Inflation

Fed Tightening Is Over: Markets Now Expect Cuts In 2019

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

People who assumed the Fed, along with the rest of the government, would cave the minute the financial markets got a little choppy turned out to be right. A couple of bad months and the “normalization” of both interest rates and the Fed’s balance sheet have stopped cold. Now the markets expect falling rates and (apparently) rising asset purchases. From today’s Wall Street Journal.

Debt Investors Embrace ‘Upside Down’ World After Fed Shift

Signs that the Federal Reserve may be done with its yearslong campaign to raise interest rates are sending ripples through fixed-income markets.

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Why Monetary Easing Will Fail

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The major economies have slowed suddenly in the last two or three months, prompting a change of tack in the monetary policies of central banks. The same old tired, failing inflationist responses are being lined up, despite the evidence that monetary easing has never stopped a credit crisis developing. This article demonstrates why monetary policy is doomed by citing three reasons. There is the empirical evidence of money and credit continuing to grow regardless of interest rate changes, the evidence of Gibson’s paradox, and widespread ignorance in macroeconomic circles of the role of time preference.

The current state of play

The Fed’s rowing back on monetary tightening has rescued the world economy from the next credit crisis, or at least that’s the bullish message being churned out by brokers’ analysts and the media hacks that feed off them. It brings to mind Dr Johnson’s cynical observation about an acquaintance’s second marriage being the triumph of hope over experience.

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Who Knows the Right Interest Rate

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By Keith Weiner -Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

On January 6, we wrote the Surest Way to Overthrow Capitalism. We said:

“In a future article, we will expand on why these two statements are true principles: (1) there is no way a central planner could set the right rate, even if he knew and (2) only a free market can know the right rate.”

Today’s article is part I that promised article.

Let’s consider how to know the right rate, first. It should not be controversial to say that if the government sets a price cap, say on a loaf of bread, that this harms bakers. So the bakers will seek every possible way out of it. First, they may try shrinking the loaf. But, gotcha! The government regulator anticipated that, and there is a heap of rules dictating the minimum size of a loaf, weight, length, width, depth, density, etc. Next, the bakery industry changes the name. They don’t sell loaves of bread any more, they call them bread cakes. And so on.

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Modern Monetary Theory: A Cargo Cult

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Newly elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) absolutely needed to be “a larger part of our conversation.” Her comment shines a spotlight on MMT. So what is it? According to Wikipedia, it is:

“a macroeconomic theory that describes the currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as the evidence that a currency monopolist is restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires.”

It is uncontroversial to say that the Federal Reserve has a monopoly on the dollar. So let’s look at the second proposition. Unemployment, MMT holds, is evidence that the supply of dollars is restricted.

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Will The 35th Recession Bring A Swift Return To Zero Percent Interest Rates?

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By Dan Amerman – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Many people view the seven years of zero percent interest rates experienced in the United States between 2008 and 2015 as being safely in the past, with normal times having returned.

As explored in this analysis, so long as the business cycle of expansions and recessions has not been repealed – then we are highly likely to see a swift return to a potentially protracted bout of zero percent interest rates with the next major downturn in the economy.

Indeed, even the staff of the Federal Reserve itself expects more frequent episodes of zero percent interest rates in the future, and for those episodes to be on a more protracted basis.

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President Trump’s Trade Tantrum Triggers Slump

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

For decades, Western governments have been pursuing a policy of transferring wealth from the public to themselves, their licensed banks and the banks’ favoured customers by means of interest rate suppression and monetary inflation. Consequently, inflation of financial asset prices has benefited the financial sector to the detriment of those employed in the productive economy. Over time, this has badly weakened productive capacity and the long-term ability of the market economy to fund future government spending.

It is a situation which seems bound to eventually lead to major economic and monetary problems. Additionally, global economic prospects have worsened considerably as a result of President Trump’s tariff wars against China and others. Empirical evidence from the 1930s as well as economic analysis illustrate how trade tariffs have a devastating effect on domestic economic activity, a prospect wholly unexpected by today’s economists.

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Markets Are All About Flows

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From GoldMoney

This article looks at prospective supply and demand factors for financial assets in the New Year and beyond. Investors should take into account money flowing into and out of financial assets as well as stock flows, particularly escalating government bond issuance, which looks likely to accelerate significantly in the coming years. It adds up to the fundamental case for physical gold and silver.

At this time of year, the thoughtful soul considers prospects for markets. Pundits are laying out their forecasts, and they fall into two broad camps. There are brokers and fund managers who talk of value. Their income and assets under management depend on continually inflating prices. Then there are the pessimists, a ragbag of doom-mongers who sweepingly point to risks on a grand scale. The collapse of Italy, Deutsche Bank, China, Brexit… take your pick. Very few engage on the subject that really matters, and that is the underlying monetary flows into and out of financial markets.

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