Recession

Global central banks have made a Faustian bargain with our economic soul selling our future for a false stability today. At this stage, absent continuous intervention, a large deflationary crash in the global economy is inevitable. The next Lehman brothers will be a country. The real ‘shadow convexity’ will not come from markets but political unrest or war. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Global Central Banks have set up the greatest long volatility trade in history. Buy the fear and you will be protected from the horror.

Welcome to Reflexivity 101.

No professional or successful investor every bought and held for the long-term without regard, or respect, for the risks that are undertaken. If the professionals are looking at "risk" and planning on how to protect their capital from losses when things go wrong - then why aren't you?  Exactly how many warnings do you need?

So what's left in the toolbag of central banks and states to stimulate recessionary economies if QE has been discredited? The answer: Helicopter Money.

For the past two weeks, the thinking probably went that if only the biggest short squeeze in history and the most "whiplashy" move since 2009 sends stocks high enough, the global economy will forget it is grinding toward recession with each passing day (and that the Fed are just looking for a 2-handle on the S&P and a 1-handle on the VIX before resuming with the rate hike rhetoric). Unfortunately, that's not how it worked out, and overnight we got abysmal economic data first from China, whose imports imploded, then the UK, which posted its first deflation CPI print since April, and finally from Germany, where the ZEW expectation surve tumbled from 12.1 to barely positive, printing at just 1.9 far below the 6.5 expected.

Neurosurgeon-turned-Presidential candidate Ben Carson has been under attack this week by the defenders of the Keynesian faith as he questioned fiat money and flirted with a new gold standard.

"The secular reality of deflation & inequality is intensified by recession & rising unemployment, investors should expect a massive policy shift in 2016. Seven years after the west went “all-in” on QE & ZIRP, the US/Japan/Europe would shift toward fiscal stimulus via government spending on infrastructure or more aggressive income redistribution.  …buy TIPs, gold, commodities, Main Street not Wall Street."

Do not believe in official statistics, Japanese retailers seem to be saying, as they cut earnings forecasts and warn of lackluster consumer spending, a key growth engine for Japan at a time when exports and factory output are stalling. Despite government statistics claining a 2.9% rise in household spending, Reuters reports Japanese retailers exclaimed "Consumer spending has ground to a halt," as Japan heads for a quintuple dip recession. Amid falling wages and higher costs, on apparel maker warned "shoppers are tightening their purse strings." The government's initial growth strategy did not really expand the pie, "now the government is simply left trying to redistribute wealth."

The Fed needs to extricate itself from manipulating the financial markets. It needs to end backstopping market liquidity. It must never again print Trillions of new “money” out of thin air. Because so long as the marketplace perceives that the markets are "too big to fail", there will be speculative excess, major securities markets mispricings and Bubble fragilities. No one – average investor or sophisticated financial operator – has a clue as to the degree Fed policies have distorted asset prices.

This globalization of regional housing markets is pricing the middle class out of housing in areas that also happen to be strong job markets. Many commentators are concerned that a nation of homeowners is being transformed into a nation of renters, as housing is snapped up by hedge funds and wealthy elites fleeing China and the emerging markets. But will current conditions continue unchanged going forward?

There can be little doubt that the massive, unprecedented surge in inventory accumulation (which counts positively to GDP) will eventually be liquidated. When it does the US enter recession, global dollar liquidity crashes, the value of dollar surges even higher, pulling EM further down and a world recession will be upon us again. In this scenario central banks panic...

250,000 Germans marched in Berlin today in protest against the planned "free trade" deal between Europe and the United States which they say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labor and environmental standards.  "This is the biggest protest that this country has seen for many, many years," Christoph Bautz, director of citizens' movement Campact told protesters in a speech.

While record mainland deficits covered by the petroleum sector is nothing new in Norwegian budget history, on the contrary it is closer to the norm, the 2016 budget did raise some eyebrows. The other side of the ledger, the net inflow to the SWF from activities in the North Sea will, again according to budget, be lower than the required amount to cover the deficit. This has never happened before and is testimony of the sea change occurring in the world of petrodollar recycling. 

Dear Americans, meet your venerable central planners:

FED'S EVANS: DOT PLOT CHART CLEARLY SHOWS US ECON DOING BETTER

So, according to the Fed's academic experts, the US economy is not, well, the US economy, it's not Y = C + I + G + NX, it's not the product of all goods and services created in the United States...  it's this: