FEB 22 16 SIT EC y POL p1
FOCUS ON US ECONOMIC CRISIS AGAIN
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ZEROHEDGE
ECONOMICS
Peter
Schiff Warns "The Fed's Nightmare Scenario Is Becoming Reality". Submitted
by Tyler Durden
on 02/22/2016 : Once markets figure out that the Fed is all hat and no
cattle when it comes to fighting inflation, the bottom should drop out of
the dollar, consumer price increases could accelerate even faster, and the
biggest bubble of them all, the one in U.S. Treasuries may finally be pricked. That
is when the Fed’s nightmare scenario finally becomes everyone’s reality.
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"Private
Capital Is Running Away From Trouble". Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/22/2016 : By Keith
Dicker of IceCap Asset
Management.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Question: Why is the world in an economic funk?
Answer: Private Capital is running away from trouble
Chart 2 shows two variables. The BLUE line shows the amount
of quantitative easing or money printing in the USA. Up until September 2008,
the amount of money made available to the economy increased in a gradual
manner. Thereafter it became a gong show.
The RED line shows the Velocity of Money. Velocity of money
is just another way to measure how well the economy is doing. And, while they
are loathe to admit it, it is one of THE most important data points monitored
by central banks every minute of the day.
Velocity of money measures how fast money swishes around an
economy. The faster it swishes around, the faster the economy is growing.
Naturally, the opposite is also true and this is what is happening today.
“Why is the world in an economic funk?” is the wrong
question. Instead, the correct question to ask is “why is the velocity of money
declining?”
And more importantly, “Why, despite the printing of
trillions of Dollars, Yen, Sterling and Euros, is the Velocity of Money
declining?”
The answer of course is quite simple: Private Capital does
not like the actions by central banks and governments, and is therefore
withdrawing their money from the global economy. And it is heading towards the
center of the earth. Yes, it really is as simple as that.
Yet, the irony is that our central banks and governments
have no clue as to the risks they have created.
They honestly believe their efforts to stimulate the economy
is groovy. But since their stimulus isn’t working – the answer is to do more of
the same.
Maybe we should make them all memorize Einstein’s quote
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results.”
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FED IS GETTING MONEY FROM F-BANKERS?
Or F-BANKERS ARE BUYING THE FED?: As
Foreign Central Banks Quietly Park $250 Billion In Cash At The Fed, A Mystery
Emerges Submitted by Tyler
Durden on 02/22/2016 : The same Fed which for 7 years provide generous
funding to offshore commercial banks, is now granting foreign central
banks the same arbitrage privilege, one which worst of all, is almost
entirely shrouded in secrecy.
EXTRACT
The Fed's domestic reverse
repo has actually declined since the Fed's rate hike.
There has been much confusion why this is, with experts such
as Wedbush's Scott Skyrm scratching their heads and deciding that there
continues to be a substantial mismatch between what the prevailing liquidity
level should be at a Fed Funds rate of 25 - 50 bps, and what is actually taking
place in the open market if such a thing even exists. The implication is
that banks continue to find better uses for their cash than giving it to the
Fed to receive the guaranteed rate which on the domestic facility is about
0.25%.
However, while use of the Fed's domestic reverse repo
program has declined in recent weeks, an unexpected market participant has
taken the place of domestic financial entities: foreign central banks.
As the chart below shows, the Fed's offshore peers have been
aggressively parking their overnight deposits at the Fed's reverse repo
facility designed for "foreign official and international accounts",
one which was has been around in some iteration ever since the 1970s, and
whose usage has soared by $50 billion since the Fed's rate hike and by a
whopping $150 billion since the beginning of 2015.
Why the dramatic surge?
The answer is not exactly clear, but has to do with the
interest that the Fed is paying on the foreign reverse repo. While the Fed for
unknown reasons does not disclose what rate it pays its foreign central bank
peers, according to the WSJ, analysts estimate it to be between 0.33% to 0.35%.
By comparison the domestic facility is about 10 basis points lower.
As the WSJ's Katy Burne writes, "the program now seems
to be at the center of how they are building a liquidity cushion at a time of
heightened market uncertainty and relatively unattractive rates on bank
customer deposits."
To be sure, the global dollar shortage first profiled here nearly
a year ago is a factor
And of course, if indeed the Fed is paying a premium to
comparably risky securities, then there is no question why foreign central
banks would be rushing into the safety of the printer of the world's reserve
currency.
The question is why is the Fed effectively allowing this
arbitrage, one which reduces foreign demand for short-term
securities, in the process boosting their yield, while providing what amounts
to yet another handout to offshore entities.
