Quantitative Easing

All you need to read.

Now that talk of NEW QE is once again all the rage, and with the FOMC's June meeting in less than a month, and since there is nothing that anyone can do, short of a revolution to prevent this (with half the country obese, and the other half hypnotized by the Kardashians or on disability, that ain't happening), it only makes sense to join them since we can't beat them. Which is why we are officially launching the "POMO For The Rest Of Us" initiative. Beginning today, we will collate readers' ideas based on twitter posts with the #POMOList hashtag, which we naturally suggest be addressed to the @FederalReserve twitter account as we wouldn't want the good central planners at the Fed to be unaware of what the general population demands be monetized in the next imminent iteration of an utterly idiotic activity which does absolutely the same as every year before, while hoping for a different result.

All you need to read.

Adam Fleming, Chairman of Wits Gold and Fleming Family & Partners (yes, related to Ian Fleming of James Bond game), discusses the gold bull market with GoldMoney's Chairman James Turk. Topics include metal price action, the eurozone's debt crisis, and mining in South Africa. Both men think that we are the "in the foothills" of a long precious metals bull market, and that the gold price is in some ways cheaper than it was back when they spoke at GATA's Dawson City conference in 2005, owing to all the quantitative easing – or more bluntly, money printing – that central banks have engaged in since the financial crisis of 2008.

Based on a swap-spread-based model, EURUSD should trade around 1.30, but based on GDP-weighted sovereign credit risk EURUSD should trade around 1.00; so who is right and what are the factors that supporting the Euro at higher levels than many would assume (given the rising probability of a Euro-zone #fail and the 0.82 lows from 2000). UBS addresses four key reasons for the apparent paradox based on the difference between ECB and Fed 'monetization', the EZ's balanced current account (independent of foreign capital flows), and the high-oil-price induced petro-dollar circulation diversifying into Euros (or out of USD). The final and most telling of factors though is bank deleveraging as European financial entities, who remain under pressure to shrink their balance sheets and re-build capital, have been selling foreign assets. They remain EUR dismalists with a year-end target of 1.15 but expect the slide to these levels to be cushioned (absent an imminent break-up) by banks' 'shrinkage'.

In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US's economic outlook and why he's delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold. "I think we're at the end of a correction that resulted from the peak last summer. It was overcooked, kind of hyperventilated hysteria over the debt-ceiling talks, the rating downgrade of the US sovereign debt, and I think basically the stocks and the metal had been working off that boiled down to what we now have is a simmer. I think we are at a position where there's not a lot of downside, and I would not be surprised by revisiting the previous highs of $1,900 and maybe even new highs over $2,000 this year."

The dollar was a median step towards a newer and more corrupt ideal.  Its time is nearly over.  This is open, it is admitted, and it is being activated as you read this.  The speed at which this disaster occurs is really dependent on the speed at which our government along with our central bank decides to expedite doubt.  Doubt in a currency is a furious omen, costing not just investors, but an entire society.  America is at the very edge of such a moment.  The naysayers can scratch and bark all they like, but the financial life of a country serves no person’s emphatic hope.  It burns like a fire.  Left unwatched and unchecked, it grows uncontrollable and wild, until finally, there is nothing left to fuel its hunger, and it finally chokes in a haze of confusion and dread…

All you need to read and some more.

You don't need to be an economist to understand the utter foolishness, the circular logic supported folly of "But after buying 325 billion pounds of government debt with newly created money, 50 billion pounds of which has been purchased in the last three months"

"should only 2% of the Fed's assets go into default — or if there is a loss in value of 2% — the Fed becomes insolvent"

All yopu need to read.

Mitt Romney's theory goes that by buying U.S. currency (so far they have accumulated around $3 trillion) and treasuries (around $1 trillion) on the open market, China keeps demand for the US dollar high.  They can afford to buy and hold so much US currency due to their huge trade surplus with America, and they buy US currency roughly equal to this surplus.  To keep this pile of dollars from increasing the Chinese money supply, China sterilises the dollar purchases by selling a proportionate amount of bonds to Chinese investors.  Supposedly by boosting the dollar, yuan-denominated Chinese goods look cheap to the American (and global) consumer.  What Romney is forgetting is that every nation with a fiat currency is to some degree or other a currency manipulator. That’s what fiat is all about: the ability of the state to manipulate markets through monetary policy. When Ben Bernanke engages in quantitative easing, or twisting, or any kind of monetary policy or open market operation, the Federal Reserve is engaging in currency manipulation. Every new dollar that is printed devalues every dollar out in the wild, and just as importantly all dollar-denominated debt. So just as Romney can look China in the face and accuse them of being a currency manipulator for trying to peg the yuan to the dollar, China can look at past U.S. administrations and level exactly the same claim — currency manipulation in the national interest.

We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble. Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon. The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working.

Bloomberg viewers estimate that Ron Paul was the winner of the clash of the Pauls. But that is very much beside the point. This wasn’t really a debate. Other than the fascinating moment where Krugman denied defending the economic policies of Diocletian, very little new was said, and the two combatants mainly talked past each other.  The real debate happened early last decade.

Quantitative Easing (QE) is/was seemingly a magic remedy, at least in the short-term. As GLG's Pierre Lagrange notes, central bankers can conjure up money out of thin air and use it to purchase assets - transforming transferring toxic debt, stimulating demand for risk assets, devaluing currencies (this deflating debt), and maintaining low interest rates on govvies. The ECB's more restrictive mandate, however, does not allow them to print money for any other purpose than lending and so direct QE was out of the question and so, as the chart below demonstrates, they ingeniously created the LTRO - delivering an infusion of liquidity (potential profits from carry and hope for capital raises).