BRICS Update – September 2023

BRICS, Currencies, Economics, Geoeconomics, Monetary Policy, Uncategorized, , , ,

We wouldn’t go as far as to call the recent BRICS summit a non-event, but the clarity many of us had been hoping for at the end of August has not yet emerged. The main feature of this year’s summit was to add additional countries – 14 members now in total with many more waiting in the wings.

Adding all of these countries at once would have been impractical – and difficult. However, it’s not the actual ‘official’ membership rolls that matter – it’s the spirit of the agreement behind the countries who have already entered – and those who will enter moving forward.

This trading / currency bloc has a largely singular purpose – to remove reliance on a weaponized US Dollar. While it’s true that many in the US and Europe don’t perceive the western financial system as a weapon, much of the rest of the world does. Our perceptions in this instance don’t matter. It is the perceptions of the growing BRICS bloc that matter. A secondary, but related, goal is to move towards multilateralism on a variety of fronts. We’re going to focus on the economic and financial aspects of this.

Simply put, these countries are tired of being told what to do. They’re tired of being told they have no self-determination. They’re tired of being sanctioned when they don’t do as the collective west wants. They’re tired of the colonialist French (just one example) taking natural resources while the people in the countries who provide these resources live in abject poverty. This is perhaps the most important takeaway of the big globalization movement in the 1990s and early 2000s – the goal was NEVER to raise the living standards in these countries, but merely to use whatever levers could be applied to get the resources from these countries for use by the ‘first world’ nations. Again, they’re tired of it. This alone is the primary fuel for the BRICS movement. They have united against a common enemy – the weaponized US Dollar, SWIFT, and the many other structures that have arisen from the USDollar’s hegemony.

Put in this particular light, it would make sense that BRICS would introduce some type of currency. We have always assumed that it would be gold-backed. Why? Another worthless paper currency isn’t going to have much appeal – if any. If there is to be a new currency regime, there must be something unique about it that provides it with the necessary credibility to function. For many years, we economists have felt gold-backing would provide that credibility.

However, the landscape has changed over the past several years and as such, we need to revisit our prior assumptions. Could the mere disdain for the USDollar and it’s financial system be enough to give even an unbacked new currency credibility? A few years ago, we’d have opined in the negative. Now? It seems possible that perhaps a backing isn’t really necessary. At least not at the outset. Countries are already cutting deals to exclude the dollar using national currencies – none of which are backed by gold or any other commodity money. The resource-rich countries might argue there’s an implied backing – extracting natural resources requires tremendous amounts of economic activity. Could that activity in and of itself be enough to provide credibility? Yes – because that’s what’s going on right now. Again, it comes down to perceptions. If these countries view national currencies as less risky than the USDollar system, then that’l how they’re going to behave.

Do the BRICS nations have enough gold to back a currency either now or in the future? Absolutely. This is some of the information we were hoping to get out of this year’s summit. What we did see is a prototype of a potential BRICS note. While the providence of the images we’ll show cannot be 100% verified at this time, the rolling out of a new currency is an event that must be chronicled and studied. What we lack at this point is the clarity of the actual mechanics of the currency. Some questions are:

Who will issue the currency?

What (if anything) will back the currency?

Will non-BRICS members be required to obtain the currency in order to trade with BRICS members? This is huge for countries like the US

If the currency eventually used is a ‘hard’ currency (with commodity backing), what will be the peg?

If the bloc decides on national currencies instead, how will exchange rates be determined?

If there IS a BRICS currency, will it trade against other currencies in global FOREX markets?

If the bloc is serious about making this work, then we can answer some of these questions now. We can certainly opine on what ‘should’ be done. However, given the fluid nature of the situation – and the fact that the world is already mired in another regional (proxy) war and several smaller ones, the situation on the ground is likely to change rapidly and the attendant amount of disinformation will certainly be present – as is the case anytime countries are at war.

It is also worth mentioning that the BRICS countries do no agree on many other matters. Some of the countries have trading alliances with NATO nations for example, while others do not. Again, the single point of focus thus far is to (at a minimum) decrease dependence on the USDollar and its hegemonic system. Surely there are some current and aspiring members that would love to see the Dollar disappear from the world stage. Others are simply looking for a stable and reliable alternative.

Instead of ad hominem attacks, the US and the collective west would do well to take a huge step back and look at WHY the BRICS alliance started and why it is growing. From our vantage point, the wounds the Dollar has sustained have been largely self-inflicted, which is consistent with economic and monetary history. We simply don’t learn from history. Or, worse yet, there is enough hubris involved that policymakers think they can do things so much better now than in the past. Again, history indicates otherwise.

