Money Supply

• The next Enron: JPMorgan at centre of power market probe (FT)
• Former Brokers Say JPMorgan Favored Selling Bank’s Own Funds Over Others (NYT)
• Ex-JPMorgan Trader Feldstein Biggest Winner Betting Against Bank (Bloomberg)
• Finland Firm On Collateral As Spain Aid Terms Discussed (Bloomberg)
• Heatwave threatens US grain harvest (FT)
• Wall Street Is Still Giving to President (WSJ)
• Greenberg Suit Against U.S. Over AIG To Proceed In Court (Bloomberg)
• Crisis forces "dismal science" to get real (Reuters)
• Hope continues to be as a strategy: Asia Stocks Rise On Expectation Of Monetary Policy Easing (Bloomberg)

There is a saying that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. Today, the San Fran Fed's John Williams, and by proxy the Federal Reserve in general, spoke out, and once again removed all doubt that they have no idea how modern money and inflation interact. In a speech titled, appropriately enough, "Monetary Policy, Money, and Inflation", essentially made the case that this time is different and that no matter how much printing the Fed engages in, there will be no inflation. To wit: "In a world where the Fed pays interest on bank reserves, traditional theories that tell of a mechanical link between reserves, money supply, and, ultimately, inflation are no longer valid. Over the past four years, the Federal Reserve has more than tripled the monetary base, a key determinant of money supply. Some commentators have sounded an alarm that this massive expansion of the monetary base will inexorably lead to high inflation, à la Friedman.Despite these dire predictions, inflation in the United States has been the dog that didn’t bark." He then proceeds to add some pretty (if completely irrelevant) charts of the money multipliers which as we all know have plummeted and concludes by saying "Recent developments make a compelling case that traditional textbook views of the connections between monetary policy, money, and inflation are outdated and need to be revised." And actually, he is correct: the way most people approach monetary policy is 100% wrong. The problem is that the Fed is the biggest culprit, and while others merely conceive of gibberish in the form of three letter economic theories, which usually has the words Modern, or Revised (and why note Super or Turbo), to make them sound more credible, they ultimately harm nobody. The Fed's power to impair, however, is endless, and as such it bears analyzing just how and why the Fed is absolutely wrong.

Only a wilful and ideological Keynesian could ignore the salient detail: as soon as the USA left the gold exchange standard,  total factor productivity began to dramatically stagnate.   Coincidence? I don’t think so — a fundamental change in the nature of the money supply coincided almost exactly with a fundamental change to the shape of the nation’s economy. Is  the simultaneous outgrowth in income inequality a coincidence too? Keynesians may respond that correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and though we do not know the exact causation, there are a couple of strong possibilities that may have strangled productivity. It’s not just total factor productivity that has been lower than in the years when America was on the gold exchange standard — as a Bank of England report recently found, GDP growth has averaged lower in the pure fiat money era (2.8% vs 1.8%), and financial crises have been more frequent in the non-gold-standard years.

After about an hour’s worth of air traffic congestion delays around JFK airport, I finally departed New York City yesterday evening en route for Vilnius, Lithuania… one of my favorite inconspicuous corners of Europe. The route took me through Helsinki, Finland for a brief connection, and I was on the ground long enough to witness something truly bizarre: a complete and utter lack of people. I could practically count on two hands the number of passengers milling around the airport this morning during peak business hours… it was almost something out of a zombie movie. Ordinarily I would have seen hundreds, thousands of people… and I have in the past as I’ve traversed this route many times before. And no, today was not a holiday.

"Private Debt Doesn't Matter" Because "Banks Can't Create Money Out of Thin Air"

While a welcome development (and probably even more welcome on the other side of the Atlantic) it doesn’t make up for the fact that the explosive price increases during the boom years were never included. And it isn’t just real estate — equities was another market that massively inflated without being counted in official inflation statistics. It would have been simple at the time to calculate the effective inflation rate with these components included. A wiser economist than Greenspan might have at least paid attention to such information and tightened monetary policy to prevent the incipient bubbles from overheating. Of course, with inflation statistics calculated in the way they are (price changes to an overall basket of retail goods) there will always be a fight over what to include and what not to include. A better approach is to include everything.

European equities in both the futures and the cash markets are making significant gains after a mornings’ trade, with financials, particularly in the periphery, leading the way higher following the weekend reports of the Eurogroup confirming aid for the Spanish banking sector. With data remaining light throughout the day, its likely investors will remain focused on the macro-picture, seeing some relief as the Spanish financials look to be recapitalized. At the open, risk sentiment was clear, with EUR/USD opening in the mid-1.2600’s, and peripheral government bond yield spreads against the German bund significantly tighter. In the past few hours, these positions have unwound somewhat, with EUR/USD breaking comfortably back below 1.2600 and the Spanish 10-yr yield spread moving through unchanged and on a widening trend across the last hour or so against its German counterpart, and the yield failing to break below the 6% mark.

At the high level, our global economic plight is quite simple to understand says noted Australian deflationist Steve Keen.  Banks began lending money at a faster rate than the global economy grew, and we're now at the turning point where we simply have run out of new borrowers for the ever-growing debt the system has become addicted to. Once borrowers start eschewing rather than seeking debt, asset prices begin to fall -- which in turn makes these same people want to liquidate their holdings, which puts further downward pressure on asset prices.

