Archive - Apr 21, 2012 - Story

Throughout the postwar period, banks have almost always lent out all the way up to the reserve requirement. So, does the accumulation of excess reserves lead to inflation? Only so much as the frequentation of brothels leads to chlamydia and syphilis. Excess reserves are only non-inflationary so long as the banks — the people holding the reserves — play along with the Fed-Treasury game of monetising debt and trying to hide the inflation . The banks don’t have to lend these reserves out, just as having sex with hookers doesn’t have to lead to an infection. But eventually — so long as you do it enough — the condom will break. As soon as banks start to lend beyond the economy’s inherent productivity (which lest we forget is around the same level as ten years ago) there will be inflation.

At first we were going to comment on this "response" by the high priest of Keynesian shamanic tautology to Mark Spitznagel's latest WSJ opinion piece, but then we just started laughing, and kept on laughing, and kept on laughing...

We present our favorite chart of 2012 (now freshly updated and with that new, NINJA subprime-loan subsidized, car smell) without any further commentary.

22% of the Q1 earnings season (by market cap) is over, and anyone listening merely to soundbites and reading media headlines would likely think that stocks have soared as a result of a relentless parade of beats. One would be mistaken. In fact, as the chart below shows, there is something very wrong with this earnings season...

Harvey Organ has been analyzing the bullion markets closely for decades. The quality and accuracy of his work is respected enough to have earned him an invitation to testify before the CFTC on position limits for precious metals back in 2010. And he minces no words: gold and silver prices are suppressed. With extreme prejudice. In this detailed interview, Harvey explains to Chris the mechanics how of he sees this manipulation occurring, why he predicts this fraudulent pricing scheme will collapse soon, and why it's critical to be holding physical (vs paper) bullion when it does.

Maybe it is the activity in Europe that made the markets feel more volatile than the weekly changes show. Or maybe it was that the futures traded in an almost 3% range – from 1,359 to 1,390 with several 0.5% swings during the course of most days. Market darling Apple isn’t helping calm the market either. That can reverse on a moment’s notice, or a great earnings release, but the momentum that was dragging more and more hedge funds into the trade, is now working in reverse as stop losses are being triggered. So often lately, the bulls are able to point to a decent tape in face of weak data and no stimulus, and this week ended with the opposite. Bulls will be nervous that decent earnings and a mega-plan from the IMF failed to provide strength to the market. So, it was a strange week that was more volatile than the weekly changes show, and where some real cracks are being exposed.

Four time Fed Chairman Marriner Eccles: "As long as the Federal Reserve is required to buy government securities at the will of the market for the purpose of defending a fixed pattern of interest rates established by the Treasury, it must stand ready to create new bank reserves in unlimited amount. This policy makes the entire banking system, through the action of the Federal Reserve System, an engine of inflation. (U.S. Congress 1951, p. 158)... [We are making] it possible for the public to convert Government securities into money to expand the money supply....We are almost solely responsible for this inflation. It is not deficit financing that is responsible because there has been surplus in the Treasury right along; the whole question of having rationing and price controls is due to the fact that we have this monetary inflation, and this committee is the only agency in existence that can curb and stop the growth of money.. . . [W]e should tell the Treasury, the President, and the Congress these facts, and do something about it....We have not only the power but the responsibility....If Congress does not like what we are doing, then they can change the rules. (FOMC Minutes, 2/6/51, pp. 50–51)"