05.30.20- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: Twenty Dollars: The Price of a Man’s Life
Justin O. Smith

What a sad day for America. I am disgusted and infuriated, not just by the murder of George Floyd, but even more so by the destruction that the ignorant mobs across the country are wreaking throughout nearly every major city. Their actions are not making America better and they certainly do not serve any real idea of justice, since the poor minority business owners are most likely wondering how justice has been served by the destruction of their businesses, burnt to the ground by frenzied, crazed, senseless mobs.  Read More

05.29.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: UK uses Feudal System law to seize £150 million from bank accounts
Simon Black

During the summer of 1215 in a riverfront meadow near London, some of England’s top barons gathered to confront King John and force him to sign a contract guaranteeing their rights and freedoms.

The contract became known as the Magna Carta. And one of its key provisions (#43) gave the Barons protection against something called ‘escheat’.

In medieval times, ‘escheat’ referred to the property being forcibly passed to the King if its original owner died without heirs. Read More

05.28.20- An Epocalypse Upon Us
David Haggith

I’ve missed a few predictions along the way, but usually only in part. When I missed, it was because I took the bad too far. The bad has almost always happened exactly when I said it would but hasn’t always been as bad as I said it would be. Now, it has all arrived and is turning out to be fully as bad as I said it would be.

It took the kick of a virus to set everything in place, but all the parts are now falling where I said they would once the next recession began. Read More

05.27.20- The Federal Counterfeiter
Keith Weiner

Suppose you wanted to run an enterprise the right way (we know, we know, this is pretty far-out fiction, but bear with us). And, your enterprise has a $1 million dollar piece of equipment that wears out after 10 years. You must set aside $100,000 a year, so that you have $1 million at the end of 10 years when the equipment needs replacing. There’s a word, now archaic, to describe the account in which you set aside this  money. From Wikipedia:

“A sinking fund is a fund established by an economic entity by setting aside revenue over a period of time to fund a future capital expense, or repayment of a long-term debt.”Read More

05.26.20- Getting Positioned for the Worst Depression in the History of the World...
Clive Maund

The gargantuan global debt bubble is now imploding at an astounding and terrifying rate, with the virus acting as a catalyst to speed up the process thanks to the lockdowns and the massive economic disruption that they are causing. The global economy is coming to a dead stop, with the airline, catering and tourism industries the first victims and already largely destroyed in the space of just a couple of months. Several days ago on TV there was the extraordinary sight of hundreds of cars in various US locations snaking sometimes for miles in lines to collect food handouts – and these weren’t beat up old clunkers held together with wire and duct tape like in the days of the Beverly Hillbillies – many of them were flashy SUVs and Mercedes etc. Read More

05.25.20- The Economic “Reopening” Is A Fake Out
Brandon Smith

How does one define an economic “reopening”? I think most people would say that a reopening means that everything goes back to the way it was before the crisis; or at least as close as possible.  Most people would also say that a reopening is something that will last.  Simply declaring “America has reopened” while keeping many restrictions in place in certain parts of the country is a bit of a farce.  And, reopening with the intention of implementing lockdowns again in a matter of weeks without explaining the situation to the public is a scam of the highest order. Read More

05.23.20- This Is The End: How & When Deflation Turns To Hyperinflation
Mike Maloney

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05.22.20- The Global Forest Fire is Here
Egon von Greyerz

It drives you absolutely mad to see a whole world living a lie. How can anyone believe that the fake world the Fed and their fellow central bankers have created has anything to do with reality. We have fake money, fake markets, fake companies, fake banks, fake interest rates, fake income, fake pensions, fake social security, fake wealth, fake bail outs, fake buildings, fake holidays, fake cars etc which create false lives for most of us especially in the West. All these fake material values have also created false moral and ethical values. Read More

05.21.20- The Reason For So Many Lies: Powell Finally Realizes He's In Way Over His Head
Jeffrey Snider

This is not a man who’s comfortable thrust into a position of leadership. Say what you want about Ben Bernanke, and there’s a lot that still needs to be said, he at least carried on with the arrogance through thick and thin (almost entirely the latter). Jay Powell sounds like a boxer who just realized the lightweight he thought he was fighting put on 75 lbs of muscle and has been practicing by sparring with world champs.

So, when he still says he’ll be the champ the words instead come out of his mouth all squeaky and unimpressive. Read More

05.20.20- People Will Be Wiped Out By
The Inflation Tax
Peter Schiff

The printing presses are running at full speed as the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air at an unprecedented rate. Peter Schiff recently appeared on Kitco News to talk about the impact of all money-printing, borrowing and government spending. Somebody has to pay for this and we all will. In fact, a lot of people will be wiped out by the inflation tax.

