Demographics

"Since Washington doesn't understand what went wrong in 2007 and 2008, so the Fed, the White House and Congress are recreating the very same conditions for another financial bubble. If it pops, we could replay the same devastating effects as occurred during the first bubble in 1999 and 2000.”

In the beginning of 2008, a US dollar could buy only €0.65 euros. Today, on average through 2015, one US dollar can buy €0.91 euros. With European demographics getting more challenging by the year, and deflation stalking the eurozone, problems don’t seem to be going away for the euro. The crises in Ukraine and Greece continue on without much resolved, and the ECB is continuing on with its QE program. Meanwhile, the Refugee Crisis has created another political distraction that has its own challenges for the people of Europe. Will the shrinking euro be able to revert its course, or is Europe doomed to become the next Japan?

"Underproduction, undercapacity, deflation, currency wars, demographics, falling birth rates" - those are the biggest fears which Fourth Turning author, and head of Saeculum Research Neil Howe, lays out in this interview excerpt courtesy of RealVision TV.

The cyclical fallout from the Great Financial Crisis and the secular deflationary “D’s” of excess Debt, tech Disruption, aging Demographics have been the major catalysts for deflation.

This globalization of regional housing markets is pricing the middle class out of housing in areas that also happen to be strong job markets. Many commentators are concerned that a nation of homeowners is being transformed into a nation of renters, as housing is snapped up by hedge funds and wealthy elites fleeing China and the emerging markets. But will current conditions continue unchanged going forward?

Having government control over the levers of the economy can have advantages. For example, by taking prompt action, the Chinese government was able to pull the economy out of the recession remarkably fast, basically by fire-housing the stimulus package that was equivalent to 12% GDP. That’s the advantage. The only problem is that these kinds of short-term advantages come with long-term, painful consequences.

Q. Should somebody have gone to jail.

Bernanke: Yeah, yeah I think so. It would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual actions as obviously everything that went wrong, or was illegal, was done by some individial not by an abstract firm.

The current surge in dis-inflationary pressures is not just due to the recent fall in oil prices, but rather a global epidemic of slowing economic growth. While Janet Yellen addressed this "disinflationary" wave during her post-meeting press conference, the Fed still maintains the illusion of confidence that economic growth will return shortly. Unfortunately, this has been the Fed's "Unicorn" since 2011 as annual hopes of economic recovery have failed to materialize. However, it is these ongoing views of optimism that have collided with economic realities.

"Mainstream America with their 401Ks are in a similar pickle. Expecting 8-10% to pay for education, healthcare, retirement or simply taking an accustomed vacation, they won’t be doing much of it as long as short term yields are at zero. They are not so much in a pickle barrel as they are on a revolving spit, being slowly cooked alive while central bankers focus on their Taylor models and fight non-existent inflation."

With Abenomics seemingly a total failure (aside from managing to collapse the currency and living standards of the population - worst Misery Index in 33 years) the demographic crisis that Japan faces just got more crisis-er. As Japan's population continues to fall (4th year in a row), what makes the situation worse, as NHKWorld reports, is that there are now a record 33.8 million people over the age of 65 (a record 26.7%), more than double the number under the age of 14 (16.2 million). The ministry says the population will likely continue declining for some time as fewer babies are born and society ages... and as America is beginning to see as retirement dream remain elusive, the number of working elderly increased for 11 years in a row to reach a new record figure of 6.81 million in 2014.

"Asia banks indicate in coming weeks markets at early stage of crisis; Q3 EPS shows recessionary global economy. Crowded Discretionary, Banks, Tech & Eurozone most at risk should peak liquidity coincide with EPS recession, SPX<1870, GT30<2.8%, DXY<93...at least until new extreme policies introduced (Fed QE4, China QE1 or a G7 shift toward fiscal policy stimulus)."

“Most Texans do not want to break away from the United States. Most Texans consider themselves Americans. But if ever being American means sacrificing our liberties, we will just prefer to be Texans.”

"There have been a number of studies that have been done recently that have tried to take account of many different ways in which monetary policy acting through different parts of the transmission mechanism affect inequality, and there's a lot of guesswork involved, and different analyses can come up with different things. But a pretty recent paper that's quite comprehensive concludes that the -- that Fed policy has not exacerbated income inequality."

Nahhh ... The Problem Is NOT ENOUGH Debt! </sarc>

Everything is so wonderful that a rate hike would equate to saying the Fed has won. Seven years of ZIRP and a few selling periods when the Fed stopped POMO’s and QE injections, we can easily say with extreme confidence that the Fed won. And by won we mean didn’t ruin the system entirely. Except they did.