Posts Tagged ‘Central Banks’
US Dollar Surges To Near 3-Year High
Friday, 17 May 2013 07:44
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Moments ago the USD value basket – the DXY – rose to highs not seen since July 2010. The recent 6.6% swing is at an annualized 25% rate of appreciation. The dollar appears to have now become the flight-to-safety currency, which historically has been associated with plunging risk values. However, now that the dollar strength is simply a function of other central banks perceived as diluting their currencies more, and injecting capital flows into the G-0 system, all of which is expected to sooner or later make its way to US stocks, this is paradoxically, now a risk on factor. (Read more…) For US companies that have to export into such an environment, this may not be quite risk on, but that is something one can roundly ignore for now.

 


 

Charts: Bloomberg

    



 
Guest Post: The Trick To Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable
Thursday, 16 May 2013 20:49
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Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The 30 million whose labor funds the parasitic status quo don't have to rebel; they simply have to stop going to work, stop starting enterprises, stop being productive.

 
Parasites must balance their drive to maximize what they extract from their host with the risk of losing everything by killing their host. This is the dilemma of the parasitic partnership of the central state and financial Elites everywhere: to extract the maximum possible in debt payments and taxes without sparking rebellion and revolution. (Read more…)
 
I have often commented on the current class structure, which paradoxically unites the interests of the top 1/5% of 1% and their political-class toadies and the bottom 50% who are drawing transfer payments/benefits from the state: both support the status quo because both receive direct benefits from it.
 
The 20% who pay most of the tax and service much of the debt are in the middle, a political minority of debt/tax serfs who finance the status quo, i.e. cartel-crony capitalism owned and operated by the financial and political Elites:
 
 
The numbers of Americans drawing benefits from the state are astounding: almost 11 million people drawing lifetime disability from Social Security (The Number Of US Citizens On Disability Is Now Larger Than The Population Of Greece); Social Security (SSA) has 61 million beneficiaries as of March 2012; Medicare had 49.4 million beneficiaries in 2012, and Medicaid has over 50 million beneficiaries (another source puts the current number at 58 million, but the Kaiser Family Foundation says roughly 7 million "dual-eligibles" receive both Medicaid and Medicare, so let's use the data point of 50 million Medicaid-only recipients.)
 
This aligns fairly well with the 48 million drawing SNAP (food stamp) benefits: Food stamp Recipients Hit Record (Zero Hedge). Those qualifying for one program likely qualify for the other.
This means roughly 110 million people are drawing significant direct benefits from the Federal government (central state) while the number of full-time workers is 116 million–about a 1-to-1 worker-beneficiary ratio.
 
The problem is two-fold: the entitlement programs are running massive deficits even though the Baby Boom has barely started to enter the programs, and the number of workers earning enough to pay significant income taxes is remarkably limited.
 
As I detailed in The Fraud at the Heart of Social Security (January 17, 2011), the program paid out $707 billion in 2010 and collected $631 billion in taxes, a $76 billion shortfall for 2010. The current program (2012) cost is $817 billion, a leap of $100 billion in a few short years as Baby Boomers flood into the program.
 
Of the roughly 142 million workers in the U.S., 38 million earn less than $10,000 per year, 50 million earn less that $15,000 a year and 61 million earn less than $20,000 annually. All these numbers are drawn directly from Social Security Administration payroll data.
 
100 million wage earners, or 2/3 the entire workforce, earn less than $40,000 per year.
 
Most of the heavy-lifting in terms of paying income taxes falls to about 30 million people, the top 20% of wage earners.
 
As for debt-serfdom, the status quo has widely distributed huge debt loads via home mortgages and student loans. A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking real money:
 
 
The banks have written off some defaults but the debt load on the serfs hasn't declined much:
 
 
Meanwhile, real wages have been declining, meaning there is less money left to service debt:
 
 
This presents the partnership of the financial kleptocracy and the state with an insoluble problem: their parasitic skimming of rentier debt payments and taxes has reduced the income of 95% of the workers, leaving them less able to service more debt and pay more taxes.
 
The parasitic financial class is not about to accept lower wealth accumulation, so the state must protect the cartel-rentier arrangements of the Elites at all costs. But the state must also buy the complicity of 110 million (going on 150 million as the Baby Boom retires) potentially restive citizens, an open-ended spending commitment that is only sustainable if the economy and those employed full-time expand smartly.
 
Alas, financialization (debt-serfdom) and higher taxes (the transformation of the middle class into tax donkeys) have gutted the real economy, driving real income lower for 95% of the workforce that still has earned income.
 
