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Here Is The Simple Reason Why QE Is Unnecessary
As the following chart from David Rosenberg demonstrates, consumers are retrenching, and "just saying no" to both residential and consumer loans. Earlier, we also showed that Small Businesses also contracted, demonstrating that credit demand is collapsing at every vertical of US society. As such, QE, or ever cheaper money, has and always will be a "push" phenomenon, for which there is simply no demand, in a society that has trillions more of deleveraging to undergo. And banks realize that with retail investors not participating in the stock market, and thus having nobody to offload risky exposure to, using reserves to bid up risky assets will merely result in more pain down the road once profit taking time comes and everything goes bidless. As such, as debate over the utility of QE is moot. The only question is what the Fed's persistent desire to debase the dollar will do the perception of monetary aggregates (i.e., the stability of the dollar) and whether the demand for alternatives (such as gold) will offset the need to liquidate said alternatives as a last-ditch source of capital to cover margin calls in a deflationary vortex. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
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QE is irrelevant. It won't do any harm, nor good. Japan has clearly demonstrated that monetary policy becomes compeltely ineffective once the economy is caught in a liquidity and debt trap simultaneously.
It won't cause higher inflation anytime soon nor will it stimulate the economy nor will it have any measurable effect on GDP or unemployment. One big non-event.
Agree, fundamentals don't matter. They are merely a punchline to the narrative spinning (churning) which makes Bernanke assuredly vague objuscations critical to perpetuating the ponzi. Inflation is his mandate.
However, Japan has sold most of it's own QE debt to its own citizens and not to foreigners. This has allowed them to play the QE game for an extended period of time. With their aging population looking to cash out here soon, the game is just about over for them. The US, on the other hand, is highly dependent on foreigners to buy its debt. Once our creditors see that the only real market for debt is our own FRB, they will cash out licketysplit. Down crashes the worthless and once mighty US$.
The biggest holders of US Treasuries are now American households and corporations, no longer foreigners. Foreigners as a group now hold less than 50% and their share is declining.
godfader,
I cannot believe there are still that many stupid Americans.
50% and their share is fading...............
Fade to Black...
Japaneese buying their own debt, Americans buying their own debt. We really believe the citizens of Japan are actually buying their treasuries and there is no monetizing going on there too? I mean hold the phone but 1% on a ten year is an amazing return, guess "households" here will soon find that appealing as well.
+1 @ hungrydweller
GodFader: 'households' is a category employed for obfuscation, don't take it literally.
And that decline if foreign ownership action you've noted is all divestment while the divesting is still good.
Regards
Not to worry, we have something even more powerful -- the printing press to the global reserve currency!
Crashes it against what? Should I buy AUD? How about Euros?
Green shoots not working for the 60+ crowd aka the US is no country for old men. As we wonder where all the people are, as labor force participation plunges, we see many are taking forced early retirement aka early social security benefits. Especially sharp jump for males aka ex construction, manufacturing workers.
http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2010/08/ap-forced-to-retire-some-take-so...
Trader, green shoots not working for me either, although I am not looking for work.
I want to PROTECT my family's capital in the storm we are in, which looks like will get worse. Maybe much worse.
I myself would like to see HIGHER interest rates, then my savings would at least grow.
...
Re credit, I know of very few who want credit, whether small businesses or folks. If a bank came along and offered me a loan at 0%, I probably would not take it. Maybe I would take one if I was convinced that I could buy some Treasury, hold it to term, and pay the loan back. Maybe.
...
Only two more days does ZH have to put up with the below anymore:
Please pull $500 (or your local currency in other countries) out of your local ATM on Thursday if you are MAD at .gov and the banksters worldwide for messing everything up.
Please participate by showing THEM that we can send signals too...
"Let's Deflate the Bitchez"
/rant off
Ms. Baum per usual gets it,
The Federal Reserve’s near-zero percent interest rates and $2.3 trillion balance sheet, almost three times its pre-crisis level, haven’t translated into growth in broad money and credit. Banks are holding $1 trillion in excess reserves in their accounts at the Fed. If policy makers want those reserves to be fruitful and multiply, they could lower the interest rate they are paying on reserves (currently 0.25 percent) or stop paying interest entirely. That’s just one option Fed officials will, or should, consider when they meet today in Washington.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-10/economy-lost-momentum-while-i-w...
Tyler.... I'm in Marketing. And the first thing to do when you want to sell your product that nobody really needs = create demand.
That is what consumerism is all about!
I dont think Americans need someone to sell them the concept of "credit"
@TD You mean that "I don't BELIEVE Americans need someone to sell them the concept of "credit".
We know you think, and deeply, too.
Don't sell yourself short!
To the extent that "credit" is now a synonym for "bail out" we all agree. But olde skool credit that one intends to use for strategic purposes and pay back without fail in order to maintain one's credit rating and ensure future creditworthiness ... perhaps not so much.
