Showing posts with label debt bubble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt bubble. Show all posts

11 May 2021

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - It Can't Happen Here - And No One Can See It Coming

 

"The time is almost here — and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of America today.  Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. 

The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose. American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check, 1919

 

“Booms start with some tie-in to reality, some reason which justifies the increase in asset values, and then — and this is the critical feature of speculative mood — the market loses touch with reality.” 

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

“A country that tolerates evil means—evil manners, standards of ethics—for a generation, will be so poisoned that it never will have any good end.” 

 Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here 

 

"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus, The Plague

 

Stocks were hammered in the morning trade, purportedly over concerns about inflation.

Comments from Stanley Druckenmiller about the status of the Dollar contributed to the selling. 

Gold and silver were also caught in the early selling.

However, as the day wore on, the dip-buyers came in, buying up precious metals until they went on to close with decent gains.

I joined a bit in the early dip-buying.  I had waiting for a pullback like this.

Big cap tech also recovered significantly in the afternoon.

The  rest of the equity market not so much. 

I would presume that traders will be watching the consumer inflation data out tomorrow morning.

Have a pleasant evening.

17 May 2017

SP 500 Futures - Gap Filled Intraday - The Gathering Storm


"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it."

Mark Twain

The gap in the SP 500 futures continuous chart that we left behind a few weeks ago has just been filled intraday.

As a reminder this is a stock option expiration week, although as I recall May is not a particularly significant month.

I imagine a lot of enthusiastic call buyers have just been smoked out of their seats and their June positions.

The tension on the tape the last few days was palpable.  It just took some small event to trigger it giving its overlong duration and extent out of balance.

I don't think impeachment is on the table for President Trump, except in overheated Democratic rhetoric.   Although I would not rule anything out while The Donald has access to twitter.

The NDX has a quite a way to go to close its gap, but that is another matter. For my purposes the SP 500 futures are the bellwether.

I have pulled in my short positions, and just left some other risk off positions run, mostly in gold. No silver at this time for a trade.  It just doesn't work as well in a panic because of its precious/practical nature.

My cynical side says that this market pullback is just a long overdue correction in the Trump rally. But we will have to wait and see where the stock markets finds a footing, or if contagion of selling starts to trigger liquidations and some sort of selling feedback.

As I noted the other day, this is a concern for me because the nature of this rally has been narrow and price driven.  People were throwing money into passive index funds, which were rising steadily thanks to speculation in about ten stocks.

The 'big one' for the markets, as opposed to a major correction, will gain the most damaging momentum from the erosion in quality of private debt loads which are once again back to record levels, along with the extreme leverage in financial derivatives exposure held by just a few financial institutions.  That is the real nitro in this chemical mix.

If any financial breakdown spreads to the $222 trillion dollars in derivative exposure then it is time to hit the exits.   There is no way to bail out that sort of malfeasance gracefully without imploding the currency, theories about the ability to print money without limit notwithstanding.

Speaking of rotten fundamentals, the average growth in loans exceeds the average growth in hourly wages.  Thanks to Tony Sanders at Confounded Interest for that chart below.

Let's deregulate The Banks even more and hand out tax breaks to the one percent!  And spend all our time looking for Russians hiding in the shrubbery so we can blame them.

Sleep well.








14 October 2014

GolemXIV: Trouble In Bankland



In the US:

  • Home Equity Loans (HELOCs) are up 20% this year. 15% of all home loans originated are home equity extraction loans.
  • People are taking equity out of their homes in the reigniting housing bubble, but adding to their bank debt.
  • Student loans now total $1.2 Trillion.
  • Nearly 35% of student loans [I believe David inadvertently says HELOC at one point] given to people under 30 are now 90 days delinquent.
  • There are $924 Billion in auto loans, with nearly one third being subprime.
  • It will not take much of a downturn for the HELOCs to go underwater.
  • Jobs for those servicing new student loans are often low paid and hard to find and could become scarcer prompting more defaults.