Hmm, what's a parasitic kleptocracy to do? The ever-resourceful Elites have hit on a solution: 1) print money via central banks and 2) borrow trillions of dollars, euros, yen, yuan, etc. to fund the status quo.
 
These adaptations have enabled the parasites of the financial Elites and the state to maintain their exploitation of their primary host, i.e. the dwindling middle-class of tax donkeys and debt-serfs. But is this rentier arrangement sustainable in the long term?
 
In Nature, parasites weaken the resiliency of the host; when crisis strikes, the weakened host, though superficially stable and strong, suddenly collapses in a heap. The financial parasitism of the state and financial Elites is weakening the real economy everywhere: Japan, China, the European Union and the U.S. Massive money creation and state borrowing are keeping the host-parasite relationship stable for the time being, but the fragility of the host is increasing.
 
The financial-political Elites are confident that they have found a way to maintain their parasitic rentier arrangements–print money, keep all the phantom assets on the books, and keep interest rates low enough that the debt-serfs can still service their debts.
 
But the financial-political Elites' calculus cannot calculate the breaking point of the dwindling minority propping up the entire status quo: When Belief in the System Fades(March 12, 2008):
 
In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company or the service. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or "retires" to some lower level of employment.
 
At what point do people choose to opt out of debt/tax-serfdom? What triggers their decision to renounce debt, go off the financial grid, and escape serfdom by fashioning a low-cost lifestyle in the cash economy? At what point do productive people tire of supporting parasitic financial and political Elites and millions of people who aren't working themselves to the bone to pay taxes and service debt?
 
The more the state pays in benefits and the higher it pushes taxes, the more appealing opting out becomes. The more The Reverse Robin Hoods of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke and his Merry Band of Thieves prints money to fund the parasitic financiers, the more they weaken the real economy and fuel a recognition that the Federal Reserve is the enemy of free enterprise and democracy. Bernanke's Neofeudal Rentier Economy (May 7, 2013).
 
The 30 million whose labor funds the parasitic status quo don't have to rebel; they simply have to stop going to work, stop starting enterprises, stop being productive. They just have to tire of being the host, tire of being debt-serfs, tire of being tax donkeys. And when they lay down their burden, there won't be anyone to pick it up: the parasitic financial and political Elites are incapable of being productive, and the working poor don't generate enough surplus to fund open-ended benefits for 110 million non-workers.
 
The trick to suppressing revolution is to keep debt-tax serfdom bearable. The parasitic Elites are keeping the host going, but at a high cost in resiliency. Let's see how long the host lasts once a crisis hits.

 

    



 
Bill Gross: “We See Bubbles Everywhere”
Thursday, 16 May 2013 13:25
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It is only logical that when one of the smarter people in finance warns that he “sees bubbles everywhere” that he should be roundly ignored by those who have no choice but to dance. Because Bernanke and company are still playing the music with the volume on Max, and if not for POMO there is always FOMO. However, if there is any doubt why this “rally is the most hated ever”, here are some insights from the Bond King from an interview with Bloomberg TV earlier today: “We see bubbles everywhere, and that is not to be dramatic and not to suggest they will pop immediately. I just suggested in the bond market with a bubble in treasuries and bubble in narrow credit spreads and high-yield prices, that perhaps there is a significant distortion there. (Read more…) said that, it suggests that as long as the FED and Bank of Japan and other Central Banks keep writing checks and do not withdraw, then the bubble can be supported as in blowing bubbles. They are blowing bubbles. When that stops there will be repercussions. It doesn’t mean something like 2008 but the potential end of the bull markets everywhere. Not just in the bond market but in the stock market as well and a developing one in the house market as well.”

As a gentle reminder, the reason why nobody anywhere trusts this particular bubble – the biggest in history – is not because speculators are not greedy (they are), or because everyone knows the market is always one central planner wrong move away from a collapse which would make the 2009 lows seem like amateur hour (it is), but because, as Seth Klarman explained two weeks ago, it is the Fed itself which by pushing on a string and the economy constantly deteriorating, proves it has no idea how to make things better: “When you tell the populace that we can all enjoy a free lunch of extremely low interest rates, massive Fed purchases of mounting treasury issuance, trillions of dollars of expansion in the Fed’s balance sheet, and huge deficits far into the future, they are highly skeptical not because they know precisely what will happen but because they are sure that no one else–even, or perhaps especially, the  policymakers—does either.”

And today from Bill, on the reason why QE is not working as intended, and why the Fed’s channels are not only clogged but never worked as intended in the past four years: “Does it mean it is a good thing that capitalism should thrive under this quantitative easing posture on the part of central banks that distorts markets and this court’s capitalism and promotes a zombie corporations and lowers net interest margins and destroys business model? All of that is the negative aspects of quantitative easing. Can we live with? I do not think this will be with us for a long time.”