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Recent Monetary Actions – 8/4/2023

Banking, Bond Market, Currencies, Economics, Geoeconomics, Government Statistics, Interest Rates, Monetary Policy, , , ,

The past few months have produced some rather notable monetary activity. For myriad reasons, the money pumping of the not-so-USFed during the period of 2009-2019 produced nominally higher price inflation, but not anywhere near the increases in prices that should have occurred. Our operating theory as the 2008 crisis was ending was that the newly unveiled ‘quantitative easing’ nay relentless money printing, would push up both consumer prices and the nominal prices of various asset classes as well. In essence, the ‘fed’ would replace the burst US residential housing market bubble with yet another bubble.

The central bank of the US, followed by other G7 central banks, embarked not just on money printing, but money channeling as well. The blowout preventers, if you will, for this excess were primarily the US Bond Market and the US stock market as well. Bond yields were artificially low during much of this period, thanks to the fed monetizing USGovt debt. Nominal yields were a joke. Real yields were far into the red. The US consumetariat didn’t notice this because, as always, credit was easily obtained. The consumer just dove deeper and deeper in debt. This was not a US-centric phenomenon. The European Union behaved in much the same manner, but the EU blew up a massive residential housing bubble as well, particularly England. Technically, England is no longer in the EU, but for practical purposes, this distinction is negligible.

What many people (investors in particular) forget is that there are always cycles. These cycles can rather easily be altered by extraneous actions of central banks, governments, and even consumers. However, the more distorted or prolonged the boom is, the bust is all the more pronounced. Think of Newton’s Laws and apply them to monetary policy and economics.

With the proverbial spring fully compressed by the massive deficit spending commencing in 2020, the not-so-USFed poured literally trillions in fresh dollars into the USEconomy, monetizing massive amounts of government debt to finance social spending. Since the US consumer, as a whole, has negligible savings, when economies were shutdown, the government became the primary support structure at levels never before seen. The ‘channeling’ of the 2009-19 period went out the window and the fresh dollars were poured directly into the consumer economy. We all know what happened next. Prices head for the stratosphere.

We noticed something curious start at the end of Q1 2023, however. The US M2 monetary aggregate began to contract – for the first time in.. well, forever basically. Was this a one-off month or the beginning of a new trend. We’ve seen a few months’ worth of data now and it would appear that there is something of a trend brewing. Deflation. Not falling prices, but an actual contraction of the money supply. It is interesting to note that during this stretch, US stock indexes, particularly the DJIA have forged towards all-time highs. What gives? Housing prices have taken a hit, which, in ordinary circumstances, would be a good thing – from an affordability perspective at least, but the reason housing prices are cooling is simply because the cost of mortgages has been pushed out of the reach of many by mortgage rates that are still hovering around 7%.

Our thesis – for now at least – is that the not-so-USFed is once again channeling money, but not in the same way it was during the 2009-19 period. It appears – and we admit it is very early to say for sure – that the consumer economy has, in the aggregate, been cut off from new money. The financial economy has not. However, the net effect is the contraction of the US M2 aggregate.

Interestingly enough, the last data pointed to a reversal, which complicates the situation a bit. The reversal could end up being a one-off event, or it could be a true reversal in the trend. Further study on prior deflationary periods is in order. In any case, the top to bottom action in the aggregate as shown above does explain the slowing of the rate of price inflation. Remember, inflation is a monetary event that manifests itself in prices. While the mainstream financial press claims otherwise in their headlines, the whole of their reporting proves they know the truth and choose to obfuscate, which is typical.

Since monetary data has a significant lag associated with it, we will not be able to ascertain until likely the end of 2023 or Q1 2024 if this is definitely the case or not. There should be anecdotal indications between now and then and we will certainly keep the readers of this blog appropriately informed.

Sutton/Mehl

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Bail-Ins and the Direct Registration System

Bailouts, Banking, Currencies, Geoeconomics, Monetary Policy, RIsk Management, ,

Originally published in October 2015

My Two Cents – Bail-Ins and the DRS

Andy Sutton, MBA

As recently as a few weeks ago, the European Union directed its member nations to draft their own independent legislation for dealing with the resolution of a failed G-SIFI (Globally Significant Financial Institution). At the same time, we have all sorts of seams opening in the currency, bond, and commodity markets. The Swiss Franc is now un-pegged from the Euro, there have been wild swings in the bond markets in Europe due to the aforementioned action, and oil is in an absolute free-fall. There are many geopolitical (and likely criminal) maneuverings behind all of these phenomena, however the chaos in the financial world thus far has been remarkable in that there hasn’t been much given everything going on.

There has been news of some smaller brokerages biting the dust thanks to these swings, but yet nobody ‘big’ has gone down – yet. Are they that good? That insulated? That lucky? That’s for people of a higher pay grade to answer, but the bottom line is that the environment is absolutely RIPE for another Cyprus or MFGlobal. Will it happen this time around? Couldn’t tell you. Maybe it’ll be next time. Or maybe it’ll happen this time, but not impact the US. Since everyone already thinks America is bulletproof I am guessing most will go with the latter of the two possibilities.