In Europe:

  • Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has now lost ALL of the £46 Billion bailout from taxpayers
  • Espirito Santo recently went bankrupt AFTER recently passing the ECB stress test.
  • Not only the bank, but the entire Espirito Santo group went bankrupt, after the bank sold their associated debt to unsuspecting clients.
  • This certainly does not inspire confidence in any of the ECB testing of the Banks. We would have no confidence in an agency that tested cars with these kinds of results.
  • There were fifteen other EU banks that passed in the weak manner of Espirito Santo.
  • The Spanish/Italian/Greek Banks were allowed to count tax credits from the government as assets.
  • What if China decides to support its domestic coal production by assessing a 3 to 6 percent surcharge on imported Australian coal? It would dampen exports and GDP.
  • Australia's huge housing bubble is counting on 8 to 12 percent house increase NEXT year.

If things go south, the ECB,  Fed, and other Central Banks will have to engage in another enormous bailout.





Source: GolemXIV



31 July 2011

US Debt Limit and Debt Versus Gold in US Dollars



Let's see, when might we expect the price of gold in dollars to stop going higher?

Chart from sharelynx, and a h/t to my brother Steve.

It would be interesting to see this correlated to Debt/GDP or Broad Money Supply/GDP, but this gets the point across.



This is your country on oxycontin. Get used to it. h/t Ilene.


04 May 2011

US To Reach Debt Limit on May 16 - Treasury Asks For $2 Trillion Increase



This is from Reuters:

"The following are highlights from the U.S. Treasury Department's announcement on Wednesday of its quarterly debt refunding, which will raise $72 billion in new cash.

The Treasury said it would auction $32 billion in three-year notes, $24 billion in 10-year notes and $16 billion in 30-year bonds next week.

When the note and bond sales are settled on May 16, they will exhaust the government's remaining borrowing capacity under the $14.3 trillion statutory debt limit. This will require the government to employ emergency measures to continue borrowing, but these will only be sufficient until Aug. 2, according to Treasury projections. The measures include dipping into two federal employee pension funds.

Treasury officials reiterated their view that they believe Congress will raise the debt limit in time. A Treasury official said that reduced auction sizes or frequencies were options that could be considered to refund maturing debt in case the debt limit increase was delayed."

The Treasury is reportedly asking for a $2 Trillion increase again according to Reuters:

The Treasury has told lawmakers a roughly $2 trillion rise in the legal limit on federal debt would be needed to ensure the government can keep borrowing through the 2012 presidential election, sources with knowledge of the discussions said.

Obama administration officials have repeatedly said that it is up to Congress to decide by how much the $14.3 trillion debt limit should be raised.

But when lawmakers asked how much of an increase would be needed to meet the government's obligations into early 2013, Treasury officials floated the $2 trillion working figure, Senate and administration sources told Reuters.

27 February 2010

Pictures of a Market Crash: Beware the Ides of March, And What Follows After


There are a fair number of private and public forecasters with whom I speak that anticipate a significant market decline in March. As you know I tend to agree to some extent, but with the important caveat that we are in a very different monetary landscape than the last time the Fed engaged in quantitative easing, the early 1930's. In short, I may allow for it, but I am not doing anything different about it -- yet.

The biggest difference is the lack of external standards. This introduces an element of policy decision that has been discussed here on several occasions. In other words, the Fed retains the option, albeit with increasing difficulty, to create another bubble, and levitate stock market prices in the face of deteriorating economic fundamentals.

The dollar was formally devalued by around 40% in 1933. We may yet see that done this time, but more gradually and informally. This is what makes gold controversial today; it exposes the financial engineering. So they feel the need to manage it, to denigrate it as an alternative to their paper. They want to have their cake, and eat it too.

Let's review where we are today.

The Bear Market of 2007-2009, marked by the Crash of 2008, has been a massive decline in equity prices precipitated by the bursting of the credit bubble centered around housing prices and packaged debt obligations of highly questionable valuations. The cause of the bubble was easy Fed monetary policy and the loosened regulation of the financial sector, which reopened the door to old frauds with new names.



Even today, I think most people do not appreciate the sheer magnitude of the decline, and the damage it has done to the real economy. This is the result, I believe, of three factors:

1. An extraordinary expansion of the Monetary Base by the Federal Reserve not seen since the aftermath of the Crash of 1929, and a swath of financial sector support programs from the Fed and the Treasury, resulting in a spectacular fifty percent retracement rally from the stock market bottom. This is the narcotic that permits the country to not notice that a leg is missing.

