Tag Archives: ECB

David Stockman on Europe’s Economic Suicide…

Posted on July 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

Some of the people running Europe make the Biden administration look like geniuses. From David Stockman at internationalman.com:

Europe’s Economic Suicide

The trio of the Sanctions War, Green Energy Crusade and the Virus Patrol is a mortal threat to capitalist prosperity. That’s already evident in the Eurozone where these policy diseases are most advanced and where the real GDP growth rate has plunged by 74% from its pre-2008 crisis rate.

That’s right. The real growth rate in the E19 countries posted at just 0.67% per annum during the 14-year span between Q1 2008 and Q1 2022, which compares to 2.29% per annum during the equivalent period between 1995 and 2008.

Eurozone Real GDP, 1995-2022

Moreover, the EU hari kari artists are just getting started. Notwithstanding the planned phase-out of Russian seaborne crude oil entirely by the end of 2022 and facing a potential total cut-off of Russian pipeline gas, these birdbrains are now planning a sixth round of sanctions on top of all the madness that has gone before.

Accordingly, Europe is heading for a rip-roaring stagflation, even as the monetary policy dial is still set on ultra-easy. That is, the ECB’s policy rate is still -0.25%, thereby creating a huge gap with the Fed’s policy rate which currently stands at +1.58% and is heading higher at a 75 basis points per meeting clip.

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ECB Raising Rates is Europe’s Last Chance to Avoid Ground Zero, by Tom Luongo

Posted on July 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Europe is the world capital of idiocy right now, even more so than the U.S. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

No matter what happens, as long as Davos feels they have control over US foreign policy they will continue to act as if everything is coming up roses for them as they trash the global economy.

This is why I find the myriad attacks against a mostly clueless Joe Biden so interesting right now. Is there a Davos pivot in the offing or is this another signal that sovereigntist forces within the US power structure are gaining the upper hand?

With that question in mind let’s put some context on recent European events and what they say about the global story unfolding in front of us.

The ECB finally raised rates for the first time since 2011, bringing the benchmark ‘lending’ rate to -0.1%, because I guess it would be beneath ‘European values’ for banks to have to pay to borrow money stolen from savers.

Some would be shocked (SHOCKED, I SAY!) that the ECB went up by 50 basis points (0.5%) today, but given the dramatic events in Italy just yesterday, how could they have really done otherwise without looking like the out of touch midwits they, in fact, are.

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Lagarde Capitulates As the Euro-Zone Divides, by Tom Luongo

Posted on June 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

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?

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Central banks are now insolvent, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on February 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

How about that, central banks can go broke. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Behind the battle to convince everyone that price inflation is not a lasting problem is the necessity to keep interest rates and bond yields suppressed. In the past, the interest rate cycle was entirely due to the expansion and contraction of commercial bank credit. But that was before central banks built up bond portfolios through quantitative easing.

Not only does this expose them to the interest rate cycle, but they have not increased their capital base to keep pace with the expansion of their balance sheets. Hence the problem with rising interest rates and bond yields: on a mark-to-market basis the major central banks are insolvent with balance sheet liabilities now exceeding their assets.

This article finds this condition true of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Board, the Bank of Japan, and the entire euro system. Other central banks are not examined.

Doubtless this will be resolved in the short term by governments investing more equity in their central banks. But there is one major exception, which is the ECB and the euro system, with all its shareholders sinking into negative equity with the only minor exceptions of the Irish, Maltese, and Slovenian central banks.

Consequently, with the interconnectedness of the global financial system, the ability of central banks to guarantee the survival of their own commercial banking networks has almost certainly ended due to a collapse of the euro system. The precedent is the failure of a prototype central bank in 1720, John Law’s Banque Royale. That experience allows us to see how this is likely to play out.

Introduction

There is a widespread assumption that commercial banks bear risk while central banks bear none. Folding notes are superior to bank deposits for this reason. It is commercial banks which fail, and central banks that rescue the ones worth rescuing. They are the lenders of last resort.

As such, their financial integrity goes unquestioned. Of course, we do not usually include central banks in emerging nations in this statement, but any risk is always perceived to be in their currencies rather than the institution. We know that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe can and does run some unconventional monetary policies, but you won’t hear the RBZ’s survival being questioned. It is generally assumed that in any nation a central bank that can issue its currency in unlimited quantities can never go bust, and that is why it is the currency that fails, and not the institution.

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The euro’s death wish, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on November 26, 2021 | Leave a comment

When the inevitable financial crash arrives, Europe is going to be in a world of hurt. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

Last week’s Goldmoney article explained the Fed’s increasing commitment to dollar hyperinflation. This week’s article examines the additional issues facing the euro and the Eurozone.

More nakedly than is evidenced by other major central banks, the ECB through its system of satellite national central banks is now almost solely committed to financing national government debts and smothering over the consequences. The result is a commercial banking system both highly leveraged and burdened with overvalued government debt secured only by an implied ECB guarantee.

The failings of this statist control system have been covered up by a pass-the-parcel any collateral goes €10 trillion plus repo market, which with the TARGET2 settlement system has concealed the progressive accumulation of private sector bad debts ever since the first Eurozone crisis hit Spain in 2012.

These distortions can only continue so long as interest rates are suppressed beneath the zero bound. But rising interest rates globally are now a certainty — only officially unrecognised by central bankers — so there can only be two major consequences. First, the inevitable Eurozone economic recession (now being given an extra push through renewed covid restrictions) will send debt-burdened government deficits which are already high soaring, requiring an accelerated pace of inflationary financing by the ECB. And second, the collapse of the bloated repo market, which is to be avoided at all costs, will almost certainly be triggered.