US stock markets have generally been rising despite dismal economic data. Any optimistic news about coronavirus, such as the recent promising vaccine trials sends stocks up. Read More

05.19.20- How Central Banks and Lockdowns Are Making the Crisis Worse
Frank Shostak

What typifies the phenomenon of the boom-bust cycle is that it is recurrent. What is the reason for this? 

Loose monetary policies set the platform for various activities that would not emerge without the easy monetary stance. What loose monetary policy does here is to engineer the transfer of real savings from wealth generating activities to artificially stimulated activities, which we can label as bubble activities. Read More

05.18.20- Did Lying About Coronavirus Cover-Up The Fed’s Economic Destruction?
Dr. Ron Paul

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05.16.20- Infinite money printing:
Fed now buying ETFs
Simon Black

Just when you thought they couldn’t come up with any more crazy ideas, the Federal Reserve announced last night that they will start buying Exchange Traded Funds, effective immediately.

Just to be clear, this means that the Fed is going to conjure money out of thin air, and then use that new money to buy ETFs.

But not just any ETF. The Fed is specifically targeting ETFs that own corporate bonds. Read More

05.15.20- Inmates of The Hotel Eccles QE Rehab Facility
Gary Christenson

Chairman Bernanke promised the Fed would unwind Fed purchases from the 2008 crisis. Now we know they can’t and won’t. The Fed balance sheet of created QE currency units will expand until a reset occurs.

When will increasing debt and the QE nonsense stop? Perhaps…

a) When a snowstorm devastates South Texas in August.
b) When the Fed begs forgiveness for its monumental sins.
c) When the US government balances its budget.
d) When global fiat Ponzi Schemes collapse.
e) When a huge financial reset occurs. Read More

05.14.20- Don’t Believe the Happy Talk
James Rickards

Nothing like what we’re witnessing has ever happened before. Even the savviest analysts cannot yet internalize what happened.

As I explained earlier, comparisons to the 2008 crisis or even the 1929 stock market crash that started the Great Depression fail to capture the magnitude of the economic damage of the virus. You may have to go back to the Black Plague of the mid-14th century for the right comparison.

Unfortunately the economy will not return to normal for years. Some businesses will never return to normal because they’ll be bankrupt before they are even allowed to reopen. Read More

05.13.20- The Fed Is Fueling a Revolt
That It Cannot Control
Charles Hugh Smith

It's not that hard to forecast a populist revolt against the parasitic class that's grown obscenely wealthy as a direct result of Fed policies.

Under the tender care of the Federal Reserve, America's wealth inequality has skyrocketed to new heights of obscenity as America's billionaires feasted off the Fed's recent stock market rally. By some accounts, billionaire Jeff Bezos added $24 billion to his personal wealth in the past week or two as the Fed's master game plan--push stocks higher, no matter what--has further enriched the few who own most of America's wealth. Read More

03.12.20- The Bailout Miscalculation That Could Crash the Economy
Matt Taibbi

A plan to help homeowners avoid foreclosure was good, in principle. In practice, it’s pushed the mortgage business toward yet another potential nightmare

When Donald Trump signed the $2 trillion CARES Act rescue on March 27, there was immediate praise across the political spectrum for section 4022, concerning homeowners in distress. Under the rule, anyone with a federally-backed mortgage could now receive instant relief. Read More

05.11.20- The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda
Brandon Smith

Central bankers are sociopathic in nature and sociopathic people tend to behave like robots. When one understands the motivations of central bankers, or at the very least what their goals are, their actions become rather predictable. The question is, what truly motivates these people?

I believe according to the evidence that the central banks are motivated by ideological zealotry with the core purpose of total global centralization of economic and political power into the hands of a select group of elitists. This agenda is really just a modern “reboot” of feudalism or totalitarianism. They sometimes refer to the plan in public as the “new world order,” or the “global economic reset.” I often refer to the encompassing ideology as “globalism” for the sake of expediency. Read More

05.09.20- Fed's New QE Operations Could Be 'Last Stop' Before Deep Recession
Peter Reagan

Last September, the Fed’s emergency liquidity operation in the repo markets signaled serious distress in the economy. The topic deserved the attention that we gave it at the time, but looking back on it now, those actions are dwarfed by those that the Fed has taken in recent months.