2. A comprehensive program of perception management by the government in conjunction with the financial sector to sustain consumer confidence and reduce the chance of further panic. In other words, a web of well-intentioned deceit, subject to abuse.

3. An understandable preoccupation by the individual with the details of breaking news, and a short term focus on particular events, diversions, and controversies, bread and circuses, without a true appreciation of the 'big picture,' in part because of some very effective public relations campaigns and a natural human reluctance to face hard problems.

This is resulting in a remarkable case of cognitive dissonance in which some of the victims of a spectacular man-made calamity are opposing remedies and aid as too costly and impractical, even as they walk around amongst the bleeding carnage.



For those who read the contemporary literature in the early Thirties, this is nothing new. In the early Thirties there was no sense, except for a few notable exceptions, of the magnitude of what had so recently happened. There was the sense of life goes on which seems almost eerie now to a modern reader. Indeed, Herbert Hoover could dismiss a delegation of concerned citizens with the advice that they were too late, the crisis was past, and all was well. Sound familiar?



The parallels with the Thirties and the Teens (today) are many, and uncanny.

There is the reformer President, elected to redress the extremely pro-business policies of his Republican predecessor. In the Thirties they had FDR who was a decisive and experienced leader. In the Teens the US has a relatively inexperienced community organizer, more influenced by the Wall Street monied interests, and a past history of 'playing safe,' who is trying to manage through indirection and persuasion.

There is a Republican minority in the Congress which opposes all new programs and actions despite giving lip service in order to delay and debilitate. In the Thirties the Republicans were over-ridden by a powerful, activist President, who created a "New Deal" set of legislation, much of which was later overturned by a Supreme Court which had been largely seated by the previous Republican Administrations.

Indeed, the remaining New Deal programs that were successful, the reforms of Glass-Steagall and the safety net of Social Security, are being overturned or are under attack in an almost bucket list fashion.



So what next?

Another leg down in the economy and the financial markets is a high probability.



Although one cannot see it just yet in the fog of corrupted government statistics, the economy is not improving and the US Consumers are flat on their back, scraping by for the most part, except for the upper percentiles who were made fat by the credit bubble, and are still extracting rents from it through officially sanctioned subsidies.

This was no accident; there is a consciousness behind it.

There are far too many otherwise responsible people who are not taking the situation with the high seriousness it deserves. Some would even like to see the US economy collapse, inflicting serious pain and deprivation because it may:
1.suit their investment positions and feed their egos because they think themselves above it all,
2. satisfy their ideological and emotional needs to see punishment administered, almost always to others, for the excesses of the credit bubble, especially if they are relatively weak, unwitting victims, and
3. the sheer nastiness and immaturity of a portion of the population which wallows in stereotypes, childish behaviour, and disappointment with their own lives. They tend to find and follow demagogues that feed their bitter hatreds.

They know not what they do, until they do it, and see the results. It is often a good bet to assume that people will be irrational, almost to the point of idiocy and self-destruction. And some of them never wake up until they are overrun, and then will not admit their error out of a stubborn sense of pride and embarrassment.
It seems likely that there will be a new leg down in financial asset valuations, as reality overcomes often not-so-subtle propaganda and disinformation. It may start in March, or it may be a 'market break' that provides a subtle warning for a large decline that begins in September 2010, with multi year progression to lows that are, as of now, almost unimaginable, at least in real terms. I cannot stress this issue of nominal versus real enough. As inflation comes, it will initially be in a 'stealth' manner, with the backing of the currency eroding slowly but steadily, and largely unrecognized for some time. It is not enough to try and count the dollars; one also has to consider the value behind them, the quality of the wealth, and its vitality. This is the case for stagflation.

The Fed is acting to mask quite a bit of this. One would hope that they would also not re-enact the policy error of their predecessors and raise rates prematurely out of fear of inflation before the structural healing can occur.

The debt incurred during the credit bubble cannot be paid and must be liquidated. So far we have largely seen transference of debt obligations from insiders to the public. Ironically these same insiders are lobbying to maintain these subsidies and transfers, and also to take a hard line against any further remediation of the consequences of the collapse, which they caused, on the public, to have more for themselves. Their greed and hypocrisy know no bounds.