I’ve been talking an awful lot again about the bail-in, but a reader pointed out that he still doesn’t understand exactly what it is, and, more importantly, how an institution gets into the position where it needs (or wants) one. He’s a smart one, this reader, so I figure if he’s got questions then so do a whole bunch of other folks and that’s perfectly all right. That’s why I do this. So this week I’m going to focus on some of the anatomy and try to give everyone a sense of the sorts of things that put a bank/broker or just a broker into a position where they’d seek to invoke the bail-in.

On the positive side, although not for those folks impacted, we have a live example of how the bail-in works, right here in America to use as a template. I don’t wish to further malign Mr. Corzine’s already shredded reputation, but as his penchant for fast travel suggests, he could probably outrun any criticism we might toss his way.

Anatomy of the Bail-In – The Mechanism

Let’s talk about a brokerage first since this is where MFGlobal was situated. Brokerages generally have two components – the brokerage side and the dealer side. Formally, they are referred to as broker-dealers by the regulators because of this. So there are two sides. One side you see when you walk in and talk to your broker and sit in his posh office and the other side, which you never see – and usually neither does the broker. It is this unseen side you need to worry about in this instance. Your hundred thousand dollar brokerage account isn’t very noteworthy in the grand scheme of things other than that the broker-dealer might use shares that you hold in your portfolio to lend out to other parties so they can short a particular stock. Hmm, that is kind of going against your best interests isn’t it?

Your broker calls you with a ‘hot tip’ or a ‘sure winner’ and you go with it, then they’re enabling short-sellers out the back door. Nice huh? And they all do it, but I digress.

The brokerage side deals with clients such as yourself, maybe some pension funds, trust funds, perhaps an institutional client or two depending on what they’re into and so forth. It is pretty benign. On the other side of the operation there is the dealer side and they can be into all kinds of stuff, which, thanks to the USFederal court system, can get you into a pile of trouble. To keep it overly simple, think of the dealer side of the broker-dealer arrangement as a giant client. The dealer operation has accounts, holds positions, buys and sells positions, and makes a market in all of the above. They might do this with regards to stocks and bonds as well as options and other derivatives. The dealer side can borrow money to do all of the above as well, usually from commercial banks. When they borrow money to engage in transactions it is called leverage.

Anatomy of the Bail-In – A Scaled-Down, Working Example

Let’s say the dealer has a million dollars in assets – cash and positions. If they make 10% in a quarter, they’ve added another $100,000. Ok, easy enough, but they want to make more than that. So let’s say they go out and borrow another $500,000 at 5% per annum and invest the whole enchilada for a quarter and make the same 10%. So now instead of $100,000 in earnings, they have $150,000 – a 50% increase. Their interest expense for the quarter is $6,250 so their gross profit on the loan is $43,750. They give the $500,000 back plus the $6,250 in interest and everyone is happy. Their assets have swelled to $1,143.750. So where they’d made 10% originally, using leverage, they turned that gain into a 14.375% gain. Not too shabby. Plus, remember they make a few bucks lending out the shares you bought on that hot tip so someone else can place a bet that your hot tip stock will go down. Again, this is overly simplistic, but you get the idea here. The borrowed money is cheap – in fact, 5% is probably on the very high side of what they pay in interest, but is a round number.

Let’s say now that things don’t work out. The invested $1.5 million goes down by 10% in a quarter. They lose $150,000 plus the $6,250 in interest and suddenly, when they give back the loan and the interest; they’re left with $843,750. This creates an obvious problem when all of their assets are already deployed. There’s red ink to the tune of $156,250. Generally, what will happen is another loan will be obtained or some assets sold off or maybe a little of both and the loss will be absorbed.

Anatomy of the Bail-In – Reality

Now the illustrative example above uses a very tame leverage ratio. There was 50 cents of debt for every dollar of assets – or a ratio of .50:1. Understand that leverage ratios of 25:1 and even as high as 40:1 have not been uncommon. That means for the million dollars in the example above, there might be as much as $40 million in leverage (debt). So let’s use the 25:1 ratio and assume the same 10% loss. Suddenly the loss is 2.5X (a $2.5 million loss against a million in assets) the amount of the dealer’s assets rather than being .15X (a $150K loss against a million in assets) as in my example, not to mention the interest. Oops. Now the firm needs cash. They have a creditor to pay off. Well, how about those folks on the brokerage side? Well, gee whiz, they have $3 million in assets. Let’s just snag the $2.5 mil from there and use that to pay off the creditor. But that’s stealing and is illegal, right?

Wrong. Not anymore. That is precisely what happened in the case of MFGlobal, Sentinel Group, and Peregrine Financial – all to varying extents. The dealer side made bad bets and when it came time to pay off those bets, they went to their clients, raided the accounts, and then the injustices in the black robes gave it jurisprudence’s stamp of approval and the bail-in was on. Now we’ve got precedent and case law supporting overt theft. Instead of impeaching the judges, imprisoning them along with the principals of the firms who pulled the stunts to begin with, the establishment comes up with a new set of nomenclature (G-SIFI, bail-in, etc.) and begins the process of normalizing the idea of stealing something that doesn’t belong to them.

