Great Depression

Chevron, we have a problem.

If you hold precious metals in your portfolio, there is a good chance you fear hyperinflation and the crash of fiat currencies. You probably distrust governments in general and believe they are self-serving and have no interest in your economic well-being. It is likely that your holdings in gold are your lifeline – your hope to get you through these times while holding on to your wealth. But have you ever given any thought to the possibility of having this lifeline confiscated by the authorities? If you fall into this camp, you're in good company. As terrible as the thought is, it seems unlikely to us that the government will not confiscate gold, as they have little to lose and so much to gain.

Almost all recoveries from recession have included rapid employment growth – until now. Though advanced-country central banks have pursued expansionary monetary policy in the wake of the global economic crisis in an effort to boost demand, job creation has lagged. As a result, workers, increasingly convinced that they will be unable to find employment for a sustained period, are leaving the labor force in droves. Rather than changing its approach, however, the Fed has responded to slow employment growth by launching additional rounds of QE. At some point, the Fed must realize that its current policy is not working. The US economy has not responded to the Fed’s monetary expansion, because America’s biggest problems are not liquidity problems.

Recent price action amid the heavily shorted solar stocks has seemingly been predicated on hope that late May chatter of negotiated settlements in the industry would occur and everyone could go happily about their business. While hope remains for a settlement - and tariffs have been delayed 2 months, as the WSJ reports - the EU is set to announce drastic anti-dumping levies on Chinese solar panels in a move that could trigger a trade war between two of the world's largest economies:

• *EU SAYS SOLAR-PANEL DUTY TO START AT 11% ON JUNE 6
• *EU SAYS SOLAR-PANEL DUTY TO RISE TO 47.6% IN AUGUST
• *EU'S DE GUCHT SAYS NOT CLOSE TO SOLAR-PANEL PACT WITH CHINA

Sadly this is playing out very similarly to the Great Depression period as tariffs and protectionism replaced domestic focused fiscal and monetary policy and escalated problems rapidly. China rejects the EU's price-dumping allegations, but the problem is not new for Beijing. The U.S. last year imposed punitive tariffs on solar panel imports after finding that China's government was subsidizing companies that were flooding the U.S. market.

On practically every day of the past four years, we have said that it was the Fed's own policies that are causing the ever-deeper systemic weakness in the US (and now global with all central banks going "all in") economy, which in turn forces the Fed to intervene even more aggressively in an attempt to counteract, in turn generating ever more economic weakness, leading to even more intervention, which is why every incremental episode of QE is larger and longer, and why the economic baseline is ever lower in the most perverse feedback loop of the New Normal. Now, it is once again Bill Gross to catch up to Zero Hedge and conclude just this in his latest monthly letter: "It’s been five years Mr. Chairman and the real economy has not once over a 12-month period of time grown faster than 2.5%. Perhaps, in addition to a fiscally confused Washington, it’s your policies that may be now part of the problem rather than the solution. Perhaps the beating heart is pumping anemic, even destructively leukemic blood through the system. Perhaps zero-bound interest rates and quantitative easing programs are becoming as much of the problem as the solution." Which is why there simply is no way out as long as Bernanke stays in.

By my count we are now in our fourth “Recovery Summer.” The recession was officially (and mistakenly) declared over in June 09. Yet, no data series in economics not influenced drastically by liquidity and a zero interest rate policy (e.g., stock prices and home prices) supports the claim. Recovery advocates point to the stock market as a barometer of how well the economy is doing. A key takeaway is that the stock market misled people during the 1930s and may be doing the same thing today. Those who want to argue against this position will declare the 1930s an unfair comparison because it was a Great Depression. Just what makes them think what we are in today is not the same thing, although not yet as far advanced. Given the trillions of dollars wasted to hide the true condition of the economy, that is not an unreasonable possibility. This liquidity hides the true nature of the economy (also falsely drives up financial asset prices) and creates even bigger distortions in the real economy.

Neil Macdonald of the CBC recently did an investigative piece on central bankers and what they’re doing to the world’s economies. Mark Carney was featured heavily. He told Macdonald, “there is no secret cabal orchestrating things,” despite CBC’s own findings earlier in the program. Central bankers around the world meet in Basel, Switzerland for secretive meetings. Of course, central banks have – and have always had – enormous power that remained more-or-less hidden until 2008. A paradigm shift is occurring where a large number of people (particularly young people) are questioning their assumptions. Some of them are even beginning to read economists like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. The “economics” of central bankers can now be revealed for what it truly is: statistical propaganda. Not only is the “Keynesian school” of economics unsound – the entire social science is bunk. Only the Austrian tradition can explain economic phenomena in such a way that makes common sense, scientific. Carney is asking us to trust him. This cannot be done. He is not speaking truth; he is speaking nonsense.