But the policy error might not be caused by the Fed's direct action, but replicated by a governmental failure to stimulate the economy effectively AND to reform the highly inefficient and impractical financial system. The purpose of stimulus is to provide a cushion for structural reform and healing to occur, after an external shock, or even a period of reckless excess and lawlessness. The natural cycle can be disrupted beyond its ability to repair itself. But stimulus without reform is the road to further deterioration and addiction.

As it stands today the global trade system is a farcical construct that favors national elites and multinational corporations. Public policy discussion has been trumped by a handful of economic myths and legends that, even though disproved every day, nevertheless remain resilient in public discussions and reactions. This is because they have become familiar, and because they are the instruments of deception for certain groups of disreputable economists and policy influencers.

A more serious market crash might cause people to recognize the severity of their problems, and the thinness of the arguments of the monied interests for the status quo which is most clearly unsustainable. But a sizable minority of the population is always highly suggestible; demagogues rely on this.

The eventual outcome for the US is difficult to forecast with any precision now because there are multiple paths that events might take at several key decision points. Some of them might be rather disruptive and upsetting to civil tranquility. Game changers.

But as the dust continues to settle, the probabilities will continue to clarify.
"Suffering can strengthen our endurance. Endurance encourages strength of character. Character supports hope and confidence even during hard times and trials. And hope does not disappoint us in the end, because God has given us the Spirit and filled our hearts with His love." Romans 5:3-5
It is right to be cautious, and it is human to be afraid. But let us not allow our fears and trials to turn us from our genuine humanity in God's grace no matter how dire the day, even if it may drive some of the world once again into the jaws of desperation and madness. And if you stumble, gather yourself up and go forward again without turning from the way. For what is the profit to gain and hold some small and temporary advantage in this world, but to lose your self, forever.

13 November 2009

Money Supply and Demand, and the Monetization of Debt


The growth of the broad short term money supply remains strong for a slack economy, although not quite as robust as when there was a flight to quality out of equities and Ben did his moonshot with the Fed's balance sheet.



Demand for money? What demand? This is something new in the post World War II era.



Relative to the growth of bank credit, the growth of broad short term money as measured in MZM is outsized as the Fed intends it to be.



The limit of the Fed's ability to monetize various debt instruments already in existence is the value of the dollar relative to the purchasing power of the other major fiat currencies.



Do people realize that a monetization of the dollar is occurring? Some do.



As one might expect the velocity of money, which is the ratio of money supply to the aggregate demand for money (GNP), is very low. This is helping the Fed to keep inflation selectively low, because although there is a lot of money relative to bank credit demand, that increased money is not doing much chasing of goods. It seems to be flowing once again into financial assets, which is probably an artifact of where the money has been allocated. How many cars and meals can a wealthy person or corporation consume? They do not create consumption out of their excess, they increase their speculation and the acquisition of the means of future production.

As the velocity of money starts increasing then the Fed will have to change its stance on quantitative easing, which is really nothing more than the monetization of existing debt.


19 August 2009

China Makes Biggest Cut in US Treasury Assets Since 2000


China dumps US Treasuries the most aggressively in a decade. Now THAT's a change you can believe in.

One has to wonder how long the UK, Japan and the US can keep supporting each other's crony capitalist oligopolies.

China Daily
China cuts US Treasury holdings in June
2009-08-18

NEW YORK: China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in June by the biggest margin in nearly nine years, according to a US Treasury Department report issued on Monday.

China cut its net holdings by 3.1 percent to $776.4 billion in June from $801.5 billion in May, the report says. This is also the first large-scale reduction of US Treasury debt by China so far this year.

However, its June holdings were still larger than April's $763.5 billion and $767.9 billion in March, according to the statistics of the Treasury Department.

Reuters data show the drop in China's Treasury holdings in June was the biggest percentage reduction since a 4.2 percent cut in October 2000.

On the other hand, Japan, the second-largest holder of US Treasury securities, increased its holdings to $711.8 billion in June from $677.2 billion in May.

The United Kingdom, the third largest holder, also increased its holdings to $214 billion in June from $163.8 billion, a surge of 30.6 percent.