Bond

The following story of corporate greed, corruption, and fraud is surely one of the best in recent years.

"We can look forward... not precisely to a 1929-type depression, but to an inflationary depression of massive proportions."

In its efforts to prop up the Too Big To Fail banks, the Fed has made keeping your money in a bank a low value proposition.

"It could simply be 1998/99 all over again. After all, a “speculative blow-off” in asset prices is one logical conclusion to a world dominated by central bank liquidity, technological disruption & wealth inequality. What worked back then? What rose from the rubble of 1998? How would one position for one final melt-up on Wall Street..."

China's key index, the Shanghai Composite, was is up over 1%, or 40 points in early, to just under 3,500 - the highest in 2 months, a gain which however is well below Friday's pre-rate cut gain and if prior rate cut history is any indication, not to mention the weak reaction by commodities on Friday (continuing into today, where WTI turned green by the smallest of margins just seconds ago we would not be surprised to see China's stocks sliding back into the red very shortly as "sell the news" concerns return, and as the increasingly more addicted "markets" demand even more liquidity from central banks just to stay unchanged, let alone rise to new all time highs.

"It is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets"...

While even the mainstream media is now aware of the 'turn' in the credit cycle and the decoupling of high-yield credit markets from equity (and equity protection) markets, there is a lot going on under the surface of the broad lending (and borrowing) markets that warrants serious concern.

Following the latest hedge fund underperformance, it is no longer possible to ignore the obvious:in the year in which central banks will unleash the greatest amount of liquidity in the "markets" in history, and where we have seen at least 77 easing steps taken by global central banks, hedge funds are poised to record their worst performance since 2011, according to JPM.

How governments all around the world resort to absurd marketing to finance largesse

The previous Bubble was of the Fed’s making, and our central bank lost control. It became a Hobson’s Choice issue in the eyes of the Fed, and they fully accommodated the Bubble. These days, the Fed and global central bankers face a similar but much more precarious Bubble Dynamic: The Fed specifically targeted higher securities market prices as its prevailing post-mortgage finance Bubble (“helicopter money”) reflationary mechanism. This ensured that the Fed would again be unwilling to impose any monetary restraint before it would then become too risky to remove accommodation (Einstein’s definition of insanity?). In concert, global central bankers now aggressively accommodate financial Bubbles.

Far from being some trivial problem that can be fixed by pressing "print", central banks operating from a negative equity position face the possibility of i) losing their independence as they have to be recapitalized at the behest of the government, ii) being forced into policy decisions (or, perhaps more appropriately "in"decisions) that they might not otherwise make, and iii) losing the ability to control the narrative, thus heightening market concerns about the loss of omnipotence.

Spain, France., Italy, Uruguay, have all begun implementing laws to ban physical cash for certain transactions. This is just the start.

"On the current trajectory, we doubt the market can stay stable beyond a few quarters, especially if some SOE and/or LGFV bonds indeed default."
- Bank of America

When it comes to “prepping”, many among the elite take things to an entirely different level. 

Now that Mario Draghi has telegraphed more easing from the ECB come December, the question is what exactly the bank will announce. Will Draghi cut the depo rate further into negative territory? How long into 2017 will PSPP be extended? Given the scarcity of purchasable paper, will the ECB expand the universe of eligible assets and if so, will Draghi go full-Kuroda knowing full well that you never, ever go full-Kuroda?