And perhaps the most ironic of all? The not-so-USFed, that shining knight on the white horse, buyer of last resort, standout of the handout to the big banks? It is in hock too and its leverage ratio is absolutely stunning. 77:1 at last count. Yes you read that right –  77:1. It was at 22:1 when the financial crisis started ripping through middle classes throughout the globe in 2008 and when you hear all these morons on television talking about how healthy US (and global for that matter) banks are, remember that someone is eating all these garbage mortgages, derivatives and other nuclear financial waste. It’s the central banks. Wait a second though; the central bank regulates the underlings, right? Maybe on the surface, but this is another bright and shining tidbit that illustrates who owns who. The not-so-USFed simply does what it is told.

A great question right now would be this: If everything is getting so much better then why are they still leveraging up at the ‘fed? Shouldn’t they be unwinding? They say they’re unwinding. But they’re not unwinding, they’re continuing to eat more and more garbage generated by their owners. Now this could go on quite a while, but not forever and it won’t end in a pretty fashion when it does end.

Anatomy of the Bail-In – Implications for ‘Depositors’

So that’s the broker-dealer version of the bail-in. The bank side isn’t much different in concept. Thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated broker-dealer operations and the savings/loan operations of commercial banks, the same thing can happen to you if you have deposits in a commercial bank. The mechanism is precisely the same. The broker-dealer side conjures up some idiotic bet based on some computer program written by someone who thinks that the global financial system is nothing more than his or her personal playpen. In typical fashion, they win enough times to get cocky and of course as this happens, the greed kicks in and the bets get bigger. Eventually there’s a loser and by this time they’ve pumped for the goalposts and hiked the leverage ratio up to about 40:1 or even higher.

When it all crumbles and everyone starts scrambling, bear in mind that the law has now made your bank deposits available to do a bail-in and make good on that bad bet. And since you’re now an unsecured creditor rather than a depositor, you a) have no FDIC protection, and b) have no recourse. If you were a secured creditor, you might have a chance to recoup something, albeit not anywhere near what you’d lost, but at least a token. What happens next is your unsecured credit (think bondholders) is converted to equity and you become a stockholder in a failed bank. Congratulations.  You woke up on a Friday morning having $25,000 in bank deposits and literally by the time the bank opens Monday you have x shares in a busted bank. And yes it can happen that fast. Anyone who doesn’t think it can, should remember Lehman in 2008. While it wasn’t a bail-in at that point, look at the velocity with which that outfit hit the mat, never to get up. Look at Cyprus. Friday afternoon there are tremors and by Monday morning, the banks are locked up like Fort Knox and the ATMs are out of money.

The US has already crafted its resolution mechanisms along with most of the G20. The EU has just ordered its member nations to the do the same. In my opinion, anyone who stores more than a trivial amount of cash in a commercial bank should be sentenced to spend the next month in Massachusetts figuring out how many of Tom Brady’s precious pigskins were improperly inflated.

The biggest problem with the above is that even if you understand the mechanism and what a firm might have to be engaged in to get themselves in trouble, it is very difficult to find out exactly what the dealer side of a broker-dealer firm is up to. They’re obviously secretive, claiming proprietary interests. Most will tell you their capital ratio though and that is a start. Your best bet if you insist on being in paper or even have decided that you’re willing to risk a small position in paper is to spread it out amongst several firms or, better yet, use the Direct Registration System so that your assets are held in your name at the issuer’s transfer agent rather than being held in street name at your broker. I realize the whole system is intertwined and something big enough to topple firm A might take firm B with it as well. However, that is an inherent risk for those who wish to engage in this activity.

Regarding the Direct Registration System, many companies stopped issuing paper certificates years ago, citing cost (funny, the shareholder usually was on the hook for that), but even if a firm doesn’t offer an actual certificate you can still have your shares held in your name at the issuer’s transfer agent. There is a popular misconception out there that you can’t do it unless the issuer will provide a paper certificate. All broker-dealers have a means by which you can DRS your positions. Many are reluctant to assist though because, frankly, not having your shares in street name in their ‘house’ costs them money. If DRS is something you are interested in and your broker is uncooperative, then find someone who will cooperate. The good news is that there are firms who are not obstructive in this regard.

Also an inherent risk is that even if you start to smell a rat that you won’t be able to extricate your assets in time. Much in the way banks are making people wait inordinate periods of time to get cash (if the paper itself is a con job then think about ‘electronic paper’ or digitized currency), firms can take up to 10 working days or more to effect transfers. In our fast-paced financial climate where the world can literally change in a weekend, 10 days might as well be 10 years. Also, those pesky daily limits on your ATM card, put in place for your own ‘security’ as you were told when you asked about it, could be lethal as was the case in Cyprus.
My goal here isn’t to make things sound hopeless; that is not the intent, but rather to present you with the risks involved when you engage in these very basic financial activities. Most people don’t even consider these risks because until recently they either didn’t exist as in the case of the bail-in or weren’t relevant as in the case of banks being so stingy with their cash withdrawal policies. This is one of those times when you simply MUST advocate for yourself because these other folks are firmly invested in your continued ignorance, apathy, and ultimately inaction.

