M2

"It seems to us that the government’s policy options are rapidly narrowing – one only needs to look at how difficult it has been for the government to hold up GDP growth since mid-2014. A slow-down in economic growth is typically a prelude to financial sector instability. Putting it all together, it seems to us that many of these conflicts may come to a head in 2016."

Because our macroeconomic policies have false targets and actually incentivize short term strategies the Fed has directly led us off of an economic cliff. Now that the Fed has boxed itself out of any further action, the market is at the peril of a collapsing, breadwinner-job-less and debt ridden economy and so prepare yourself for the largest market ‘correction’ the world has ever faced.

Elections are misunderstood. On the surface they are contests between zombies and cronies. The zombies (leftists, socialists, Democrats) want lots of little handouts. The cronies (rightists, Wall Streeters, Republicans) want fewer but bigger ones. All the loot comes from the voters – who willingly give up both their money and their liberty believing that, somehow, they are better off for it. But the real winner is the Deep State. It usually controls the candidates... and continues to gain power and resources, no matter which side wins. But the Deep State is not immune to setbacks.

"What I find most hilarious is that some serious commentators have been pontificating at considerable length about what the market’s participants think. These days, some 70% of market orders are generated by computers, and many of the rest by indexers. And computers do not think... I cannot remember a time when less thinking has ever been done in the financial markets, which is why I find today’s financial markets infinitely boring."

- Charles Gave

We all need to work together to create an environment that is hostile to bad guys.  We don't need more gun-free zones like San Bernadino...

Hitler said often that the bigger the lie, the easier it would be [for the masses] to believe.  This is no where more true than Forex.

While EM sovereigns as a group may be in better shape now in terms of “original sin” (i.e borrowing heavily in foreign currencies) than they were during say, the Asian Currency Crisis, the confluence of factors outlined above means no one is truly “safe” in the current environment as moving from liquidation back to accumulation will entail a sharp reversal in commodity prices and a pickup in the pace of global growth and trade.

If you know someone special that likes the finer things in life, and lives where they may need to defend those finer things and their life, I offer mrs_horseman's recipe for, "Can-of-Whoop-Ass."

All great monetary fiascos are forged upon a foundation of misperceptions and flawed premises. There’s always an underlying disturbance in money and credit masked by supposed new understandings, technologies, capabilities and superior financial apparatus. The notion back in 2006 and 2007 that the world was at the brink of a major crisis was considered absolute wackoism. Incredibly – and well worth contemplating these days - virtually no one saw the deep structural impairment associated with the protracted Bubble in “Wall Street Finance.” An even more momentous monetary fiasco has been perpetrated since the 2008 crisis, constructed upon a foundation of even more outlandish misperceptions and flawed premises.

How much did the PBoC spend propping up China's stock market in Q3? By how much did they overpay? How likely are they to take an outsized loss? BofAML takes a look.

The biggest event overnight came from Europe, where Draghi managed to once again jawbone the Euro lower by ober 50 pips when he told European lawmakers in a prepared testimony that downside economic risks are "clearly visible," repeating his October press conference statement, adding that the ECB will reexamine degree of accommodation in December as "inflation dynamics have somewhat weakened." And the statement that crushed the Euro: "If we were to conclude that our medium-term price stability objective is at risk, we would act by using all the instruments available within our mandate to ensure that an appropriate degree of monetary accommodation is maintained." I.e., another "whatever it takes" moment.

China can’t allow its industrial economy to sink without a fight. It will have to devalue the renminbi to try to get more market share for its exports. It still has 80% of its workers earning less than $10 a day. A lower renminbi will reduce real wages further and make China’s exports cheaper than ever. And then, what about the rest of the world? As the renminbi goes down, the dollar, yen, and euro will have to go up. Commodities – priced in dollars – will stay down. U.S. corporate profits will fall. The stock market “tape” will go down. Consumer prices, too, will remain low... or go negative. Deflation. Deflation. Deflation.

We will be the first to admit that yield curve inversion is not the only factor causing recessions, but through the credit channel it can be an important contributor. Depending on the importance of the credit channel, the Federal Reserve, by pegging the short term rate at zero, have essentially removed one recessionary market mechanism that used to efficiently clear excesses within the financial system. While stability obsessed Keynesians on a quest to the permanent boom regard this as a positive development, the rest of us obviously understand that false stability breeds instability.

At least parts of the Fed all the way back in 1979 appreciated how Greenspan and Bernanke’s “global savings glut” was a joke. Rather than follow that inquiry to a useful line of policy, monetary officials instead just let it all go into the ether of, from their view, trivial history. But the true disaster lies not just in that intentional ignorance but rather how orthodox economists and policymakers were acutely aware there was “something” amiss about money especially by the 1990’s. Because these dots to connect were so close together the only reasonable conclusion for this discrepancy is ideology alone. Economists were so bent upon creating monetary “rules” by which to control the economy that they refused recognition of something so immense because it would disqualify their very effort.

"On the current trajectory, we doubt the market can stay stable beyond a few quarters, especially if some SOE and/or LGFV bonds indeed default."
- Bank of America