On Thursday Rick Santelli pushed and prodded and as a result, we were able to travel from Japan to Europe in an effort to discuss some of the more pressing issues confronting the global macro world. First, we stopped in Japan to discuss how the BOJ and Governor Kuroda will be able to extricate itself from five years of QQE which has seen the BOJ accumulate Japanese debt and equities. Of course the end game is to reach the self-imposed inflation level of 2 percent that has proved to be an agonizing level to achieve. As a reminder, when a nation is saddled with huge debts the best relief is to be found in inflation, which results in an ultimate money illusion as debts are paid back with an ever-depreciated currency.
Click on the image to watch me and Rick discuss global policy.
On June 6, I had a discussion with the Financial Repression Authority host Richard Bonugli and the highly respected Ronni Stoeferle. We covered myriad of global financial and political concerns as we tried to provide the foundation for profitable opportunities via in-depth analysis of these fragilities.
This week for global macro traders is packed with data and policy statements that can ignite the volatility fuse. On Tuesday night, President Trump, the conquering hero of Davos, will deliver the State of the Union address. Chair Janet Yellen will oversee her final FOMC meeting this week. There are also several data releases Thursday and Friday, culminating with the unemployment report.
Another moment in time with Rick Santelli. We reviewed some of today’s early market reactions to the weekend events. A measure of the impact of President Mario Draghi’s ECB policy was reflected in the prices of European sovereign debt. The political news out of Spain and Italy let alone recent elections in Austria and the Czech Republic SHOULD have sent Italian and Spanish yields HIGHER but because of the ECB’s ongoing LARGE ASSET PURCHASES Spanish and Italian yields on 10-year debt actually dropped the most today.
(Click on the image to watch me and Rick discuss the weekend’s events.)
First: On Oct. 18 I talked with Richard Bonugli from the Financial Repression Authority and financial analyst John Browne, a former member of the British Parliament. I am linking to the transcript of the chat. The conversation was free-flowing and was heavily tilted toward geopolitical concerns and shed light on investment possibilities. But as readers of NOTES well know, many of out best trade outcomes are based on political economy as well as mere yield curves. Last week the 2/10 did challenge the 73.5 basis point level (again) and by Friday the 2/10 had bounced back to 81 basis points.
First a few jokes: My sources tell me that the new Fed Chairman will be Marc Faber; second, as Lloyd Blankfein is chirping about Brexit and Goldman moving to Frankfurt, Germany, he opined several years ago that Goldman was doing God’s work. Well, being the cyclical time in the Jewish Torah of the reading of NOAH, I remind Blankfein that Noah was also part of God’s work. (Pour a scotch and laugh).
Not a word was spoke between us,there was little risk involved Everything up to that point ,had been left unresolved Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm
When Bob Dylan released this song 42 years ago it was on the album Blood on the Tracks. When the FED embarked on its QE1, QE2 and QE3 it was to respond to the blood coursing through the streets of the U.S. financial system. The U.S. banking system was threatened with insolvency and the FED‘s monetary injections sheltered the banking system from a storm of forced systemic liquidation of assets. QE1 coupled with a questionable TARP program did prevent a systemic liquidation but QE2 and QE3 I always believed were superfluous but in the land of counterfactuals it is an impossible point to prove.
All of the words and photos emanating from Hamburg are figments of the media’s confirmation bias. In Monday’s Financial Times, Wolfgang Munchau had a splendid op-ed titled, “From Brexit to Fake Trade Deals–the Curse of Confirmation Bias.” Munchau calls out the Euro-Japan trade deal headlines for as he points out it was announced on the eve of the G-20 summit in order to embarrass President Trump. I laughed when I read the stories about the aforementioned trade agreement because while EUROCRATS presumed a signed agreement, the FACT is each EU state will have to approve the agreement. So the acrimony from the Euro/Canada trade agreement still reverberates.
This is a tough POST to write for I will criticize a newspaper I have read every day for at least 30 years. (In fact, I still have it delivered on my doorstep and read most of it online in the evening before the hard copy arrives.) The London Financial Times had a front page story, “Troubled Italian Banks Face Fresh Risk of Failing If Renzi Loses Vote.” This is a deplorable headline for it harkens back to the days of the mainstream media warning of dire consequences if Brexit passed and the Trump was elected president. THIS IS SCARE MONGERING. It raises the question: When will the Davos crowd EVER LEARN?
The Wizard of Oz provides so many appropriate metaphors for dealing with global central bank policy. The failure of the wisdom of those who meet behind the “curtain” enthrall the members of the elite media who genuflect on the altar of access. Provide the necessary backdrop of equations and the media believes everything. It reinforces the sentiment of the Greenspan era: “If you think you understood what I said, I must have misspoken.” The idea of an “all-knowing Fed” is beginning to lose its luster as markets begin to understand that FED policy is not rocket science. There is no predictable outcome for the global experiment of negative interest rates or zero interest rates. Even the growth of supersized central bank sheets is causing doubts among the blind followers of free money forever.
Click on the image to watch me and Rick discuss global policy.