Bank of England

The Keynesian notions of “potential GDP” and “aggregate demand” have no basis in the real world. They are revealed doctrine. They are the religion of the state’s economic policy apparatus. Its bad enough that this destructive economic religion leads to the farcical forecasting games evident in the EC’s chronic updates and slow-walks of the GDP numbers down. The evil, however, is that the Keynesian apparatchiks will not desist in their destructive money printing and borrowing until they have suffocated free market capitalism entirely, and have monetized so much public debt that the financial system simply implodes.

"we do not expect any additional easing to be announced in addition to the various measures adopted between June and September. We expect Mr Draghi’s remarks to be focused on the Comprehensive Assessment of Euro area banks, and on the fact that the decline in oil prices is lowering headline inflation in most advanced economies."

With last night's latest Japanese flash crash firmly forgotten until the next time the trapdoor trade springs open and swallows a whole lot of momentum chasing Virtu vacuum tubes, it is time to look from east to west, Frankfurt to be precise, where in 45 minutes the ECB may or may not say something of importance. As Deutsche Bank comments, "Today is the most important day since.... well the last important day as the ECB hosts its widely anticipated monthly meeting." Whilst not many expect concrete action, the success will be judged on how much Draghi hints at much more future action whilst actually probably doing nothing.

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With the Swiss gold stored at the Bank of Canada, now having been transferred out of the Bank of Canada’s Ottawa vault to an unknown location, the Swiss public would be wise to question the SNB on this move. The Swiss gold stored at the Bank of England in London seemingly being ‘actively managed’ one of the world’s largest centres for unallocated gold trading, the Swiss public would also be wise to enquire on this issue. And with significant historical quantities of Swiss gold that were stored with the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York no longer there after the SNB seemingly brought their US vaulted gold holdings to zero, the Swiss public need to question why these particular holdings were targeted for sales from 2000-2005 and not domestically held gold.

While it is unclear whether it is due to the rare event that no central bank stepped in overnight with a massive liquidity injection or because the USDJPY tracking algo hasn't been activated (moments ago Abe's deathwish for the Japanese economy made some more progress with the USDJPY hitting new mult-year highs just shy of 113.6, on its way to 120 and a completely devastated Japanese economy), but European equities have traded in the red from the get-go, with investor sentiment cautious as a result of a disappointing the Chinese manufacturing report. More specifically, Chinese Manufacturing PMI printed a 5-month low (50.8 vs. Exp. 51.2 (Prev. 51.1)), with new orders down to 51.6 from 52.2, new export orders at 49.9 from 50.2 in September. Furthermore, this morning’s batch of Eurozone PMIs have failed to impress with both the Eurozone and German readings falling short of expectations (51.4 vs Exp. 51.8, Last 51.8), with France still residing in contractionary territory (48.5, vs Exp and Last 47.3).

When Calpers buys an international asset for its investors, is it intervening in the forex market on behalf of the US?

Still confused what the BOJ's shocking move was about, aside from pushing the US stock market to a new record high of course? This should explains it all: as the chart below show, as a result of the BOJ's stated intention to buy 8 trillion to 12 trillion yen ($108 billion) of Japanese government bonds per month it means the BOJ will now soak up all of the 10 trillion yen in new bonds that the Ministry of Finance sells in the market each month. In other words. The Bank of Japan’s expansion of record stimulus today may see it buy every new bond the government issues. In other words: full monetization.

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On balance, Morgan Stanley feels that broad-based QE, (i.e. large-scale purchases of government bonds) is further away for the ECB than the market currently believes. Presently they only assign a subjective 40% probability to such a step being taken; whereas the euro rates market is already pricing in the ECB resorting to a broad-based purchase programme with a very high probability of 80-100%. Goldman agrees warning specifically that "Sovereign QE is not imminent... and indeed may never happen." It appears no matter what, disappointment is guaranteed for the market.

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