Deutsche Bank

As Reuters reports, "Deutsche Bank aims to cut roughly 23,000 jobs, or about one quarter of total staff, through layoffs mainly in technology activities and by spinning off its PostBank division, financial sources said on Monday."

The title does give it away: the only event that everyone will be focusing on this week will be the Fed's announcement and Yellen's press conference on Thursday. Here is what else is on deck.

In the seven years since the world’s central banks responded to the financial crisis by slashing interest rates, more than a dozen banks in the advanced world have tried to raise them again. All have been forced to retreat.

To be sure, whether or not Janet Yellen has made a mistake will become all too clear over time. All one need do is observe whether EMs careen further into chaos and/or whether the PBoC becomes even more schizophrenic, but as far as what to watch in the immediate aftermath of the FOMC announcement, we return to what we noted after September’s NFP print when we quoted BofAML. To wit: “If they do hike, watch the long-end.”

"A 'policy error' rate hike might well result in positive correlations among equities, commodities and bonds, due to a combination of risk off and higher rates. In this case it is not entirely clear how risk-parity funds would rebalance: A potential candidate for inflows would be currencies, and in particular the dollar. This would only put additional upward pressure on the dollar, reinforcing the “policy error” nature of the hike."

Behind the veneer of “all is well” being promoted by both world Governments and the Mainstream Media, the political and financial elite have begun implementing moves to prepare for the next Crisis.

This past week has seen a continuation of market volatility unlike anything witnessed over the last several years. Of course, this volatility all coincides at a time where market participants are struggling with a global economic slowdown, pressures from China, collapsing oil prices, a lack of liquidity from the Federal Reserve and the threat of rising interest rates.  It is a brew of ingredients that would have already likely toppled previous bull markets, and it is only by a hairsbreadth the current one continues to breathe.

When it comes to the Fed's upcoming rate hike, only one simple shorthand matters: higher rates means less liquidity, and vice versa. What does that mean for inflation/deflation and bond yields? According to the following simple and understandable analysis by Deutsche Bank, nothing good.

Earlier today we got the most glaring confirmation there had been absolutely zero coordination at the highest levels of authority and "responsibility", when the World Bank's current chief economist, Kaushik Basu warned that the Fed risks, and we quote, triggering “panic and turmoil” in emerging markets if it opts to raise rates at its September meeting and should hold fire until the global economy is on a surer footing, the World Bank’s chief economist has warned. And just in case casually tossing the words "panic in turmoil" was not enough, Basu decided to add a few more choice nouns, adding a rate hike "could yield a “shock” and a new crisis in emerging markets"

Thanks to the new normal world of extremely loose monetary policy and extraordinary accumulations of financial assets by Central Banks, Deutsche Bank finds that we live in a period not of selectively expensive global asset prices, but of record "expensiveness" across developed market bonds, stocks, and real estate.

The data point everyone has been waiting on is out and, just as we tipped weeks ago, China liquidated nearly $100 billion in USD assets during the month of August in support of the yuan.

What is the reason for the drop? Well, one can believe the ECB's stated explanation which is that due to European summer vacations, activity in Europe has ground to a halt. Of course, this would suggest that monetization in the Eurozone is continent on managers' summer vacation plans, which is probably an even more troubling explanation of ECB activity bottlenecks than what may be really going on in Europe. The alternative? As we noted over the weekend when we reported that now even the IMF is discussing the upcoming limits to BOJ QE as a result of sellers running out of BOJs to hand over to the BOJ, the same may be taking place in Europe

Logically, the massive liquidation of USD assets by China and other emerging market central banks should put upward pressure on UST yields and will, all else equal, work at cross purposes with DM central bank QE. But all else is never really equal...

"there is a sense that policy is being priced to “fail” rather than succeed... why should equities always rise in value? Why should debt holders be expected to afford their debt burden? There are plenty of alternative viable equilibria with SPX half its value, longevity liabilities in default and debt deflation in abundance. In those equilibria traditional QE ceases to work and the only road back to what we think is the current desired equilibrium is via true helicopter money via fiscal stimulus where there are no independent central banks.