Sudden Debt, I used to do honest work, now in marketing--"where the rubber meets the sky."
but "create demand" works when trust can exist: belief in a better future.
but Our Dear President and gang do not believe in a future where conditions are better (at least in the U.S.--maybe Bernadette thinks that things will be better in Gaza on her next excursion).
so Spengler did "Decline of the West," and O is doing "decline of the consumer."
- Ned
Marla--Captcha requires *char[4], but the mask is only for 3. I'd bet it will let this message through, though.
(OT-through, though, tough--hard to teach my ESL associates).
I agree that today's announcement will be a big juicy nothing-burger. How sad is it that the entire world is waiting for what the Fed has to say....
fuggit
The search for yield was one of the main reasons for the CDO bubble. Insurance companies and the like had to try to earn what they could in a low rate environment (courtesy of the Fed) and had to take ever higher levels of risk to meet their fixed obligations.
It's deja vu all over again.
Here's an article from today's WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870342860457541977210764468...
""With the Fed keeping rates down low, it's forcing people to search for yield."....And many investors are still smarting over those triple-A tranches of collateralized debt obligations. Most investment-grade corporate bonds may never be so unlucky, but the rewards are still trifling compared to the risks."
QE is the only stimulus possible in The Zombie Economy, aside from giant Congressionally approved rescue packages. It will permit extend and pretend to go on. Otherwise expect rising defaults on CRE and RRE debt and more gloom as credit demand contracts in general. If QE is too large, however, expect rising prices to offset growth and crush consumers and small business. The Double Whammy. Where incomes can fall as prices rise, margins fall as cost inputs go up.
"It will permit extend and pretend to go on."
It will keep the payment system running...until it doesn't.
Exactly. This is no longer a technical question; it is a political question. The "full faith and credit" of the US is under pressure, and it will become increasingly fragile until US households and coporations (including CEOs) either voluntarily bear the pain of austerity (I wouldn't bet on this), or get tossed into a messy collapse of some kind due to an endogenous shock. Extend and pretend has no internal cost or control--it simply stretches our systemic risk to infinity, so that in the future an ever smaller shock is needed to break things. Supporting austerity is political suicide since no population will ever voluntarily cut back on its standard of living, therefore extend extend and pretend until the bull gets into the china shop. Destruction will be neither immediate nor complete, but it will be substantial.
Synchronising deficits & watches...
the Refi leveraged Credit Card debt, and small businesses run off Consumer Credit, so if we can put Humpty Dumpty together again, Refi everybody at market rates, we unleash 50B or so, that much is already mentioned. But true if no one is initiating (bad) mortgage loans in the first place, there is no string to push on. And the Fed holds the MBS, which should appreciate with a push down in mortgage rates, so the whole thing makes sense in a perverted way. The Feds balance sheet gets marked to market, housing prices rise, and they take on more bad debt, which solves the problem, but it doesn't get the patient out of bed. Now if the Fed were to do a mortgage cram down, and raise rates incrementally, enough to force the banks to do something with the money, (and the Obama people would restore Countrywide et al, hopefully with some speed bumps) then we can get this thing going, but levitating asset valuations alone are not enough to restore the economy, but it is enough to raise inflation, and that is the best they can hope for, avoid the deflationary spiral.
There is no fricking way the Fed or anyone else can make housing prices levitate again. If you believe that, I have a skittle-pooping unicorn for sale.
Pretty neat how gold is lower and the USD is higher immediately prior to the next dollar debasement announcement.
Deflation is a self-enforcing death spiral. Once it starts there is virtually no escape until every last drop of speculative money is wrung from the system. At the bottom is subsistence living, the search for things of real value amid monetary ruins, and economic reset.
QE2 will have zero effect on the deflationary blackhole we are currently in the grip of. Deflation devours speculation, and QE1 went almost 100% into speculative bubbles and QE2 will do exactly the same unless BB can somehow get all that money into the hands of people who have actual bills to pay. That will NOT happen, not even close. BB and TPTB will invoke the unnamed forces of Hell to support the banks and TBTF financial apparatus, until not two stones are left standing together anywhere in the Western world.
QE2 will buoy the equities markets and a speculative bubble another 5% over 9 months or less, real deflation will drag the real economy downwards a like amount, and that will be the end of it.
Yup. QE reinforces the Double Whammy due to misallocation of liquidity. Given prologue of 3 decades of relentless credit expansion with outsourcing of the productive economy, QE can't solve deflation. But the degree to which it introduce inflationary forces (commodity spike) can crush the economy further than a deflationary spiral
Yup. QE reinforces the Double Whammy due to misallocation of liquidity. Given prologue of 3 decades of relentless credit expansion with outsourcing of the productive economy, QE can't solve deflation. But the degree to which it introduce inflationary forces (commodity spike) can crush the economy further than a deflationary spiral
DP 'cuz it is QE _two_?
teasing,
- Ned
Agreed. QE2 or whatever variants are likely not to have much effect at if the destination ends up as reserves sitting at the Bank of Not Yet Failed.
