Quantitative Easing

Raging against its German creditors, the new Greek government is demanding reparations for Nazi-era depredations. Herewith - from Jim Grant’s archives - some timely context both for the Greek negotiating position and the underlying monetary issues.

The world economy stands on the brink of a second credit crisis as the vital transmission systems for lending between banks begin to seize up and the debt markets fall over. The latest round of quantitative easing from the European Central Bank will buy some time but it looks like too little too late.

Today's obvious mispricing of sovereign bonds is a bonanza for spending politicians and allows over-leveraged banks to build up their capital. This mispricing has gone so far that negative interest rates have become increasingly common. Macroeconomists will probably claim that so long as central banks can continue to manage the quantity of money sloshing about in financial markets they can keep bond prices up. But this is valid only so long as markets believe this to be true. Put another way central banks have to continue fooling all of the people all of the time, which as we all know is impossible.

This is a chart that truly screams "Recovery!" In fact, it is quite clear that things are far better now than they have ever been before. If your life seems to be at odds with the obvious economic reality, you are clearly not working hard enough (or perhaps not at all).

Needless to say, Greece is only the poster child. The McKinsey numbers above suggest that “peak debt” is becoming a universal condition, and that today’s Keynesian central bankers and policy apparatchiks are only pushing on a giant and dangerous global string. So now we get to ground zero of the global Ponzi. That is the monumental pile of construction and debt that is otherwise known on Wall Street as the miracle of “red capitalism”. In truth, however, China is not an economic miracle at all; its just a case of the above abandoned Athens stadium writ large.

The Abe administration nominated a major proponent of reflationary monetary policy to the central bank’s board, buttressing Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s efforts to save the nation from the dread of deflation. As Bloomberg reports, economist Yutaka Harada, who will replace Ryuzo Miyao, has said Japan can beat deflation by printing money in a 2013 book "Reflationary Policy Revives Japan’s Economy." So far that is not working so try harder... “The nomination is a good news for Kuroda... he will keep a majority on the board and win what he wants." Why such good news? As deputy director at the finance ministry’s Policy Research Institute, Harada exclaimed, "we just need to print money."

"Conditions in the global economy are clearly abnormal. The policymaker response to those conditions is extraordinary, with minimal focus on an all-out push for higher growth. Instead, the primary focus is on boosting “inflation” with repeated doses of bondbuying, stock-buying and super-low interest rates"

"A trait you'll see among the world's best investors is the willingness -- even desire -- to talk about their mistakes. They analyze what went wrong, why they were mistaken, and how they can learn from their errors so they don't repeat them. Everyone makes mistakes, but they seem to grasp what most of us have a hard time admitting: It's your (and my) fault."

"...we’ll have to face a new world financial crisis in the next few years... the growing volume of debts and the unsteady development of the economies of the US, the EU, China and some other developing countries mean the situation is even worse than ahead of 2008."

There is a bull market developing in gold and few are aware of it...

In Part 1, we described the world’s economy as one that is based on energy. The design of the system is such that the economy can only grow; shrinkage tends to cause collapse. If this view of the situation is correct, then we need an ever-rising amount of inexpensive energy to keep the system going. We have gone from trying to grow the world economy on oil, to trying to grow the world economy on coal. Both of these approaches have “hit walls”.  Now we have practically nowhere to go.

Six years on from the financial crisis and central banks are still hacking away at interest rates. Australia and Romania's did this week and while Poland and India held off, both are expected to prune rates later in 2015.

Deflation goes hand in hand with releasing the individual from the debt enslavement that was created with the monetary policies of the past 100 years. Nigh unlimited printing of money has become the orthodox strategy to avoid deflation. Deflation was made the scapegoat for all sorts of economic ills in a century of pro-inflation propaganda. For deflation to happen government interference in money and the economy needs to stop. The endorsement of deflation goes hand in hand with safeguarding liberty. “Paper money has become the technical foundation for the totalitarian menace of our days.”

The ECB kills the Troika!

There is intense debate going on in the worlds of economics, politics, and finance as to whether we will, in 2015, experience the mother of all stock market crashes or whether, instead, we will float along ever higher on the happy cloud that has been making at least some people rich over the last few years (or whether, for a third possibility, we will just muddle along somewhere in the middle). Beyond the diatribes from the punditocracy, there is a mood – maybe it is idiosyncratic – but there’s the feeling that something dramatic is about to happen. I mean, a snowstorm hits and the local supermarket runs out of bread?! Are we all rehearsing for something here?

Until now, central banks have restricted monetary policy to domestic economic management; this is now evolving into the more dangerous stage of internationalisation through competitive devaluations. The gold price is an early warning of future monetary and currency troubles, and it is now becoming apparent how they may transpire. The ECB move to give easy money to profligate Eurozone politicians is likely to have important ramifications well beyond Europe, and together with parallel actions by the Bank of Japan, can now be expected to increase demand for physical gold in the advanced economies once more.