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Banking Crisis Update – April 5th, 2023

1 CommentBailouts, Banking, Currencies, Economics, Monetary Policy, RIsk Management, Uncategorized

Andy Sutton / Graham Mehl

The past few weeks have been fairly ‘quiet’ regarding bank failures, but, much like a hurricane, we’re in a bit of an ‘eye of the storm’. There are several graphics that follow which will hopefully reinforce the main point – the crisis is nowhere near over. While getting direct information has become quite challenging, we maintain several data series that were previously discontinued by the publishers.

Graphic #1 – Monthly Changes in Bank Deposits – as of March 2023

In the chart above, you’ll note the timeline on the x axis. The data stream begins in 1971. March of 2023 just provided the LARGEST single month drop in bank deposits – EVER. We had nearly a trillion dollar bank run during the month of March and not a single word was uttered by any official, policymaker, or media talking head. This should not be much of a surprise – the financial industry and government have learned extremely well the lessons of Cyprus and other places in the past decade. Transparency is the mortal enemy of a fiat money system.

Let’s not split hairs here – there isn’t a single commodity-backed currency on the planet at this time so everyone else is doing the same thing we’re doing here in the US.

1930-1932 Reboot?

It certainly appears that is a distinct possibility. We’ve opined for many years now, much to the chagrin of readers, that the not-so-USFed would indeed try to rescue the dollar one last time before the cycle ended. What we’ve seen over the past few months are the possible beginnings of a contraction in the monetary aggregates (Deflation). We’ll let them graphic below speak for itself:

The above graphic is M1 in the United States. The timeline starts in 2000. The incredible spike towards the middle/end of 2019 is responsible for the massive spike in price inflation that we’ve seen in the past 18 months. There’s a delay of between 9 and 21 months from spikes in money supply to the knock-on price increases. Note that the spike in M1 started pre-pandemic.

We’ll show one more chart before we close this brief update. United States M2 – now the broadest (officially) tracked monetary aggregate. It’s painting a similar picture. The timeline is set to that of the M1 graphic above for easy comparison.

M2 tends to move more gradually than M1 because it contains more subtypes of money. We’ll post a chart at the end of the piece where you can see the various components of the aggregates. But what is noteworthy about the above M2 graphic – we’re seeing the first actual deflation in almost a century. This isn’t price deflation (falling prices), this is the actual removal of dollars from the system. If the deflation of 1930-32 was truly the accident that everyone claimed, then policymakers ought to know well enough to avoid it again.

In a fiat monetary system, only the central bank can remove money from the system. Ours did it at the beginning of the depression and it certainly looks as though they’re doing it again. We’ll deal with the fallout that will result in the next update. To give a small hint – think about debt that was taken when the money supply was at its peak.

The chart of monetary aggregates in the United States is directly below.

Stay well,

Andy / Graham

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A Quick Check-In, the Farce of GDP Reporting and a New Monetary Regime

Banking, Consumer Finance, Currencies, Debt Ceiling, Economics, Geoeconomics, Government Statistics, Modern Monetary Theory, Monetary Policy, National Debt

Hello friends,

Yes, we are still alive! And kicking too – at least most days! It’s been two years since we published anything, but we’ve been very busy, nonetheless. We’d like to take a moment to point out a few indisputable (and very provable) facts. 

Let’s play connect the dots, shall we? This is a bit off-topic of the day but might be instructive for some in your spheres of influence.

1) MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) is in full force. The ‘Fed’ – and the rest of the world’s central banks – are printing funny money like crazy. Hence no more M2 here in the US. For reference, M3 was discontinued in March 2006.

2) That funny money is pushing consumer prices at an admitted rate of 4+% annualized. Let’s assume that’s true even though we know it’s much higher.

3) GDP in every major economy is measured in currency, NOT units of goods and services produced/purchased/sold.

Therefore, even if every single American business, middleman, and consumer conducted the exact same amount of economic activity (produced/sold/purchased) as last year, GDP will STILL rise by more than 4% on an annualized basis. What exactly is going on here?

We all know. The international bankers are doing exactly what Thomas Jefferson said they would do – robbing us blind first by inflation, then by deflation. Lest I digress too much, GDP is NOT an accurate way to measure any kind of economic growth in its current form, especially because one of the components is government spending (look at the deficit spending last year alone!). 

The Cobb-Douglas production model that Graham and I tweaked to include more modern components of the global economy and have been running for the last decade STILL shows America in a protracted recession. It’s not a perfect model, but it’s a lot better than the one that is spouted about 4 times a year on CNBC, etc. If you haven’t already, feel free to download, read, and spread our 2019 commentary on Modern Monetary Theory. The link is at the end of the email.