One can hope.

Some other observations from Gross:

On how distorted the bond marker is:

“It is easy on the bond side. We speak to an epical bond/bull market, not the beginning of a bear market but the ending of an epical bond/bull market show it in terms of a smiley face. It has been the investment committee. The bright side of the smile is the thirty year bull market in which prices rose exceeded what rationally could have been expected. We are at the bottom basically of this smiley face and our opinion on a long-term basis. That means with treasury yields and credit spreads, importantly and here is the key to the bond market statement: treasuries are 80 basis points, credit spreads are 70 basis points, put them together, 150 basis points in combination. In our opinion, absent of an additional amount of quantitative easing treasuries will go down in yield because of slowing economy, but that will make spreads go up. This suggests a 20-Month time ahead in which treasury, corporate, and high yields do not move much. The end of the smiley face all market run in terms of higher yields and lower prices is over.

On whether the conditions today are reminiscent of what we saw in 1992 and 1993:

“I do not think so, because in 1994 the FED raised funds dramatically to 200 basis points to basically slow things down. If the FED did that this time, I think they know with this amount of leverage there is two to three times more leverage in this economy this time than in 1994, the FED does not dare move in 200 basis point increments. That kind of market to our way of thinking is not in store for us. Does it mean it is a good thing that capitalism should thrive under this quantitative easing posture on the part of central banks that distorts markets and this court’s capitalism and promotes a zombie corporations and lowers net interest margins and destroys business model? All of that is the negative aspects of quantitative easing. Can we live with? I do not think this will be with us for a long time. For the next 12-24, perhaps.

On when the Federal Reserve will start to taper the billions of dollars in bond purchases:

“It is almost a day-to-day thing in terms of the market but certainly not in the terms of the FED. They had objectives in terms of 6.5% unemployment and importantly, 2.5% inflation. We’re down to 1 percent inflation in terms of the PCE which is their target for inflationary measure. To think the fed would begin to pull back in terms of tapering when inflation is approaching the Japanese levels of the lost decade is a big stretch. I do not think they change much. I think they have to be concerned about what happens in asset markets. Up until this point the chairman has done an Alan Greenspan and said cannot really relieve him as such but will monitor them in terms of potential regulation. However, having said that, I think the FED basically is on hold for a long time until unemployment and more certainly, inflation moves higher to the 2.5% target.

On the implications of the end of the 30-year bull market in treasury:

“It is not just treasuries. Treasuries, corporates, high-yield. We actually saw the end of the treasury market about six months ago. I think only a few weeks ago when you put the whole enchilada together, what does it mean going forward? It means as interest rates eventually go up, we do not think they are going up for 12 months or so, that the cost of interest for them move forward. And the portly, households will increase as well. Because of the lag effect in terms of the average cost of debt for corporations, and even government, there is a fair amount of room in terms of timing, even as interest rates move back up. Treasury yields on average are above 2%. In terms of what they’re issuing it is closer to 1%. Same thing in terms of relative magnitude on the front of corporatations and households. It will be a while until this “smiley face” where higher interest rates begin to affect corporations and the credit sector as well as the government sector in terms of the cost of leverage in the cost of borrowing. Eventually, a net interest margins narrow on the part of corporations because they will hire in terms of interest. Same things for households they pay higher for mortgage loans. That is two to three, four years out. We don’t have to worry about it yet, but we have to worry about it.

On the great experiment and what is happening in Japan right now in the shift:

“We want to be able to monitor in the Tokyo office. They are in touch with the institutions in Tokyo. We want to be able to monitor where the money is going. Our sense is not much of it, some of it, is going outside the country. The metaphor for the Japanese small investor, Mr or Mrs. Watanabe, when she or he begins to sense there are more attractive yields outside of Japan and the Japanese Yen moving lower in the yields and lower in price that they can capture a higher total return by moving outside that is where they will go. We want to get in front of them so to speak. Where will they go? Typically they went to the Euro and bought a lot of France and Germany. Those markets we think our extended close to zero. Italy and Spain perhaps at the periphery. And back to the good ol’ United States. We think it will buy treasury bonds at 80 basis points above the five-year and close to 1.90 or so for the 10-year treasury. It does not sound like a deal, but a much better field in Japan. 

* * *

So to summarize: the great bond bull market is over, but Japan will buy everything about 1.90% on the 10 Year. Perhaps this is why, somewhat counterinuitively, Pimco has been buying up every Treasury it could find in the past 6 months, or around the time Pimco “saw the end of the treasury market about six months ago.” Just in case someone takes Bill a little too literally.