Central Banks

Inflation expectations are collapsing in the EU, Japan and the US. Is another deflationary spiral about to hit?

Evidently, voters are in a very bad mood just about everywhere. Unfortunately, they are bereft of good choices in most places. Usually one essentially gets to exchange one bunch of psychopathic looters for another – so it is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Very often, things will simply go from bad to worse, as the underlying basic problems are usually misdiagnosed, resp. there is no-one willing to actually tackle them. Investors should pay very close attention to this trend...When the performance of financial markets diverges from underlying social mood trends, it is usually time to be very careful.

The internals were mixed with the Bid to Cover sliding from 2.460 to 2.409, which however was above the 12 TTM average of 2.356. Offsetting the slightly weaker BtC print was the jump in Indirects, which rose from 56.4% to 60.3% the second highest on record, as foreign central bankers have again decided that the safety of US paper offsets the duration risk of holding it in a rate hike environment.

Ooops ...

Good Thing Debt Doesn't Matter! </sarc>

With the 'paper' price of gold are a somewhat unprecedented barrage of selling currently (down 9 of the last 11 days) to 4-month lows, one could be forgiven for thinking that demand for the precious metal is dropping. However, as almost every nation in the world (ex US) is devaluing their currency, The World Gold Council reports that physical gold demand has risen dramatically with US gold Eagle coin sales at the highest levels since the financial crisis.

The biggest event overnight came from Europe, where Draghi managed to once again jawbone the Euro lower by ober 50 pips when he told European lawmakers in a prepared testimony that downside economic risks are "clearly visible," repeating his October press conference statement, adding that the ECB will reexamine degree of accommodation in December as "inflation dynamics have somewhat weakened." And the statement that crushed the Euro: "If we were to conclude that our medium-term price stability objective is at risk, we would act by using all the instruments available within our mandate to ensure that an appropriate degree of monetary accommodation is maintained." I.e., another "whatever it takes" moment.

There is a driving desire among weaker-minded people to seek control over other people in the name of arbitrary standards of safety as well as arbitrary standards of “civil” conformity. While such people proclaim publicly that they do what they do for the “greater good,” in reality they seek only to satiate a private lust for power. Any fight for freedom from collectivists will require the removal of command and control. This is the only way that humanity can be given breathing room to rebuild without remaining under constant preplanned threat.

"I have a problem with Berkshire’s ownership of Coke,” Ackman told an audience of about 200 people. “Coca-Cola has probably done more to create obesity, diabetes on a global basis than any other company in the world. "You have some of the best marketing in the world and a lot of happy skinny people drinking it in the advertising."

Now that there are "no taboos," and assuming the ECB doesn't take our advice on the '52 Mantles or the lumber, the only question is whether the central bank will pair a depo rate cut with the PSPP expansion (in whatever form it takes)....

Today’s dilemma – for financial markets and central bankers – is that pushing back against nascent “risk off” unleashes another forceful bout of “risk on.” At this point, it’s either Bubble on or off – destabilizing either way. The global Bubble has grown too distended and the market backdrop too dysfunctional. Central bankers over the past 25 years have created excessive “money,” while incentivizing too much finance into financial speculation. There is now way too much “money” crowded into the securities and derivative markets, and the upshot is an increasingly hostile backdrop for leverage and speculation.

Breaking a critical trendline (particularly one that has been in place for several decades) is one thing. Breaking it and then failing to reclaim it during the following bounce is indicative of BEAR MARKET.

There is “a barbarous relic” in our global monetary system. It is the U.S. dollar: the worthless, monetary relic of an empire in decline.

Once again we feel the close tug of systemic illiquidity as it transcends the usual noise about assurances to ignore or trivialize all this growing uncertainty. Even though stocks and other assets have been trading in their own world mostly free from all this more hidden esoterica, the full weight of this analysis suggests that can’t be more than a temporary deviation. Since it is the angle of economy that is ultimately driving all of this, everything depends upon a global economy that has already been beaten down far past anticipation.