Quantitative Easing

Talk of raising interest rates introduces a new Fed conundrum. Over the last few months, Federal Reserve Board members have maintained a less dovish tone which implies the eventuality of rate hikes despite economic data which has been slowing rapidly.... A case can be made that, excluding 2008, the economy is weaker now than prior to the announcement of the previous QE actions and Operation Twist. Further confounding the Fed stance is inflation, which as measured by CPI is running lower than at any time since 2009. Additionally the strong dollar and global deflationary trends point to lower inflation and possibly deflation in the coming months.

There have been countless previews of the FOMC statement at 2pm today, all of them largely worthless and regurgitating the same exact stuff. The only one that matters, as it is the only one with the explicit blessing of the Fed (see "On The New York Fed's Editorial Influence Over The WSJ") in its attempt to manage expectations: that "drafted" by Jon Hilsenrath. And if what the WSJ economist writes in "Fed to Markets: No More Promises" is accurate, then fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen, because we are about to enter some turbulence. "The Federal Reserve is about to inject uncertainty back into financial markets after spending years trying to calm investors’ nerves with explicit assurances that interest rates would remain low."

With the bond market appearing ripe for a dramatic correction, many are wondering whether a crash could drag down markets for other long-term assets, such as housing and equities. Bond-market crashes have actually been relatively rare and mild. According to our model, long-term rates in the US should be even lower than they are now, because both inflation and short-term real interest rates are practically zero or negative. Even taking into account the impact of quantitative easing since 2008, long-term rates are higher than expected. Regarding the stock market and the housing market, there may well be a major downward correction someday. But it probably will have little to do with a bond-market crash.

The transparent truthlessness of the Fed’s basic premises go far to explain the chasm between official policy and reality - though it does not explain the appetite for plain lying of the supposedly informed minority cohort of the public, the deciders among us in business, politics, and media. Within th enext few months (between "patient" removal, token rate hikes, and reversals to QE4), the Fed will be completely out of cred. This will be the biggest disaster of all, since the loss of faith in august institutions will rage through every polity in the advanced economies. Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do, and especially the value of the papers (or digits) they denominate as money.

Will Europe ever see its money back?

The bust of Aussie boom-towns, collapse of the mining industry, dramatic capital outflows, and a bursting housing bubble all have one thing in common, according to billionaire hedge fund manager Crispin Odey - "China is everything to Australia in lots of ways." Simply put, he tells The Australian Financial Review, economies dependent on China for income, including Australia, are headed for recession and central banks will not be able to able to come to the rescue because they have exhausted the arsenal of policy weapons. "We've got a very old-fashioned recession which is spreading across the world," and Australian banks face a tough time ahead too because there are indications bad debt risks are rising.

Since QE has been far and away the most important variable impacting the economy and markets since the crisis, ignoring its impact on wealth inequality is simply unforgivable. Yet, it’s more than that. Much more. Many of the polices existing in these United States not only encourage foreign oligarch money laundering into luxury skyscrapers that remain empty, but our society seems to go out of its way to ensure they have to pay as little in property tax as possible. Indeed, tax polices don’t benefit the rich, they benefit the super rich. Nowhere is this more apparent that in the oligarch capital of America, New York City.

Yellen has created a narrative about the US economy, especially the (un)employment rate, and with the narrative is now firmly in place, Yellen and her stooges can claim they have no choice but to hike In short, Janet Yellen will go down into history as the person responsible for what may be the biggest economic crash ever, or at least delivering the final punch of the way into it, a crash that will make the rich banks even much richer. And there is not one iota of coincidence in there. Yellen works for those banks. The Fed only ever held investors’ hands because that worked out well for Wall Street. And now that’s over. Y’all are on the same side of the same trade, and there’s no profit for Wall Street that way.

Why Monetary Policy Is Failing

The entire formerly rich world is addicted to debt, and it is not capable of shaking that addiction. Not until the whole facade that was built to hide this addiction must and will come crashing down along with the corpus itself. Central banks are a huge part of keeping the disease going, instead of helping the patient quit and regain health, which arguably should be their function. In other words, central banks are not doctors, they’re crack dealers and faith healers. Why anyone would ever agree to that role for some of the world’s economically most powerful entities is a question that surely deserves and demands an answer.

A survey of 40 financial institutions shows that BoJ purchases are sapping liquidity and making it difficult for dealers to fill orders. Defiant to the end, the central bank pledges to stay in the market until inflation hits 2%.

The current set of dominant market narratives are so well known as to be cliché.  Invest where central banks are pumping liquidity, and short the currency of those countries or regions.  Look for growth, and pay any valuation multiple that seems half way reasonable in today’s market.  Expect any spike in volatility to wilt like cut flowers in the hot sun, and the Fed to care intensely about stock prices.  And maybe that will continue to work in this last month of the first quarter…  But it always pays to question the foundations of market assumptions...

The consequence will not be eternal virtual prosperity, but rather a wrecked accounting system for the operations of civilized human life. We’ve stepped across the event horizon of that consequence, but we just don’t know it yet. Our bet is that we start feeling the effects sooner rather than later; and when it is finally felt, all the Kardashian videos in this universe and a trillion universes like it will not avail to distract us...