Monetization

One week after the gold scheme's official launch, we take a look at how has it has done so far. In one word, so far the "gold monetization" plan has been a disaster with a laughable 30 kilograms in gold tendered by the people from physical into "government-backed" form.

Brutal news is pouring in from pretty much everywhere. The world, in short, is rolling over. Debt monetization on the scale so far attempted has failed to stop the implosion of tens of trillions of dollars of bad paper, growth has stalled and geopolitics has begun to turmoil. And none of this is a surprise. It’s just what you get when you put monetary printing presses in the hands of governments and/or big banks.

On the heels of placing its third former employee at the Fed this year alone, Goldman explains why the market is wrong about inflation and whyv a handful of ex-Goldmanites will hike by 200bps in the next two years.

JS Kim Issues Critical Warning About Newly Introduced Global Banking "Gold Programs". Could Bankers Be Duping Us into Yet Another One of Their Reverse Alchemy Schemes?

The world is bankrupt after thirty years of borrowing from the future to throw a party in the present, and the authorities can’t acknowledge that. But they can provide the conditions for disguising it, especially in the statistical hall of mirrors that once-upon-a-time produced meaningful signals for the movement of capital. The Dow, the S&P, and the NASDAQ are the only signaling mechanisms that the legacy media pays attention to, and the politicos take their cues from them, in a feedback loop of false information that begets more delusional positive psychology in those same markets.

The developing deflationary cycle stunting the world economy has arisen from the monumental harm that central bankers have already done, not from lack of sufficient vigor and boldness in attempting to contravene its consequences.

In case you have been hibernating, the European Union (EU) is already in a complete state of disarray. Everywhere you look - economy, politics, security, society, demographics - there are very serious problems with no credible solution in sight. This does not bode well for the future of the EU, starting with those who will be living in it.  The EU doesn't need any nationalists to destroy its future prospects. It’s doing absolutely fine on its own.

The cries for going totally crazy are growing louder... the lunatics are running the asylum. One shouldn’t underestimate what they are capable of. The only consolation is that the day will come when the monetary cranks will be discredited again (for the umpteenth time). Thereafter it will presumably take a few decades before these ideas will rear their head again (like an especially sturdy weed, the idea that inflationism can promote prosperity seems nigh ineradicable in the long term – it always rises from the ashes again). The bad news is that many of us will probably still be around when the bill for these idiocies will be presented.

We’ve almost become numb to horrendous videos like these.. It seems like a new shocking police abuse video sweeps the nation almost every week. These viral videos help bring a small dose of accountability to government employees. And they don’t like it one bit. It’s all part of a long trend. The government will always try to shield itself from the fallout from its behavior. Another favorite tactic is to simply declare troublesome information “classified” or to withhold it because of “national security,” a vague and misused term. It’s an upside down situation. The government can monitor almost any aspect of the average citizen’s life whenever it wants. But it’s difficult to impossible for the average citizen to monitor the government. In a free society, the opposite would be true.

The current stock market melt-up hardly qualifies as limp. Even the robo-machines and hyper-ventilating day traders apparently recognize that their job is to tag the May 2015 highs and then get out of the way. So when and as they complete their pointless mission, the question recurs as to why the posse of fools in the Eccles Building can’t see that they are inflating one hellacious financial bubble; and that when it blows it will deconstruct their entire 7-year project of make-pretend recovery.

We found something unexpected when skimming through the website of China's finance ministry.

On Wednesday morning a new national poll revealed that 54% of Americans rate the economy as 'poor', but instead of focusing oin that, Becky Quick quizzed Marco Rubio about his 'lack of bookkeeping skills,' Carl Quintanilla posed questions about homosexuality and fantasy football, and the astonishingly incompetent John Harwood expressed doubt about Donald Trump's 'moral authority.' The interaction between the candidates and the CNBC moderators revealed the yawning gap between the bubble world at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street and the hard scrabble reality of economic stagnation and political alienation on main street America.

Haruhiko Kuroda owns 52% of all Japanese ETFs. And now he wants more. Facing a lack of willing JGB sellers, the BoJ now faces the possibility that ramping up its easing efforts will entail expanding the bank's already elephantine equity portfolio. "At a fundamental level, I don’t support the idea of central banks buying ETFs or equities. Unlike bonds, equities never redeem. That means they will have to be sold at some point, which creates market risk."

Gold’s biggest enemy is a brilliant Nobel Prize winning economist, university professor and columnist for the New York Times. Sadly, he is also a con man.