What QE2 will likely do is perpetuate speculation in risky assets that most investors are going to avoid anyway... so long as government intervention is evident. And I'm not real sure that the "QE-Lite" that was introduced today will have that much as a lasting impact. Why blow a bubble up another 5% and for another 9 months, when your political party is going to lose badly, anyway?
What I find amusing, though, is that the Fed is continuing to talk the book on a normal economic recovery-- in a monetary environment that is pretty much considered abnormal. Why would anyone think were in normal economic times when we're 18 months into ZIRP and we're STILL monetizing debt???
What I find most surprising of all is no direct explanation on WHY continued asset purchases are even needed in the first place. Bennie Mae has previously argued for QE1 as a way to spur aggregate (credit) loan demand. That didn't close close to working for the stated purpose.. So in the context the Fed's views of continued economic recovery, more QE is needed... for... what... reason????
I think most of us here know the answer to that... but who's gonna bite? As long as Timmy gets his Treasuries funded a minimal cost, who really cares... right????
Does anybody really believe the Fed's decisions are 'independent' of the Executive and Legislative desires ? I would love to be a fly on the wall in some of those meetings.
Obama: Tell me Ben, how is it ? It's bad right ?
Bernanke: Real bad Mr President. I've run all the possible simulations, and nothing survives, although in some models we can make the game last a little longer by continuing to pay off people who are close to default. Everything ends on December 12, 2012 though.. none of the simulations extend beyond that date.
Obama: Where have I heard that date before ?
Bullshit. My prediction is that QE2 will buoy the markets for two weeks or less. Every successive stimulus has a shorter shelf-life.
+ !!!
Which is exactly why QE 2 is a certainty. It has begun.
QE2.0 Build 04.5417 will continue to destroy any amortization entity and savers with 0 impact on employment. Small bubbles will blow and pop richetteing around and dislocating more labor and capital for naught.
Did the Fed buy any CMBS (I know they bought RMBS) with the $1.25 trillion QE in 2009-10?
LMAO oh my fake Jesus.
To my best memory on CNBC Maria just said to her guest, "Mortgage rates are already at all time lows and it's not sparking home buying. Maybe changing the rate is not the answer, maybe it's more than that?" I had to sit down to finish laughing.
But Brawndo's got what plants crave. it's got electrolytes...
Actually both asset-based easing and stimulus do a lot of harm, for they destroy the credit bond. It is a feedback loop:
- More easing -> more easy terms to banks
- More easy terms to banks -> easier for banks to speculate rather than lend
- More speculation -> everyone joins in because that is all that is left
- More speculation -> less taxes, because 'capital gains' are protected because they supposedly promote 'economic activity'
- More easy terms to banks -> debtors perceive they do not have to repay. Look around you for clear, incontrovertible evidence. Credit supply and credit demand drops.
- More easy terms to banks -> people mistrust their government. They do not pay their taxes. Government in bankers pockets.
- More government stimulus -> people mistrust their government because deficits are meaningless.
Basically, economic activity is driven into speculation, destroying the 'real' economy, which governments and central banks try to revive with more easing. It is a clear and easy to spot feedback loop. It is not a 'non-event' - it is fuel on the fire.
http://willanystand.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-owing-money-means-nothing-and.htmlA good articulation here. People are waiting for the next handout. What good is investing now if it gets cheaper later on?
Hyperventilating about hyperinflation is the in thing, but credit destruction is really the killer. People don't realize what easy money does to credit. It does not increase it, it destroys it. Throughout history credit has been the lynchpin around which economic policy revolves. We are out of whack now more than at any other time I can think of.
ex-I really like your presentation and logic chain.
Add in the basic challenge to property rights in the GM and Chrystler bond default. One judge said essentially: "well, it is OK because everyone agrees."--without discussion or discovery on the bond holders' side.
{devaluation, property rights, debt}:=fundamental change;
thanks,
- Ned
Thanks. Its all about false belief systems. We have false belief systems driving economic decisions on all sides. Belief in stimulus and monetary theory. Economists miss the human element, and they believe their monetary theories will cure these problems with human causes. But they completely ignore the human results of their actions. And yes government bailouts that destroy property rights are part and parcel of the problem, thank you for that.
Let anyone who has a pulse and is currently occupying a house less than 20% underwater refi first and seconds at 1.5% 30 year, gov. guaranteed. This will start the Fed's desired inflation cycle and push home prices back up. Follow this in one year with 1.25% loans for new purchases for qualified buyers and you will get housing inflation. All the money held at the Fed by the banks will come out to play- instant inflation.