Spread it far and wide. Delete our names if you wish. We want neither credit nor accolades. We just want people who are looking for a little common sense to know there’s some out there. The article isn’t perfect, but it’s the effort of two guys who love their country and feel stewardship of the blessings we’ve been given is very important. 

Next up? The ’new’ Bretton Woods and an analysis of Schwab’s ‘Great Reset’. Purely in economic terms.

Best,

Andy & Graham

Click to access MMT.pdf

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What Exactly is Neel Kashkari Trying to Accomplish? – My Two Cents

Bailouts, Banking, Consumer Finance, Currencies, Interest Rates, Modern Monetary Theory, My Two Cents, Trade War, , , , , ,

Neel Kashkari is hardly a household name. We’d speculate that most people wouldn’t recognize it. Neel was the Goldman Sachs alum who was hand-picked by Hank “A Strong Dollar is in the National Interest” Paulson back in 2008 to handle the disbursement of the TARP bailout money. That’s the $750 billion bailout that was initially shot down by the House, but eventually passed a few days later after Paulson did some rather heavy handed and unapologetic arm-twisting.

We’re going to link up a couple of videos throughout as sort of a walk down memory lane. 2008 was, after all, a dozen years ago already.

Ok, so what? What does this have to do with Neel? Well, after the bailout was passed, an odd thing happened. Instead of being used to buy troubled assets, the money went right to the banks. Kashkari was grilled by then Rep. Dennis Kucinich about his activities. Kashkari had already mastered the thousand-yard stare while being grilled which immediately caught our attention. He’d been trained for this.

After the brewing scandal was snuffed out by further epic plunges in global financial indices, Kashkari was quietly taken off the scene and ran like a refugee to a cabin in the woods of Northern California. He would remain there until 2016 when he was called off the bench to head up the Minneapolis Fed. That really got our attention. From a cabin in the woods to an extremely high level position in one of the most corrupt enterprises man has ever known after spending more than a half dozen years in exile? We should be so lucky.

Unfortunately, that’s not where the saga ends. Lately Neel Kashkari has been going around the talk show circuit saying that the only way to save the USEconomy is by doing essentially a full lock down on the US. Again, we’ll post some link to videos. We think Kashkari’s words carry a bit more weight just because of his pedigree and prior experience in sticking it to the taxpayers of this crumbling nation. How does a lock down save the economy?

We have a theory and we’re going to lay it out. The graphic below shows the rather alarming – and rapid – departure from the USDollar from two of the biggest up and coming economic powers out there: Russia and China. There are other countries engaged in similar activity and Andy has spoken on Liberty Talk Radio about these events for several years.

The USDollar’s reserve currency status is gone. It was in serious jeopardy going into this year, but after the blowout federal deficit even the dimmest bulb can see there is no way and certainly no will to ever pay off the national debt. Hyperinflation might be a tactic and we’ll talk about that eventually as well, but countries are bailing. It should be noted that the US is sanctioning EVERY SINGLE ONE of these countries at this moment and urging allies to do the same.

Other tripe and banal reasons are given, but this is clearly a move to protect the Dollar as long as possible. The house of cards is shaking and is about to get blown away like the houses of the first two of the three little pigs.

So why the call for a lock down? We’ll use basic economics to lay out our theory. When global demand for dollars decreases, those dollars need to go somewhere. If countries are using other currencies for international trade, their FOREX reserves will be changed to reflect this. Simply put, they won’t need to keep as many dollars. And why buy USGovt debt? It pays next to nothing – well below even the most cooked levels of price inflation. And there’s the very real possibility of switching to negative yields – especially in the series of shorter maturities.

These unneeded, unwanted dollars are starting to come home. Add to that all the funny money that has been created by the not-so-USFed to ‘buy everything’ in sight to keep financial markets stable. There are no reserve requirements, so the banking level can create massive inflation from making new loans. This is why the NASDAQ and S&P500 are at record highs. The repatriated dollars are being poured into financial markets and blowing up all manner of bubbles.

What is also happening is that consumer price levels are starting to rise at frightening levels. The change from May to June was .5654%, and the change from June to July was .5867%. These are annualized rates of around 7%. The central bank’s ‘comfort zone’ ends around 2.5% annualized.

US CPI-U

Kashkari’s argument for a lock down now makes perfect sense. If America goes back to lock down, we’ll see consumer prices drop from lack of demand as was seen in March, April, and May. A lock down would hide the effects of all this funny money flowing back into the US.

Let’s fold into the mix our paper on Modern Monetary Theory from last summer. The first premise is that a central bank/government that acts as its own bank cannot go broke. It can print until the lights go out in Tennessee. BUT.. when consumer prices start to go up, the next step is raise taxes to pull money from the system. There have been quite a few articles talking about higher taxes. With real unemployment and underemployment where they are, does anyone think a tax increase would fly?

