Central Banks

Even though the odds are never in our favor, there is still hope. Not everyone has to make the extreme sacrifice in order to contribute to the revolution. There are thousands of small acts which will weaken the establishment: "Don’t be a slave to debt. Live beneath your means and accumulate some physical silver and gold. Don’t vote for candidates selected by the vested interests. Spread the message of liberty and freedom to anyone who will listen. Think critically. Do not trust your government. Prepare for the inevitable collapse of this rotten, fetid, corrupt paradigm."

"Security prices are not low. I wouldn’t say high, but full. So people are thinking cautiously but they’re acting bullish and they’re behaving in a pro-risk fashion. While investor behavior hasn’t sunk to the depths seen just before the crisis, in many ways I feel it has entered the zone of imprudence... The market is not an accommodating machine. It will not go where you want it to go just because you need it to go there."

Despite the increasing perception of policy divergence between The US and the rest of the world, it appears 'factors beyond the control of the central planners' has stymied hope for any US-based sparking of global growth. Between The Fed's liquidity withdrawal and the deflationary tsunami from an emerging world buried in credit-fueled mal-investment, it is increasingly clear that central banks have lost control and everything is now going down together. As Citi's Willem Buiter recently noted, "everything's failed" so how long before we see the money drop?

Imagine if Casinos told you in advance what the next card from the deck in a game of Blackjack was going to be?

When the When Issued data hit minutes ahead of the auction pricing, we were expecting a number well through the 1.073% When Issued.This is precisely what happened as the Treasury confirmed moments ago when it announced it had sold $26 billion in 2 Year notes at a yield of 1.056%, a whopping 1.7 bps through the When Issued: just like that, the short squeeze worked again.

"Essentially central banks, by unfairly inflating asset prices have compressed risk like a spring to unfairly tight levels. Unfortunately, the market is aware the price of risk is not correct, but they can’t fight it, and everyone is forced to crowd into the same trade. By manipulating markets they have also reduced investors’ inherent conviction by rendering fundamentals less relevant."

It becomes ever more tempting to conclude that the timing of the Fed’s rate hike was really quite odd, even from the perspective of the planners...

This is what happens when the Fed’s academic-based nonsense collides with economic realities: perversions of capital that lead to massive bubbles and eventually even more massive crises.

According to a recent contrarian call by  Prerequisite Capital Management, the "US Treasury Bond Market is potentially set up for a substantial move higher over the next year or two." Here are the reasons why.

"If, as seems possible, the ECB will increase, in H1 2016, the scale of its monthly asset purchases from €60bn to, say, €75bn, and if these additional purchases are concentrated on public debt, the euro area will benefit from a ‘backdoor’ helicopter money drop –something long overdue."

"By now, it’s an all-too-familiar drill. After an extended period of extraordinary monetary accommodation, the US Federal Reserve has begun the long march back to normalization. A majority of financial market participants applaud this strategy. In fact, it is a dangerous mistake."

"Unfortunately, an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.” 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders said in an op-ed on Wednesday that a full independent audit of the Federal Reserve is necessary “to reign in Wall Street."

The situation is clear: the 2008 Crisis was the warm up. The next Crisis will be THE REAL Crisis. The Crisis in which Central Banking itself will fail.

Goldman, Decembert 20, 2015: "We think the BoJ is closer to easing further to attempt to achieve a successful reflation than it is to giving up altogether, and so we continue to expect $/JPY higher. We recommend being long $/JPY as part of our 2016 top trade recommendation (along with short EUR/$) and forecast $/JPY at 130 in 12 months"... Three days later, the USDJPY is 100 pips lower.

The Fed will never succeed in its attempt to manage inflation and unemployment by varying interest rates. This is because it and its economists do not accept the relationship between, on one side, the money it creates and the bank credit its commercial banks issue out of thin air, and on the other the disruption unsound money causes in the economy. This has been going on since the Fed was created, which makes the question as to whether the Fed was right to raise interest rates recently irrelevant.