Over three months ago in "South Korea Starts Currency War Rumblings; Has Japan In Its Sights" we showed that the one nation with the biggest sensitivity to Japan's currency-destructive and export-promoting Abenomics policy is its close neighbor, South Korea. With nearly 60% of SK's entire GDP deriving from net exports, every percent drop in its trade balance result in a more than 0.5% hit to GDP: more than any nation in the world. And since South Korea and Japan compete for the same export end markets, there would be no bigger loser in a zero trade sum world than Seoul. However now that Abenomics is in its sixth month, and South Korea's max export pain threshold has been reached, the country no longer will stay silent. As the FT reports, "South Korea has warned that G8 leaders need to do more to tackle the “unintended consequences” of Japan’s monetary easing when they gather for a summit later this month amid mounting concerns about the knock-on effects of a weaker yen. In an interview, Hyun Oh-seok, the South Korean finance minister and deputy prime minister, said that international co-ordinated action was needed to mitigate the impact of so-called “Abenomics” on currency markets."

The wild ride in Japan's bond market is a prelude to what will happen in other developed markets.

Is there a better phrase to describe modern government than “a seedy circus which is perpetually in debt?” It is perfect. Government is exhausted. It, like Whipsnade’s circus, is  out of resources, ideas and solutions. Government has painted itself into a fiscal and financial corner from which there is no escape. As a result of its profligacy, government is no longer able to sustain itself. That is the real reason for the Fed’s quantitative easing program(s). Taxes and traditional government bond sales no longer provide enough money to run the monster. QE, more properly described as counterfeiting, is a euphemism to disguise the insolvency of the government. Without the Federal Reserve, government would have to pare down dramatically. Government is now a facade, with guns. It has failed miserably at governance and shifted its focus to survival.

US consumer confidence is soaring. That's great - there is a problem: the two year drop real US wages has never been lower.

The conventional wisdom is that oil should decline in nominal price as global demand weakens along with the global economy. In the hot-money-seeks-a-new-home scenario outlined above, demand could decline on the margins but speculative inflows - demand for oil contracts by speculators - push prices higher, potentially a lot higher in a geopolitical crisis. The central banks that are creating all the "free money" that is available to large speculators fulminate against oil speculators, as if all the free money is only supposed to go to "approved" speculations in equities and bonds. Unfortunately for the central bankers, they only create the money, they don't control what the financiers who get the free money do with it. Gasoline is expensive at the pump, but by one measure oil is cheap and poised to go higher and despite the endless MSM hype about U.S. energy independence and U.S. exporting energy abroad, the U.S. still imports over 3 billion barrels of crude oil every year and when oil becomes expensive: the economy sinks into recession.

• ‘Cov-lite’ loans soar in dash for yield (FT)
• Cambodian police clash with thousands of garment workers, 23 hurt (Reuters)
• Obama Accepting Sequestration as Deficit Shrinks (BBG)
• Having done nothing to restore confidence in a fragmented market, the SEC turns back to main street fraud (WSJ)
• Europe's austerity-to-growth shift largely semantic (Reuters)
• Germany thwarts EU in China solar fight (FT)
• In EU-China dispute, Beijing warns of trade  (FT)
• U.S. Oil Boom Divides OPEC (WSJ)
• Record Cash Sent to Balanced Funds (BBG)
• Hilsenrath: Fed Wrestles With Market Expectations About Pace of QE (WSJ)
• Worse-Than-Cyprus Debt Load Means Caribbean Defaults to Moody’s (BBG)
• States Raise College Budgets After Years of Deep Cuts (WSJ)
• U.K. Banks Cut 189,000 With Employment at Nine-Year Low (BBG)

The aftermath of the largest liquidity injection process in the history of the world, is that politics, and the entire fiscal process, has effectively been rendered obsolete, and politicians are now nothing but figureheads in a central banker world. Perhaps, the general public would be angry if it were to realize that the only entity left making global macro economic decisions is a private organization run by academics, who in turn are merely firgureheads for the world's private banks. That, however, would entail that the co-opted media would actually explain to the broader population just what is going on behind the scenes: a process that would entail the loss of core advertising revenue, which is why expect confusion about just who pulls the strings to linger for years.

Investors borrowed $384.4 billion in April, a 1.3% gain from the previous month and a 29% rise from the same month last year. This is an all-time record for margin debt and it exceeds the previous high mark set in June 2007. Some may see this as an increased sign of investor confidence but we are not among them. To me this is a giant red warning flag blowing in the financial breeze indicating the leveraging of dumb money making very risky bets. We are once again in the crack house of substance abuse! In each age the gods of the marketplace show up once more. The packaging may be different but the powder is the same. Each dealer uses the same line, "Nothing addictive here."