A lock down might not fly either, but any decrease in aggregate demand that Kashkari is able to squeeze from his bully pulpit is going to ‘help’ the situation. Note – it’s not going to help the average person. This is a move to protect a broken currency regime, the institution that brought it to fruition, and the total corruption of fiat currencies in general.

Keep in mind that the partial lockdowns from March through June caused a 33% contraction in GDP according to the USGovt. Our model showed a 43% contraction. Given that we use a totally different methodology, the difference isn’t surprising. Since the USGovt’s GDP model uses the purchase of finished goods rather than intermediate goods, we can say that aggregate demand fell by about a third in the second quarter. You can see in the chart above the impact that had on consumer prices. Kashkari and his ilk are looking for more of the same.

Another such drop in prices would enable them to repatriate even more dollars without it become too noticeable in the real economy. We might get Dow 30K, NASDAQ 14K and S&P500 4K, but that is the ‘good’ kind of price inflation. If consumer goods went up in proportionate amounts, there would be even more rioting than there is at present.

Why not just destroy the unused currency? Most of it is digital anyway. That’s the most common question we are expecting. It is very important to understand that true deflation doesn’t occur unless money is actually destroyed. Falling prices do not mean deflation. You can create a little deflation on your own if you pull all the ‘money’ from your bank account in cash, then set it on fire. Why would I do that, I can still use it!!! And that’s the answer. The repatriated dollars aren’t going to be destroyed because they can still be used. Not by Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average, but by the banking system.

The next step in this decoupling process is for major trading partners to start requiring the US to settle transactions in some other currency or possibly even gold. Make no mistake, that is why this campaign of sanctions and threats of military action are in place against countries like Venezuela and Syria. When in doubt, follow the money. Forget the terrorism for a minute and follow the money. Nicholas Maduro and Bashar al-Assad are a clear and present danger to dollar hegemony because they’re stepping out of the dollar for international trade. Andy analyzed the situation in Syria almost 7 years ago and accurately predicted that Russia would not leave Syria hang out to dry. And even more importantly, WHY they wouldn’t leave Syria – and why they have yet to do so.

On a day the S&P500 recouped ALL of its losses due to a global pandemic that the experts are telling us is going to only get worse, we can look at the above mechanism and understand exactly how all those gains took place. It is perhaps ironic that over the past few month the USDollar has struggled mightily – even against other fiat currencies backed by nothing but the never-ending stream of hot air from bankers the likes of Neel Kashkari.

Graham Mehl is a pseudonym. He is astonishingly bright, having received an MBA with highest honors from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also worked as a policy analyst for several hedge funds and has consulted for several central banks. Among his research interests are finding more reliable measurements of economic activity than those currently available to the investing public using econometric modeling and collaborating on the development of economic educational tools.

Andy Sutton is a research and freelance Economist. He received international honors for his work in economics at the graduate level and currently teaches high school business. Among his current research work is identifying the line in the sand where economies crumble due to extraneous debt through the use of econometric modeling with constant reflection of economic history. His focus is also educating young people about the science of Economics using an evidence-based approach

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Andy Continues Discussion of the Dollar’s Fate on Liberty Talk Radio

Banking, Consumer Finance, Currencies, Economics, Geopolitics, Monetary Policy, Trade War, , , , , ,

Andy’s Notes: As always a big ‘thank you’ to Joe Cristiano for having me back on the show. Pieces are beginning to fall into place regarding the economic situation both here in the US and abroad. Incidentally, Graham and I ran our alternative GDP model for the second quarter in the US and it showed a -43% ‘growth’ rate, which was 10 percentage points lower than what the Commerce Department reported.

Joe and I discussed MMT, the USDollar as world reserve, inflation, price inflation, actions overseas by trade partners and predators alike, and finished up with some fairly straightforward advice to listeners. This is actionable general financial information. If you’ve read or listened for any length of time you’ve heard this before, but there are new people coming into the arena, so we felt a little repetition might be a good thing. Thanks again Joe!

Sutton

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Andy Chats with Joe Cristiano about the Dollar and Signposts for the Future

Banking, Currencies, Economics, Geoeconomics, Liberty Talk Radio, National Debt, Trade War, , , , , ,

As always it was a pleasure getting together with Joe Cristiano. We never seem to be able to stop at our 20 minute target, however! We talking about the Russia-China trade situation where they’re slowing backing out of the $USD, what happens when global demand for the $USD drops, some mild to moderate capital and price controls that have emerged under the cover of NCV and other useful tidbits. The link for the YouTube video is below.

