Central Banks

"Central banks alone cannot be relied upon to deliver all the policies necessary to achieve macroeconomic goals. Governments must also act and use the policy-making space provided by conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures. Failure to do so would be a serious error and would risk setting the stage for further economic disturbances and imbalances in the future."

"Europe has seen nothing like this for 70 years – the visible expression of a world where order is collapsing. The millions of refugees fleeing from ceaseless Middle Eastern war and barbarism are voting with their feet, despairing of their futures. The catalyst for their despair – the shredding of state structures and grip of Islamic fundamentalism on young Muslim minds – shows no sign of disappearing. Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats."

Correction continues, but it is only a correction.

"We believe that the path of least resistance would be to effectively ban capitalism and by-pass banking and capital markets altogether. We gave this policy change several names (such as “Cuba alternative”, “British Leyland”) but the essence of the new form of QE would be using central banks and public instrumentalities to directly inject “heroin into blood stream” rather than relying on system of incentives to drive investor behaviour."

Austerity: Also known as “sado-fiscalism”. A forlorn attempt to stave off government bankruptcy.

...

Keynesians: Economists “who hear voices in the air (and) are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” (John Maynard Keynes).

There can be little doubt that the massive, unprecedented surge in inventory accumulation (which counts positively to GDP) will eventually be liquidated. When it does the US enter recession, global dollar liquidity crashes, the value of dollar surges even higher, pulling EM further down and a world recession will be upon us again. In this scenario central banks panic...

"If only it was that easy to print our way out of a global crisis." 

As part of a global investigation into how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, we submitted the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at the central bank of Belgium (NBB) to obtain information about the amount of Belgian official gold reserves, the exact location of all gold bars, the type of gold accounts NBB holds at the Bank Of England (BOE) and how much is leased out and to whom. The outcome of this research was not what we had expected...

The warnings are getting louder.  Is anybody listening?

One weekend. The process was not gradual. It was sudden and it was total: once it began in earnest, the banks were closed and you couldn’t get your money out (more on this in a moment).

Investors should hope for the best while making preparations for less benign scenarios. This can be achieved by reducing leverage and speculation and having a healthy allocation to physical precious metals in the safest vaults in the world.

If Western governments didn’t want a refugee crisis, they shouldn’t have been so eager to topple those governments and destabilize those countries. The refugees should camp out in the backyards of the individuals who run those governments.

News That Matters

Frequent followers of the German public campaign “Repatriate our Gold“ already know how intensively we have been struggling since 2011 (and longer) with Deutsche Bundesbank to finally – after more than 50 years of external storage of Germany’s gold – get credible transparency regarding this matter. Some progress was brought about recently (2012 disclosure of the whereabouts of Germany´s gold by BuBa; 2013 partial repatriation plan announced by BuBa; 2013 and ongoing through 2015 alleged physical repatriation of approximately 200 tons to date – equaling approximately 10% of Germany’s gold abroad). But real proof and transparency is still lacking from Bundesbank’s side!

As more and more "reputable" analysts realize that the 30 Year bull market in Treasury isn't going anywhere, another firm jumped on the "more easing" bandwagon overnight, when HSBC's Steven Major slashed his target yield on 10Y Treasurys for 2015 and 2016, from 2.4% and 2.8% to 2.1% and 1.5% respectively. The reason: more easing of course, or rather expectations for further ECB monetary easing which will help U.S. curve to perform.