Money Supply

If you like your de-escalation, you can keep your de-escalation. To think that heading into, and following the Russia-Ukraine "summit" earlier this week there was so much hope that the tense Ukraine civil war "situation" would somehow fix itself. Oh how wrong that thinking was considering overnight, following rebel separatists gains in the southeast of Ukraine which included the strategic port of Novoazvosk and which is "threatening to open up a new front in the war" including setting up a land corridor to Russia controlled-Crimea, Ukraine's president Poroshenko for the first time came out and directly accused Russia of an "Invasion", or at least a first time in recent weeks, saying he has convened the security council on the recent Russian actions.

"Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly.... Central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, have taken aggressive action, consistently lowering interest rates such that today they hover near zero. They have also pumped trillions of dollars’ worth of new money into the financial system. Yet such policies have only fed a damaging cycle of booms and busts, warping incentives and distorting asset prices, and now economic growth is stagnating while inequality gets worse. It’s well past time, then, for U.S. policymakers -- as well as their counterparts in other developed countries -- to consider a version of Friedman’s helicopter drops. In the short term, such cash transfers could jump-start the economy...  The transfers wouldn’t cause damaging inflation, and few doubt that they would work. The only real question is why no government has tried them"...

Key highlights in the coming week: US Durable Goods, Michigan Conf., Services PMI, PCE, and CPI in Euro area and Japan. Broken down by day: Monday - US Services PMI, New Home Sales (Consensus 4.7%); Singapore CPI; Tuesday - US Durable Goods (consensus 7.5%) and Consumer Confidence; Wednesday - Germany GfK Consumer Confidence; Thursday - US GDP 2Q (2nd est., expect 3.70%, below consensus) and Personal Consumption; Euro area Confidence; CPI in Germany and Spain; Friday - US Michigan Conf. (consensus 80.1), PCE (consensus 0.10%), Chicago PMI; Core CPI in Euro area and Japan (consensus 2.30%). Additionally, with a long weekend in the US coming up, expect volumes into the close of the week to slump below even recent near-record lows observed recently as the CYNKing of the S&P 500 goes into overdrive.

Dispassionate overview of the week ahead, with thoughts about September.

• FTW: Europe Stocks Rise as Data Signals Need for Stimulus (BBG)
• More de-escalation: Dozens die in Ukraine in street battles, Donetsk shelling (Reuters)
• Calm largely holds in Missouri after grand jury opens shooting investigation (Reuters)
• Attorney General Eric Holder Vows Thorough Probe of Ferguson Shooting (WSJ)
• World’s Biggest Wealth Fund Slows Emerging Market Investment (BBG)
• Market Chilly to Argentine Debt Proposal (WSJ)
• Israeli air strike kills three Hamas commanders in Gaza (Reuters)
• Retooled Hamas Bloodies Israel With Help From Hezbollah (BBG)
• Investors Pour Into Vanguard, Eschewing Stock Pickers (WSJ)
• Fed Debates Early Rate Increases (WSJ)

The world’s central bankers have given companies the urge to merge. Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity has already reached $2.2 trillion this year according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence, up 70% from this time a year ago. The deals are big, with eight acquisitions, each over $5 billion, being announced in just a single week in July. However CEO buying sprees do not create new jobs and new products that make our lives better, but are instead just wasteful malinvestments that destroy capital. The cost of capital is integral to making these assumptions. The lower the assumed interest rate or cost of capital, the higher the price for the acquisition that the models will justify. Once interest rates go up, these valuation models will be blown to pieces.

Looking at the past 100 years of the US dollar's history, one theme becomes abundantly clear: in times of crisis, the US government has no issue with changing its own rules or breaking its own laws. And those "temporary" emergency measures have a nasty habit of quickly becoming permanent. As we see the US money supply exponentially accelerating since the 1970s, and the Federal Reserve more than tripling its balance sheet since 2008, it's only prudent to ask the question: Without constraints, are we in danger of destroying the purchasing power of our currency by making too much of it?

If it was crashing German business confidence yesterday setting the somber mood for European economic "growth" in the second half, with a European GDP decline if not outright contraction now almost practically inevitable, then overnight it was disappointing data from virtually every other spot in the globe (and Europe again) to hammer the message in, starting with a historic 6.8% drop in Japanese GDP driven by a record plunge in consumption, quickly followed by total social financing out of China which in aggregate rose by only RMB273.1bn in July, or just 18% of what was expected, with missing industrial production and retail sales just the cherry on top. Then it was Europe's turn again, where June Industrial Production contracted -0.3% on expectations of a 0.4% increase, to set the stage for tomorrow's Eurozone GDP print which, following Italy's triple-drip recession shocker last week, probably means it will be not only Japan but also Europe which are about to have taken a sharp move for the worse. All of which of course, explains why just as Europe opened, the USDJPY blasted off and took both EuroSTOXX and US equity futures higher with it, and at last check ES was some 10 higher.

What does the future look like for fiat currencies? (e.g. the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound...) In the case of the dollar (which operates similarly to the other major world currencies), we know that - since all are "loaned into existence" - all dollars are backed by an equivalent amount of debt. Debt upon which interest must be paid. As all outstanding debt must compound over time at the rate of its interest (at least), we come to this important conclusion: Our money system is designed to grow exponentially. And it requires ever more debt in order to do so.

Empires are not the result of conscious thought; they happen when a group is large enough and powerful enough to impose itself on others. But empires are expensive. They are typically financed by theft and forced tribute. The imperial power conquers... steals... and then requires that its subjects pay “taxes” so that it can protect them. The US never got the hang of it. It conquers. But it loses money on each conquest. How does it sustain itself? With debt.

Steve Forbes has had enough of the Federal Reserve and its "sinning" policies to undermine the dollar. In this brief interview with Birch Gold Group, the publisher and CEO of Forbes, Inc. exposes the damage that the central bank has created, "Bernanke was a disaster...has totally mucked up the credit markets." Blasting Janet Yellen "who needs to go to re-education camp," Forbes explains why he believes so strongly in the gold standard, and the one single scenario under which he would ever sell his gold.

For seventy years, one of the critical foundations of American power has been the dollar’s standing as the world’s most important currency. For the last forty years, a pillar of dollar primacy has been the greenback’s dominant role in international energy markets. Today, China is leveraging its rise as an economic power - and as the most important incremental market for hydrocarbon exporters in the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union - to circumscribe dollar dominance in global energy, with potentially profound ramifications for America’s strategic position.

As John Kenneth Galbraith famously stated, "The process by which money is created is so simple the mind is repelled." As Peak Prosperity's Chris Martenson explains (as part of his excellent Crash Course), essentially, money is lent into existence though fractional reserve banking. The dollars you deposit at the bank? They turn into nearly 10x that amount as your bank subsequently makes loans using that money as collateral. As simple as the process is, nearly every American remains ignorant of it and its massive implications. At the heart of the matter is this: our money supply and its related debt obligations MUST continue expanding (thereby devaluing the purchasing power of each dollar ad infinitum) -- forever -- or the entire system collapses upon itself. Prepare to be repelled...

“But long term...and economic law says, if you keep printing a lot of paper money, the value of the dollar and currency will go down, and things and most prices will go up and indeed gold always goes up against that currency” - Ron Paul

The following are six of the most prevalent economic myths that appear time and again in the mainstream media...