Sutton

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Gold – The Opportunity of a Lifetime – Original Post 8/29/2008

Currencies, Economics, Geoeconomics, My Two Cents, Precious Metals, , , , ,

My Two Cents – “The Opportunity of a Lifetime”

For the past 8 years, wise investors have chosen to ignore the confusion and in many cases unplugged themselves from the traditional financial system, opting to become their own central bank and invest in gold and silver. Others have used a hybrid model of investing partially in the physical metals and partially in shares of precious metal miners and related companies. This has undoubtedly been the right move. The recent correction included, gold prices alone are up an amazing 45% just since my Survival Guide was published on 10/23/2006. For those who have been in since the beginning of the move, the gains have been even larger.

Many in the mainstream press will quickly scoff at the idea of holding Gold and Silver because they don’t pay dividends. So to be fair to their argument, I calculated the movement in the S&P500 Dividend Reinvested Index from 10/31/2006 to the last report at the end of this past July. Even with dividend reinvestment, the S&P500 is down 4.78% while Gold is up nearly 50%. This takes the primary argument against owning real money and blows its doors off. Granted, we’re only looking at a period of not quite 2 years here, but given the macroeconomic events that have transpired it is clear that real money was the way to go.

The question we need to ask now is pretty simple. Is anything going to change moving forward that will reverse this trend? Or, put another way, what would need to happen to make precious metals unsuitable for investment? There are dozens of prerequisites, but we’ll stick to the Big Four.

  • Since precious metals, particularly Gold are proxies for inflation, we would need to see worldwide inflation slow dramatically. A quick look at the chart below tells us this is nowhere near happening. The global supply of money in US$ terms has increased by 12.4% since mid-2007 from $53.7 Trillion to $60.3 Trillion. We’re still inflating like crazy. (Chart Compliments of dollardaze.org)
Global Money Supply
  • Geopolitical risk would have to decrease. Risk tends to be friendly towards precious metals. This because deep down, most people understand that fiat money is not real money, but only has value because its backing government says it does. Its value is based almost entirely on perception. Wars and rumors of wars tend to undermine political and therefore financial stability. On the other hand, gold has been recognized as real money for thousands of years because it is desirable, portable, homogeneous, and scarce. Scarcity and fiat money are 180 degrees diametrically opposite to each other.
  • Systemic risk to the financial system would need to be swept away. This is no simple task and, despite what Bernanke & Company choose to say, it is clear that the systemic risk to the financial system is nowhere near close to abating. Bank failures are on the rise and credit spreads are at record levels. The housing debacle has left many financial hand grenades in the portfolios of investment and commercial banks the world over and many have yet to go off.
  • Inflationary expectations would need to decrease significantly. Again, perception tends to be reality and if people are convinced that prices are going to continue to rise, then they will behave accordingly. They will seek out assets that protect their purchasing power. Commodities generally assume this role due to scarcity: they cannot be printed or digitally created like fiat money. And the more funny money that sloshes around chasing a finite quantity of goods, the more those goods will increase in terms of the fiat currency. To reverse this trend, people worldwide would have to get the idea that their money is going to buy more, not less. It is going to be difficult to accomplish that feat with the price of almost everything (except housing and stocks) going up.

Given just this cursory analysis, it is easy to see why Gold is a slam-dunk choice in terms of protecting wealth. Certainly, gold is prone to nasty corrections. Too often, people buy gold with the idea that they’re going to get ‘rich’. These folks fail to properly understand why it is they should own gold in the first place and are easily shaken out when a correction occurs. Gold should not be purchased with the expectation that it will make you rich. It should be acquired to protect your purchasing power. The recent rout in precious metals presents a fantastic opportunity for new buyers to get on board and for people who already have positions to add to them as circumstances permit.

One caveat that needs to be mentioned is the fact that the precious metal markets are prone to intervention and manipulation. These activities are disruptive to normal market function and can create disparities between the price of futures contracts and the actual metals themselves. GATA covers these activities in great detail and has done a masterful job assimilating a vast array of resources, articles, and other materials related to this topic. I highly recommend getting up to speed on this important issue before investing – particularly if you’re new to these markets.In totality, the recent correction in precious metals should be viewed not as a tragedy, but rather as the opportunity of a lifetime.

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Russia/China Currency Alliance is Now Doing Less than 50% of Business in US Dollars

Currencies, Debt Ceiling, Economics, Geoeconomics, Geopolitics, Interest Rates, Modern Monetary Theory, Trade War, , , , ,

This is something we have been talking about what seems like forever. The move away from the dollar. It was always a matter of when rather than if and unfortunately we’ve reached the point now where the majority of transactions between these two growing economic powers is done away from the $USDollar. This has many, MANY implications for all Americans and anyone else who uses the $USD as their primary means of storing wealth.

This move also explains the embracing of Knapp’s modern monetary theory that was soft-introduced back in 2018. We wrote an extensive paper on MMT and we’re posting this again below for anyone who hasn’t read it. We will be releasing another commissioned paper by Labor Day. We’ll also be re-posting relevant articles that were written between 2006 and the present on precious metals, the dollar standard, bail-ins, and general relevant macroeconomic articles as well.

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Sutton/Mehl

Here is the paper on modern monetary theory – Read/Download here.

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