Brilliant plan. Except that it will set off class warfare in this country, because the 30% of people with paid-off mortgages aren't going to be too happy. Plus, it would immediately bankrupt most regional banks and further bankrupt Fannie and Freddie. If your "plan" had even the remotest chance of success they would have already launched it.
Exactamundo!
Rock and a hard place is where the Fed be.
yo, dog-
I'd say, that is the O plan, and:
yep. Although the concept of "more infinity" is unnatural to me.
But these are unnatural complex times, and all y'all ZH'ers help.
- Ned
Hell I would love to buy myself a new truck, but the way the Gubbermint is out for us..................Fo-Get it!
t - 1 minute.
I had CNBC on for 10 minutes this morning and I cannot remember which tool but he repeated the same phrase 3 times during my viewing.
" Investors are looking for the Fed to save the day and not PILE ON"
No joke 3x's.
Panic.
That only worked for Dorothy, and only cuz she was dreaming.
Well, the Fed is dreaming. The Fed is the wizard.
By following the gold brick road in her silver slippers, Dorothy saw the man behind the curtain...he wasn't much of a man but was a Fed board member.
I take away from this that at least there is a modicum of prudence left in the US typical household. Pulling back in tough times (which these are, regardless of what the equities market says) is just common sense, which means less reliance on credit and more on savings. I knew a senior banker from the UK who said in mid-2008 "the American consumer will never be a saver", and I told him he had better be wrong. When people realize that prudence and common sense means simply spending within your means, and investing using vehicles that you can understand - whether that be your own business, your friends, your community, gold, food, ammo or just CDs or cash in the mattress - then we can get on with a meaningful recovery.
What's missing entirely seems to be a sense of trust, either in the financial system or in the government overseeing this debacle. And they unfortunately have given us nothing in which to trust. The only recovery I see is in the financial services sector salaries and the federal government (not municipal).
FOMC
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/08/federal-reserve-sucked.html
The Wall St, Chamber of Commerce and Repuglicraps game is to keep blaming Odummo and the Democraps until the elections. Everyone is reading the same BS Chamber of Commerce script. Tax cuts and incentives. Tax cuts or business incentives will not create significant demand this time. It will only blow up the deficit even more. The consumer and many small businesses are over leveraged to the hilt. Trying to inflate another bubble will only guarantee a much larger crash in the future.
Anarchist:
I like the "keep blaming" meme. Kinda like the "keep blaming Bush" meme.
Dude, any small business not in 7 or 13 is hunkered down, cash flow OK (not good), unfortunately trigger pointed (steadily) at really good long term employees' bridge of their nose, and praying that, with all the slack squeezed, they will not have to pull the last ounce.
Trying to inflate another bubble through the small guys?
Wrong universe, pal.
- Ned
Right. We are not getting past politics here. What is needed is deep, real, long-lasting cuts in actual government spending. Not cuts in amount of growth, but true, honest cuts. And that is going to be hard to do, plus, it will add to the already un-politically feasible unemployment rate. It's a giant shit sandwich. But either we do the cuts or we just all go down as one.
"Here Is The Simple Reason Why QE Is Unnecessary"
BamaNomics 101.................no one in their right mind is going to RISK shit, as long as it's a TAKE back +.
Slap me ONCE, your fault, slap me TWICE,My fault.
Anarchist,
You think there are not tons of cash out there, looking for a creditable ROI?.
Give them a reason, to think they/we will get to keep the fruits of our/your labor, and some semblance on sanity in that 10sq miles of HogShit, and you would be surprised.
Sharpen the guillotines...
...in a society that has trillions more of deleveraging to undergo.
Yeah, that's pretty much what it's all about right there. Everything else (well, almost everything else) absent that is just cosmetic.
We're rats in a maze, but our leader (Bernanke) insists on continuing down a dead end.
So ZIRP has only encouraged banks to ride the yield curve, rather than lend, and pump up asset markets that have no effect on the major portion of the economy (consumers).
Perhaps raising rates would allow us rats to find our way out. It couldn't hurt. Consumers are hardly feasting off their returns when the interest they receive is 15 pips. Seniors---an increasingly large segment of the population---cannot live off clipped coupons or TBill interest anymore, so they spend less and save more. Higher rates might get them spending again, as they would be earning measureable interest. Banks would no longer be able to pump up profits off the backs of the taxpayer by merely riding the yield curve, so they might have an incentive to loan. If consumers who received interest picked up spending, business might engage in a little capital spending.
A continuation of ZIRP Forever only benefits those who can ride the yield curve and bid up equities, which I guess is why it will continue. Then again, maybe nothing works except a total reboot.
Higher rates shoots the government dead pretty much instantly. It's a no-go option.