Money Supply

Awareness about the concept of money is making a comeback. Gone are the decades in which the global citizenry was fooled to leave this subject to economists, governments and banks – a setup that has proven to end in disaster. The crisis in 2008 has spawned debate about what money is, where it comes from and where it should come from.

The last few months have seen a steady drip-drip-drip increase in US, European, and Chinese bank credit risks, even as stock prices rose (aside from the latter). The turning point appears to have been the downturn in oil prices as traders began to hedge their counterparty risk in massive levered derivative positions tied to commodities. But it is not just banks... COMEX counterparty risk mut sbe on the rise, as Jesse's Cafe Americain notes, the 'claims per ounce of gold' deliverable at current prices has spiked higher once again, to a record 126:1.

By monetizing more than the entire Japanese budget deficit, the BOJ is running of out willing sellers. Without those, Japan's QE, just like that of the ECB, will grind to a halt. Better yet, this creates a vicious loop, because with every passing month, the inevitable D-Day when the BOJ has no more TSYs on the offer gets closer, which in turn will force those who bought stocks to sell in anticipation of the end of QE, and to seek the safety of bonds themsleves, in effect precipitating the next inevitable Japanese stock market crash.

While many continue to debate if what with every passing day increasingly looks like a global recession, one from which the US will not decouple no matter how many "virtual portfolio" asset managers claim the contrary, there are those who without much fanfare are already taking proactive steps to avoid the kind of fallout that the markets have hinted in the past month of trading, is inevitable. Some such as Calstrs: the nation's second largest pension fund with $191 billion in assets (smaller only than Calpers), which as the WSJ reports is "considering a significant shift away from some stocks and bonds amid turbulent markets world-wide."  According to the WSJ, it will move as much as $20 billion, or 12% of the fund’s stock  portfolio, into other assets, including Treasurys.

With 30% of Venzuelans eating two or fewer meals per day, social unrest is mounting rapidly in President Nicolas Maduro's socialist utopia. As WSJ reports, soldiers have now been deployed to stem rampant food smuggling and price speculation, which Maduro blames for triple-digit inflation and scarcity. "Due to the shortage of food... the desperation is enormous," local opposition politician Andres Camejo said, and nowhere is that more evident than the trampling death of an 80-year-old woman outside a state-subsidized supermarket.

The economic slowdown in China was set in motion a long time ago when the yearly rate of growth of the money supply fell from 39.3 percent in January 2010 to 1.8 percent by April 2012. The effect of this massive decline in the growth momentum of money puts severe pressure on bubble activities and in turn on various key economic activity data. Any tampering with the currency rate of exchange can only make things much worse as far as the allocation of scarce resources is concerned.

...as soon as credit expansion stops, the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments must liquidate the unsound overinvestments of the boom and redirect the economy. And, of course, the longer the boom is kept going, the greater the malinvestments that must be liquidated, and the more harrowing the readjustments that must be made.

News That Matters

Demand Surge and Shortages of Bullion as Stocks Fall Sharply, Gold Outperforms All Assets In August

Crash waves are notoriously volatile – several of the biggest one day rallies in history have occurred before and during crash waves. This makes short term forecasting even more of a coin flip than it normally is. However, we believe it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees; stock markets around the world have been in bubbles driven by extremely loose monetary policy, which ipso facto allows us to identify them as an example of artificial price distortion. Such bubbles always collapse sooner or later – unless the monetary authority decides to simply destroy the currency it issues, as has happened in Zimbabwe and is currently happening in countries like Venezuela and to a slightly lesser extent Argentina. We don’t expect the central banks of the developed nations to follow suit, at least not yet.

After a 5 day tumbling streak, which saw Chinese stock plunge well over 20% and 17% in just the first three days of this week, overnight the Shanghai Composite was hanging by a thread (and threat) until the last hour of trading. In fact, this is what the SHCOMP looked like until the very end: Up 2.6%, up 1.2%, up 2.8%, up 0.6%, up 2%... down 0.2%. And then the cavalry came in: "Heavyweight stocks like banks and insurance companies helped pull up the index, and it’s possibly China Securities Finance entering the market again to shore up stocks," Central China Sec. strategist Zhang Gang told Bloomberg by phone. Net result: the Composite, having been red just shortly before the close, soared higher by 156 points or 5.4%, showing the US stock market just how it's down.

A half-century ago, America - and then the world - was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time. Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it - except that now, with gold abandoned and each nation able to print currency ad lib, we are likely to wind up, not with a repeat of 1929, but with something far worse...

As asset bubbles are in the way of the Fed’s policy, a decline in stock prices removes the equity market bubble and enables the Fed to print more money and start the process up again. On the other hand, the stock market decline could indicate that the players in the market have comprehended that the stock market is an artificially inflated bubble that has no real basis. Once the psychology is destroyed, flight sets in.

The reason given by our rulers for suppressing cash is to keep society safe from terrorists, tax evaders, money launderers, drug cartels, and other villains real or imagined. The actual aim of the ?ood of laws restricting or even prohibiting the use of cash is to force the public to make payments through the financial system. This enables governments to expand their ability to spy on and keep track of their citizens’ most private financial dealings, in order to milk their citizens of every last dollar of tax payments that they claim are due.

A non-bombastic discussion of market forces and what to expect next