleprompter like she had something caught in her throat, likely the remnants of what is left of her conscience, because even she couldn’t swallow the bullshit she was slinging.
We have inflation under control. We will still grow in 2022 (BWAHAHAHA!) and growth will accelerate in 2023 and 2024. These people haven’t gotten one quarterly forecast right in … forever, and yet they project this idea that they have any clue what GDP growth will be in 2024?
All central banks can do is create fiat debt instruments. With interest rates rising, they are pm a government debt hamster wheel, continuously creating fiat debt instruments to buy an ever-expanding supply of government debt. It can’t last. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
I don’t know what’s more ludicrous at this point, the amount of central bank intervention or the whining from the markets that there isn’t enough.
We’re headed for the mother of all financial crises and from my chair I can’t for the life of me understand how so many smart market analysts can’t see the way it’s being engineered right in front of their eyes.
Despite the headlines and the ocean of money beginning to flood the landscape from the Fed and the Treasury dept. the Fed wasn’t “uber-dovish” on Wednesday. If anything, FOMC Chair Jerome Powell didn’t give the markets what it wanted at all.
All the Fed did was say we’re going to keep doing what isn’t working until 2023 despite what the bond market thinks we should do. Oh, and we’ll make potential credit lines to the banks deeper.
The response was typical. Everything was golden. Taco Tuesday’s are back on the menu and the Fed has our backs.
Because for a brief few hours the algorithms scanned the headlines and reacted accordingly. The weak dollar is here.
Central bankers hate alternative, private mediums of exchange. Don’t take Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies freedom from regulation for granted. From Paul Joseph Watson at summit.news:
“Bitcoin has conducted some funny business.”
Getty Images News
Head of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has called for global regulations on Bitcoin, labeling the cryptocurrency “reprehensible.”
Lagarde made the comments during a Reuters Next conference earlier today, during which she asserted that Bitcoin was not a currency.
“When you look at the most recent developments upward, and now the recent downward trend … for those who have assumed that it might turn into a currency, terribly sorry but this is an asset and it is a highly speculative asset,” she said.
The former head of the IMF, who was previously found guilty of financial negligence by a French court over a €403 million arbitration deal in favor of businessman Bernard Tapie, went on to accuse Bitcoin of being heavily embroiled in criminal activity.
“(Bitcoin) has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity,” said Lagarde.
The ECB head went on to call for Bitcoin to be regulated by financial authorities.
There are junior high school students who know more about how economies function than most of the world’s central bankers. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Any hopes that the replacement of Mario Draghi, who on Halloween left the ECB more polarized than ever, as the core European nations revolted against the Italian’s profligately loose monetary policy in an unprecedented public demonstration of discord within the European Central Bank…
… with the ECB’s new head, former IMF Director and convicted criminal, Christine Lagarde would result in some easing of tensions, were promptly crushed when Lagarde picked up where Draghi left off, calling on Germany and the Netherlands to use their budget surpluses to fund investments that would help stimulate the economy, in a sharp rebuke that will not win the former French finance minister any friends in fiscally conservative Germany.
In an appeal to Germany’s sense of solidarity, and in hopes that Germany’s memory of hyperinflation has faded enough, Lagarde said that there “isn’t enough solidarity” in the single currency area, adding: “We share a currency, but we don’t share much budgetary policy for now.”
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