Recall that as we
first reported in 2011, it was the Fed's generous payment of interest on
excess reserves to foreign commercial banks that provided a big boost
to those same deeply insolvent banks, who had parked hudnreds of billions in
excess reserves with the Fed during QE1, 2 and 3, which incidentally is the
Fed's own money created out of thin air.
In fact, according to the latest Fed data,
foreign banks remain the single biggest beneficiary of the Fed's generous
excess reserve policy, with some $1.1 trillion in reserves - more than
either large or small domestic commercial banks - parked at the Fed belonging
to foreign commercial banks: these reserves now collect a rate of 0.50% per
year, a rate which is set to rise with every incremental rate hike.
While it is debatable if the billions in interest the Fed
paid to foreign banks was equivalent to a slow-motion cash bailout (one
set to increase), what is not debatable is that the same Fed which for 7
years provide generous funding to offshore commercial banks, is
now granting foreign central banks the same arbitrage privilege,
one which worst of all, is almost entirely shrouded in secrecy.
And finally one last question: if U.S. citizen savers get
a 0.0% interest rate courtesy of the Fed despite the Fed's rate hike, why
are foreign central banks getting 0.35% from the Fed?
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The
Follies & Fallacies Of Keynesian Economics Submitted by Tyler
Durden on 02/22/2016 : Eighty years go, on February 4, 1936, one of the
most influential books of the last one hundred years was published, British
economist, John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money. With it was born what has become known as Keynesian Economics.
In the process Keynes helped undermine what had been three of the essential
institutional ingredients of a free-market economy: the gold standard,
balanced government budgets, and open competitive markets. In their
place Keynes’s legacy has given us paper-money inflation, government deficit
spending, and more political intervention throughout the market.
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For
These Four States, The Recession Has Arrived. Submitted by Tyler
Durden on 02/22/2016 : From abysmal PMI data to slumping freight volumes to
collapsing Class 8 truck orders, the writing is on the wall: the US is headed
for a recession. And while we would argue that if it weren't for goalseeked
data, the numbers would already show that the entire economy is contracting, at
least four states are already in an official downturn.
Extracts
North Carolina: That’s consistent with what we’ve
seen in the trucking industry, where Class
8 sales growth is in freefall, which just last week cost 1,250 people their
jobs at Daimler in North Carolina. “Everybody around here's been hurting, and
it's going to hurt even more,” one convenience store clerk told the local media
in the wake of the layoffs.
Minnesota. “Over the last 30 years, the bad times
last longer and the good times are shorter,” Minnesota lawmaker Tom Anzelc,
whose House district includes the city of Iron Junction, which has suffered in
the face of China’s acute excess capacity problem and the slump in global
growth said
earlier this month. “This particular time is the worst I have ever seen.”
Against this backdrop, consider that four states are
already officially in a downturn: Alaska, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“Job gains and losses are key
factors that the National Bureau of Economic Research uses to chart U.S.
expansions and recessions,” Bloomberg
writes. “Even as U.S. employers added 2.7 million workers in 2015, job cuts
last year totaled 18,800 in North Dakota, 11,800 in West Virginia and 6,400 in
Wyoming, according to the U.S. Labor Department.”
Likewise, things aren’t going so well in Louisiana, New
Mexico and Oklahoma which are all at
risk according to Moody’s. And then there is of course Texas, which is also
struggling to cope with the Saudi war of attrition on US oil producers.
“For every 25 percent drop in oil
prices, employment could be expected to decline 0.6 percent in Texas
and 0.8 percent in Louisiana, while Wyoming stands
to lose 2.1 percent of its jobs and North Dakota and Oklahoma about
1 percent each,” Bloomberg goes on to note, citing research by Stephen Brown,
an economist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Mine Yücel, director
of research at the Dallas Fed.
Amusingly, we're supposed to believe that the consumer is
going to keep things afloat. "Whether the weak links break the entire U.S.
economy will hinge largely on a group that’s benefited from the energy price
collapse: American consumers," Bloomberg concludes. Of course as we've
said too many times to count, Americans simply aren't spending their savings at
the pump. If they were, you'd think GDP growth wouldn't be bumping along at a
paltry 0.69% clip.
And about all of that net job creation, don't forget this
indelible chart:
But as lower for longer continues to break the back of the
US oil patch and as the soaring dollar further imperils the dying manufacturing
sector, just remember, Janet Yellen
doesn't think the malaise will spread. "But
with respect to employment, although there really are very severe losses [in
energy], it’s a pretty small sector of the work force overall.”
Dan Oxley, a West
Virginia homebuilder who spoke to Bloomberg doesn't share Yellen's assessment.
"Everyone is going to have to tighten their belts. The next couple of
years are going to be difficult.”
Stop "peddling fiction" sir.
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