Reserve Currency

A BRICS Bank - as an IMF alternative and to enable nations to become less dependent on the global reserve currency - was originally discussed at The BRICS Summit in 2012. Then at the 2014 BRICS Summit, the framework for The BRICS Bank was approved as "a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decisions made by the United States and their allies." Headquartered in Shanghai and chaired by Russia, this week saw what appears to be the final step in the creation of BRICS New Deverlopment Bank as RT reports, The Russian State Duma has ratified the $100 billion BRICS bank that’ll serve as a pool of money for infrastructure projects in Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa. It is expected to start fully functioning by the end of 2015. Isolated?

With the world's oldest central bank - Sweden's Riksbank - taking the plunge into negative rates, there have been 19 'eases' by central banks this year, Morgan Stanley warns of "ghosts of the 1930s." With competitive 'easing' stoking fears of international currency wars, The Telegraph notes however that looser monetary policy is not the order of the day everywhere in the world, and herein lies potential danger for the world economy.

Bell Curves have become fatter and flatter. They may even be inverted. The term “bell curve” comes from the shape of the curve that depicts all occurrences distributed around the most-probable event. Data points in the ‘tails’ are now more frequent. Hyper-active central banks might be ensuring both a melt-up bubble and a market crash: larger ‘right-tail’ and ‘left-tail’ outcomes.

Feel like trading FX has become next to impossible, with massive, gaping bid-ask spreads, strange "tractor beams", completely unexpected stop loss runs, and - of course - central banks behind every corner? Don't worry you are not alone. According to Bloomberg, that's precisely the case as "it hasn’t been this difficult to trade currencies since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. shook markets worldwide."As for the reason why, well: take a guess.

The chart below, which presents not only the total amount of sovereign gold holdings, but indicates the percentage of the monetary base backed by gold reserves, shows something rather stunning.

"Fuck the CHF and the SNB!" "Those bastards lied to us - I'll never trust them again!"

The newsflow over the past several days was progressing much as expected: any time Greece demanded a bailout renegotiation (or termination), and an end to the Troika, Germany just said "Nein." And then something unexpected happened: the socialists came to the rescue when they voiced their support to their ideological peers in Greece. First, it was France whose finance minister said that France is "more than prepared to support Greece." And now it is Obama's turn who as the WSJ reported, has "expressed sympathy for the new Greek government as it seeks to rollback its strict bailout regime, saying there are limits to how far its European creditors can press Athens to repay its debts while restructuring the economy."

Over the last 100 years the Fed has had many mandates and policy changes in its pursuit of becoming the chief central economic planner for the US. Not only has it pursued this utopian dream of planning the US economy and financing every boondoggle conceivable in the welfare/warfare state, it has become the manipulator of the premier world reserve currency. All this effort by thousands of planners in the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the bureaucracy to achieve a stable financial system and healthy economic growth has failed. It must be the case that it has all been misdirected. And just maybe a free market and a limited government philosophy are the answers for sorting it all out without the economic planners setting interest and CPI rate increases. A simpler solution to achieving a healthy economy would be to concentrate on providing a “SOUND DOLLAR” as the Founders of the country suggested.

Given that Russia perceives itself to be under financial and economic attack from the West, there is the possibility that they are accumulating more gold than they are declaring officially to the IMF.

De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank has denied reports in Reuters, Bloomberg and picked up by GoldCore, that the bank had increased its gold holdings for the first time in sixteen years. IMF data had shown that the Dutch had increased their holdings to 622.08 tonnes.

It's a common story throughout human history. There’s almost always an elite, or government, with a ‘scarcity’ mentality that believes in the zero sum game, i.e. for anyone to be a winner, someone else has to be a loser. When they’re short of cash, governments almost invariably raise taxes. Of course, the numbers show that raising taxes rarely affects total tax revenue. There’s a very looooong history which clearly establishes this point. And you’d think that a government would look at the data and recognize the obvious truth: their scarcity mentality doesn’t work. But no. Sadly, in the face of such overwhelming data, the Obama administration is now pushing to raise tax rates once again...

Well things are gonna change in Europe.  Greece just voted in a majority no bullshit government. But what is it that needs to get done in Greece?  That’s really the $64K question.  On the surface it seems as though Greece is simply a bunch of lazy sponges.  But we caution you to look at the facts before making a final judgement.  Remember Greece was once upon a time the genesis of democracy.  These people have been doing democracy longer than any other nation on earth.  And so we have a hard time accepting all of sudden after thousands of years they simply got too lazy to carry on the pride of the people who created the concept of a self-governed and free populace.  We just don’t buy it.  Let’s look deeper...

The Japanese fire at the Europeans. The Europeans fire at the Japanese & Chinese. The Chinese fire scattershot at everybody else in Asia. England & America prep to teach those they consider muppets not to play with guns. It's World War Money, if you know what I mean...

Since last May (and likely long before) when the topic of "de-dollarization" was first uttered in official circles (and not just tin-foil-hat-wearing blogs), the rest of the world (un-isolated as they are) has been warming to the idea that perhaps - just perhaps - it is time to de-dollarize (more or less depending on the despotic region in question). From currency swap agreements to bi-lateral trade agreements to selling US Treasuries and greatly rotating USD reserves into gold, the world's nations (small and large) appear less and less comfortable holdings dollars in this tempestuous world. Among the supporters of that first "de-dollarization" meeting were China and Iran and while the former continues to work down its exposure, the latter - Iran, according to Tasnim news agency, has almost entirely eliminated USDollars from its reserves and is no longer using dollars in foreign trade. De-dollarization complete...

The US Dollar rally, combined with the ECB’s policies are at risk of blowing up a $9 trillion carry trade.

The Bundesbank, Germany’s powerful central bank, announced very publicly this morning the further repatriation of some of it’s gold being held in foreign locations – namely in Paris and New York with the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve.