Japan

Having stepped in a stunning 76% of days to ensure the market closed green, it appears, as Bloomberg reports, time (or money) is running out for Kuroda and the BoJ having spent 78 percent of its allotment as of Sept. 7. "They've only got a little bit left in their quota," notes one trader, "The BOJ had a big role in supporting the market," he implored, "if they don’t increase purchases now, it’s going to be a shock."

While the massive, $19.2 billion outflow in the week of the August 24 flash crash was understandable, as the market's record complacency was shaken by days of violent selling, as was the snap rebound inflow of $5.8 billion the following week resulting from oversold conditions, the fact that EPFR reported that in the week ended September 9 equity outflows once again surged, rising to a total of $19.4 billion - greater than two weeks prior, and the largest of 2015 - will cast doubt that the recent market correction is a one and done event, especially if the selling becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Perhaps after intervening every single day in the past week (remember that FT piece saying the PBOC would no longer directly buy stocks... good times) in either the stock or the FX (both on and offshore) market, China needed a day off; perhaps even the algos got tired of constantly spoofing the E-mini and inciting momentum ignition, but for whatever reason the overnight session has been oddly uneventful, with no ES halts so far, few USDJPY surges (then again those come just before the US open), and even less violent CNY or CNH moves, leading to virtually unchanged markets in Japan (small red) and China (small green). And while the initial tone in Europe has been modestly "risk off", it is nothing in comparison to the massive gyrations that have become a stape in the past few weeks.

"Being bearish on China for the last few years has reminded me of the 1987 action classic "Predator". For bears, much like the alien in Predator, the Chinese government has continually used special abilities that were previously unknown. Bearish investors in China had been picked off relentlessly and seemingly effortlessly by the government and the central bank. But then just as suddenly, the stock market started to sell off and the pressure on the currency began to build. This led to the small devaluation we saw in the Renminbi in August."

Late last year, Paul Krugman took a field trip to Japan to observe Keynesian insanity prowling around in its natural habitat. While he was there, he gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe some sage advice which can be roughly summarized as follows: "Abenomics is working so why would you screw it up by getting fiscally responsible all of the sudden?" Nine months later, Japan is still a deflationary deathtrap and Krugman is "really, really worried"...

Market participants, be they lenders or borrowers, know that “easy money” has an expiry date. If The FOMC raises rates, "we foresee negative effects on world GDP in the medium term, not only for emerging markets but also for industrialized economies." In other words, though emerging markets – through their dependence on capital inflows – will be at risk when America’s monetary policy eventually returns to “normal,” the same will be true for advanced economies.

Since the “impossible” global panic in 2008, there have been 10 QE’s in Japan but using the numerical standard which has been applied to the Federal Reserve there may have been as many as 22 or more. What none of those have amounted to is an actual and sustainable economic advance; NONE, no matter how you count them. In very simple fact, the idea that central banks “need” to keep doing them in continuous fashion is quite convincing that at the very least they don’t mean what central bankers think they mean, and perhaps worse that the more they are done and to greater extents the more harm that eventually befalls.

And monetary policies will be “ineffective”: Natixis

It has become virtually impossible to differentiate between actual central bank intervention, hopes of central bank intervention, and how the two interplay on what was once the "market" but is now merely the place where money printers duke it out every day in some pretense of price discovery set by those who literally print money.

News That Matters

The growing roar of 'the establishment' crying for help from The Fed should make investors nervous. While your friendly local asset-getherer and TV-talking-head will proclaim how a rate-hike is so positive for the economy and stocks, we wonder why it is that The IMF, The World Bank, Larry Summers (twice), Goldman Sachs, China (twice), and now no lessor nobel-winner than Paul Krugman has demanded that The Fed not hike rates for fear of  - generally speaking - "panic and turmoil," however, as Krugman notes, “I think it would be a terrible mistake to move. But I’m not confident that they won’t make a mistake."

Bank profitability will remain under pressure for some time to come in light of the new capital regulations currently in the works. This will make it more difficult for banks to generate new capital internally, so they will have to tap the capital markets and dilute their shareholders further. It is no wonder that bank stocks remain way below the valuations they once commanded (we actually wouldn’t touch these stocks with a ten-foot pole). From a wider economic perspective, the new capital regulations are rendering banks moderately safer for depositors (as long as the markets don’t lose faith in government debt that is), but they also contribute to their ongoing “zombification”. Bank lending is going to remain subdued. This wouldn’t represent a big problem, if not for the fact that it is likely to provoke even more government activism.

In a word, the official unemployment rate is now in what has been the macroeconomic end zone for the past 45 years. Might this suggest that the emergency is over and done? Self-evidently, the only “incoming” information that can matter between now and next Wednesday is the stock market averages.  If the Fed takes no action in September, it’s hard to imagine any economic or jobs report that wouldn’t support ZIRP or near-ZIRP in the minds of the money printers and the Wall Street gamblers they pleasure.

"We believe a global recession scenario has become the most likely global macroeconomic scenario for the next two years or so. Helicopter money drops would be the best instrument to tackle a downturn in all DMs. We expect to see QE #N, where N could become a large integer, as part of the monetary policy response in the US and the UK, and QEE2 in Japan."