Mark Carney announced a few days ago the Bank of Canada will keep its benchmark interest rate steady at 1%.  This announcement comes despite his previous warnings over the enormous increase in Canadian private debt.  But of course the run up in debt couldn’t have occurred if interest rates were determined by market factors only.  Had supply and demand been allowed to function freely, interest rates would have risen as a check on the swell in debt accumulation.   Carney won’t admit this though.  Like all central bankers, he has made a habit of boasting the positive effects of his low interest rates policies while avoiding blame for the negative consequences. He is a bartender who gleefully takes the drunk’s cash while replying with “who, me?” when said drunk drinks himself to death. Carney’s decision to keep interest rates suppressed is yet another instance of a central banker unable to face reality.  The malinvestments will continue to accumulate and will have to be liquidated at another date.  What Carney has done to mitigate the looming debt and housing bubble is effectively kick the can down the road.  He has revealed through his actions the undeniable truth which holds for all central bankers: that they have no other card to play but the printing press. 

In today’s world, there are many who want government to regulate and control everything. The most bizarre instance, though — more bizarre even than banning the sale of large-sized sugary drinks — is surely central banking. Why? Well, central banking was created to replace something that was already working well. Banking panics and bank runs happen, and they have always happened as long as there has been banking. But the old system that the Fed displaced wasn’t really malfunctioning — unlike what the defenders of central banking today would have us believe. Does central banking retard the economy by providing liquidity insurance and a backstop to bad companies that would not otherwise be saved under a free market “bailout” (like that of 1907)? And is it this effect — that we call zombification — that is the force that has prevented Japan from fully recovering from its housing bubble, and that is keeping the West depressed from 2008? Will we only return to growth once the bad assets and bad companies have been liquidated? That conclusion, we think, is becoming inescapable.

The game continues.  Talk up the economy, talk down printing and pray. If the market heads into the Fed meeting at current levels it runs the risk of being disappointed.  If this is combined with continued economic weakness then the real set up happens between the June meeting and the August one.  It is in that interim period that the market could throw another one of its hissy fits and beg for more liquidity.  Money supply growth is extremely sluggish right now all over the world.  The velocity never happened and the global economy is rolling over.  The Fed is already behind the curve and so when they are forced to act the infusion will have to be huge just to stem the momentum. Mike Krieger suggests people go back and look at different asset classes from the prior two lows in China’s M2 year-over-year growth rate.  The first one occurred in late 2004.  The M2 growth rate then accelerated until around mid 2006.  In that time period gold prices went up around 65% and the S&P 500 went up 20%.  In the second period of acceleration from late 2008 to late 2009 gold was up 65% and the S&P500 was up 15%.  We are at one of these inflection points and considering the DOW/Gold ratio is still holding gains from its countertrend rally from last August of almost 40%, this is probably one of the best entry points to buy gold and short the Dow of any time in the last decade.

All you need to read.

It may feel like I'm out of touch with the precious metals markets to broach the subject of a mania today, but I think the table is being set now for a huge move into gold and silver. There are, however, very valid reasons to reasonably expect a mania in our sector. For one thing, manias have occurred many times before, but the main issue is that a mania in gold and gold stocks is the likely result of the absolute balloon in government debt, deficit spending, and money printing. Saying all that profligacy will go away without inflationary consequences seems naïve or foolish. Inflation may not attract investors to gold and silver as much as force them to it. Now, one could make the argument that any rush into gold and silver will be muted if no one has any savings, especially given that demographers say a quarter of the developed world will soon be retired. But even if individuals are wiped out, the world's money supply isn't getting any smaller, and all that cash has to go somewhere. I wanted to look at cash levels among various investor groups to get a feel for what's out there, as well as how money supply compares to our industry. Data from some institutional investors are hard to come by, but below is a sliver of information about available cash levels. I compared the cash and short-term investments of S&P 500 corporations, along with M1, to gold and silver ETFs, coins, and equities. While the picture might be what you'd expect, the contrast is still rather striking.

Reflecting on yesterday's monetary-policy-hope-driven rally, UBS' Art Cashin prefers to focus on Richard Fisher's very frank (and succinct) speech on the limits of monetary policy and the importance of fiscal policy.  Urging everyone to read it, and send it to your Congressman and Senators, he reminds us that Fisher is the only Fed policymaker to have been a banker and a money manager, and in the words of Richard Fisher, he worries that: "there is a growing sense that we are unwittingly, or worse, deliberately, monetizing the wayward ways of Congress."

The most recent money supply data from the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has shown increases of huge amounts. As compared with its loss of 19 bln. francs in 2010 (3% percent of the Swiss GDP), the central bank printed tremendous 17.3 bln. in the week ending in June 1st and 13 bln. in the one ending in May 25th. These numbers were not seen since August 2011 when the SNB increased money supply by 50 bln and 40 bln per week buying the EUR/CHF at rates between 1.00 and 1.13. Now, however they are buying at 1.20 and are risking extreme losses, especially because many other central banks are dumping euros.