This article attempts to clarify these issues. It is hardly surprising that for the ECB raising interest rates is not an option. Therefore, the recent weakness of the euro on the foreign exchanges marks only the start of a threat to the euro system, the outcome of which will be decided by the markets, not the ECB.

Introduction

The euro, as it is said of the camel, was designed by a committee. Unlike the ship of the desert the euro and its institutions will not survive — we can say that with increasing certainty considering current developments. Instead of evolving as demanded by its users, the euro has become even more of a state control mechanism than the other major currencies, with the exception, perhaps, of China’s renminbi. But for all its faults, the Chinese state at least pays attention to the economic demands of its citizens to guide it in its management of the currency. The commissars in Brussels along with national politicians seem to be blind to the social and economic consequences of drifting into totalitarianism, where people are forced into new lockdowns and in some cases are being forced into mandatory covid vaccinations.

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The Eurozone Is Going Down The Japan Way, by Daniel Lacalle

Posted on September 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Japan Way is for the central bank suppresses interest rates and monetizes debt through its buying of the government’s debt, until interest rates are so low that the bank is the only buyer. From Daniel Lacalle at dlacalle.com:

The European Central Bank announced a tapering of the repurchase program on September the 9th. One would imagine that this is a sensible idea given the recent rise in inflation in the eurozone to the highest level in a decade and the allegedly strong recovery of the economy. However, there is a big problem. The announcement is not really tapering, but simply adjusting to a lower net supply of bonds from sovereign issuers. In fact, considering the pace announced by the central bank, the ECB will continue to purchase 100% of all net issuance from sovereigns.

There are several problems in this strategy. The first one is that the ECB is unwillingly acknowledging that there is no real secondary market demand for eurozone countries’ sovereign debt at these yields. One would have to think of twice or three times the current yield for investors to accept many eurozone bonds if the ECB does not repurchase them. This is obviously a dangerous bubble.

The second problem is that the ECB acknowledges that monetary policy has gone from being a tool to help implement structural reforms to a tool to avoid them. Even with the strong GDP bounce that the ECB predicts, few governments are willing to reduce spending and curb deficits in a meaningful way. The ECB estimates show that after the massive deficit spending of 2020, eurozone government spending will rise again by 3.4% in 2021 only to fall modestly by 1.2% in 2022. This means that eurozone government spending will consolidate the covid pandemic increase with little improvement in the fiscal position of most countries. Indeed, countries like Spain and Italy have increased the structural deficit.

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Market Weekly: You Say You Want a Financial Crisis? by Tom Luongo

Posted on March 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

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:

gold-dollar-trap

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.

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The ECB’s Financial Suttee, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on March 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

European banks are a strong contender in the contest to see which institution or institutions leads the world into a humongous financial crisis. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

he European Commission is failing. Its response to Brexit and the pandemic, where it is now threatening emergency powers in order to secure vaccines is a latest throw of the political dice. Even before this development markets were getting the message with capital flight worsening.

The only thing that holds the Commission together is the magic money tree that is the ECB.

Following the recent change in the Commission’s leadership, the political dysfunction in Brussels is a new challenge for the ECB. It is already juggling with overindebted member states, a global rise in bond yields, a rotten settlement system and commercial banks both over-leveraged and with mounting pandemic-related bad debts.

It really is a horror show in the making.

Introduction

This week, the ECB took the next step towards its inevitable destruction of itself, its system and its currency. This ending, a sort of financial suttee where it joins the failing EU Commission on it funeral pyre, is plainly inevitable, and will increasingly be seen to be so.

On 3 March, Bloomberg reported “European Central Bank policy makers are downplaying concerns over rising bond yields, suggesting they can manage the risk to the euro-area economy with verbal interventions including a pledge to accelerate bond-buying if needed.”

Then last week, the story changed: the ECB vowed that: “Based on a joint assessment of financing conditions and the inflation outlook, the Governing Council expects purchases under the PEPP over the next quarter to be conducted at a significantly higher pace than during the first months of this year”.[i]

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ECB Head Christine Lagarde Calls For Global Regulation of “Reprehensible” Bitcoin, by Paul Joseph Watson

Posted on January 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

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.

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The ECB’s Latest Big Mistake, by Daniel Lacalle

Posted on December 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

Whatever the central banking cult might believe, issuing endless debt at negative interest rates is not a recipe for last prosperity. From Daniel Lacalle at dlacalle.com:

One of the great mistakes among economists is to receive the measures of central banks as if it was the revealed truth. It is surprising and concerning that it is considered mandatory to defend each one of the actions of central banks. That, of course, in public. In private, many colleagues shake their heads in disbelief at the accumulation of bubbles and imbalances. And, as on so many occasions, the lack of constructive criticism leads to institution complacency and a chain of errors that all citizens later regret.

Monetary policy in Europe has gone from being a tool to help states make structural reforms to become an excuse not to carry them out.

The steady funding of deficits of countries that perpetuate structural imbalances has not helped strengthen growth, as the Eurozone has seen constant GDP estimate cuts already before the Covid-19 crisis, but it is whitewashing the extreme left populists that defend massive money printing and MMT, threatening the progress and growth of the eurozone. Populism is not fought by whitewashing it, and the medium and long-term impact on the euro area of this misguided policy is unquestionably negative.

Today, citizens are being told by numerous European extreme left politicians that structural reforms and budgetary prudence are things that were implemented by evil politicians with malicious intent, and the message that there is unlimited money for anything, whenever and however is whitewashed by the central bank actions.

It is surprising to hear some serious economists at the European Central Bank or the Federal Reserve say that they do not understand how the idea that money can be printed eternally without risk is spread all over the political debate when it is central banks themselves who are providing that false sense of security. The central bank may disguise risk for a time but does not eliminate it.

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