In March, in order to stave off market panic, Federal Reserve Chair Powell fired most of his economic “bullets”, including initiating a new round of Quantitative Easing. Read More

05.08.20- “Sweep the Leg”
Simon Black

It was barely a week ago that the federal government estimated it would borrow $3.7 trillion this fiscal year due to all the Covid bailouts.

Then, only a few days later, the Treasury Department updated the estimate and announced they would in fact be borrowing $4.5 trillion this fiscal year.

That’s an increase of $800 billion in less than a week! Read More

05.07.20- The Enslavement of Infinite Money
Brandon Smith

The phrase “don’t fight the Fed” is an unfortunate but popular delusion. It presupposes that the central bank has limitless power to direct the economy because it can print limitless money. I’m not sure where this idea comes from, but consider the fact that anyone today who is under 30 years old was barely old enough in 2008 to understand or care about the credit collapse. These people spent their formative years knowing only stimulus and QE. In their minds, this is the norm, and they think it always works because they haven’t yet witnessed a collapse. Read More

05.06.20- The Fed's Destruction Of Financial Markets & What It Means For You
David Stockman

International Man:

Decades of money printing have created enormous distortions in the market. It seems that the coronavirus popped the Everything Bubble. Where do you see the stock market going?

David Stockman:

I’d say it’s going in a new direction, and it’s not up year after year, month after month, day after day. Read More

05.05.20- The Federal Reserve: More Lethal than Coronavirus
Dr Ron Paul

Last week the Federal Reserve announced it will keep interest rates at or near zero until the economy recovers from the government-imposed shutdown. Following this announcement, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell urged Congress and the Trump administration to put aside any concerns about the deficit and spend whatever it takes to stimulate the economy and combat coronavirus. Read More

05.04.20- The Next Financial Crisis: A Global Debt Bomb Is Being Primed to Go Off
Nathan McDonald

Central bankers and governments around the world are attempting to stem the economic disaster resulting from lock-downs caused by the Coronavirus outbreak, which to this date has brought about one of the most prolific expansions of debt the world has ever seen.

Individual countries have engaged in such money expansions in the past, most notably when they are circling down the drain towards economic ruin. However, never before have we seen the entire world engage in a massive fiat money-printing fiesta all at once in such a voracious manner. Read More

05.02.20- Fed to Print $9.5 Trillion and Buy all the Gold in the World
Egon von Greyerz

Six Central Banks and the Ponzi Scheme that will Bankrupt the World

The destiny of the world is now in the hands of 6 central banks, Fed, ECB, BoE (England), PBOC (China), BoJ (Japan), SNB (Swiss). This in itself bodes extremely badly for the global financial system. This is like putting the villains in charge of the judicial system. For decades these central banks have totally abused their power and taken control of the world monetary system for the benefit of their banker friends and in some cases their private shareholders. Read More

05.01.20- A Broken System: Trader Warns "The Fed Has Poisoned Everything"
Sven Henrich

The Fed poisons everything, and I mean everything. From markets, the economy, and I will even go as far as politics. Sounds far fetched? Let me make my case below. But as much as the Fed poisons everything, this crisis here again reveals a larger issue: The system is completely broken, it can’t sustain itself without the Fed’s ever more monumental interventions.

These interventions are absolutely necessary or the system collapses under its own broken facade. And this conflict, a Fed poisoning the economy’s growth prospects on the one hand, and its needed presence and actions to keep the broken system afloat on the other, has the economy and society on a mission to circle a perpetual drain. Read More

04.30.20- The Crisis Won't Stop Until The Globalists Are Removed From Power
Brandon Smith

In the first week of February I published an article titled 'The Lies We Are Being Told About The Coronavirus'. I focused primarily on the disinformation coming out of China, and for those with short memories there was a flood of it being spread on various web forums by what I believe was a army of paid disinformation agents. The lies seemed to revolve around keeping the rest of the world passive to the potential threat by promoting a set of assumptions: Read More

04.29.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: America's Super-Rich See Their Wealth Rise $282 Billion In Three Weeks Of Pandemic
Alan Macleod

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days. This is despite the fact that the economy isexpected to contract by 40 percent this quarter.

The report also noted that between 1980 and 2020 the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased by 79 percent. In the last 30 years, U.S. billionaire wealth soared by over 1100 percent while median household wealth increased by barely five percent. In 1990, the total wealth held by America’s billionaire class was $240 billion; today that number stands at $2.95 trillion. Read More

04.28.20- The Fed Is Stealing Our Future
Brian Maher

The pestilence presented the Federal Reserve two options.

The first was to wash out the sins of the past decade. The second was to sin on a vastly mightier scale.

Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice

• Allow capitalism to take root by allowing corporations to fail and restructure after spending a decade leveraging themselves to [the] hilt, buying back shares and massively increasing the wealth of their executives while compressing the wages of workers. Or… Read More

04.27.20- Here’s How High Inflation Could Soar and How Quickly It Could Get There
Jeff Clark

With deflation engulfing the world right now, is there really any reason to worry about inflation?

Yes. As I’ll show below, not only has inflation started abruptly many times throughout history, the current actions of the Fed and other central bankers are the very actions that have caused high inflation in the past.

We have some research on inflation that we haven’t seen elsewhere, research that can potentially be very useful to all of us in preparing for what is likely ahead. Read More

04.25.20- Buffett, Zimbabwe, & What You Must Know About 'Zeros' In The Years Ahead
MN Gordon

Billionaire investor and American folk hero Warren Buffett’s been lying low.  This is a change from the 2008-09 financial crisis.  Back then he eagerly supplied cash to Goldman Sachs and Bank of America in exchange for high interest rates and warrants.  But not now.

Instead of making deals, Buffett says he’s “…drinking a little more Coca-Cola” to ward off coronavirus.  Yet is that really all he’s doing?  Buffett admirer Bill Ackman doesn’t think so.  Ackman – who’s been aggressively buying stocks – thinks the Oracle of Omaha has a few tricks up his sleeve.  When recently asked: Read More

04.24.20- Anatomy of a fiat currency collapse
Alasdair Macleod

This article asserts that infinite money-printing is set to destroy fiat currencies far quicker than might be generally thought. This final act of monetary destruction follows a 98% loss of purchasing power for dollars since the London gold pool failed. And now the Fed and other major central banks are committing to an accelerated, infinite monetary debasement to underwrite their entire private sectors and their governments’ spending, to prop up bond markets and therefore all financial asset prices. Read More

04.23.20- Fed Lies And Money Printing:
Rocket Fuel For Gold
Dave Kranzler

For central banks, monetary inflation is everywhere the solution. Bank rescues, payment chain failures, the furloughing of millions of employees, helicopter money to bail out whole populations, money to bail out governments, money to support all categories of financial assets: the list is endless in scope and infinite in quantity. The survival of the global financial system is at stake. If it survives, state-issued money will have been destroyed. But then what is the point of owning financial assets valued in valueless currency? Read More

04.22.20- They’ll wreck the currency if they have to
Simon Black

Nearly seven centuries ago in the mid-1300s, the first major outbreak of the Bubonic Plague forced Europeans into some of the harshest social distancing measures in history.

As Boccacio wrote in The Decameron in 1353, the hysteria was so extreme that “brother abandoned brother. . . fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs.”

When people sensed the worst was over, they slowly came out of their homes. Read More

04.21.20- False Reading: The Fed's Equities Light Is "Green" But The Economy Is Crashing
Charles Hugh Smith

Sadly, as markets stall and crash, participants will still be in their seats thinking all is well.

The tragic 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 offers an apt analogy for the global economy and central bank-driven false signals. Flight 447 entered an area of frigid turbulence over the Atlantic which caused the air-speed sensors (pitot tubes) to ice up. A few minutes later, the autopilot disengaged, and the co-pilot flying the aircraft over-corrected in the turbulence. Read More

04.20.20- How to Think About the Fed Now
Jeff Deist

The Great Crash of 2020 was not caused by a virus. It was precipitated by the virus, and made worse by the crazed decisions of governments around the world to shut down business and travel. But it was caused by economic fragility. The supposed greatest economy in US history actually was a walking sick man, made comfortable with painkillers, and looking far better than he felt—yet ultimately fragile and infirm. The coronavirus pandemic simply exposed the underlying sickness of the US economy. If anything, the crash was overdue. Read More

04.18.20- And Now, foe Someting Entirely Different: How the CARES Act “Helps” Retirement Savers
Peter Reagan

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was passed by Congress to help businesses and individuals who are facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of the bill is intended to help Americans with their retirement planning.

The first notable way it may help on this front is by suspendingrequired minimum distributions (RMDs) for the remainder of 2020: Read More

04.17.20- Central Banks Add More Gold To Their Reserves While Dumping U.S Treasuries
Tom Lewis

As the world continues to deal with the coronavirus and more and more economies fall into a state of collapse, central banks continued on their gold-buying spree in February while they dumped U.S treasuries at record speed.

Zerohedge posted this fantastic chart this morning: Read More

04.16.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Rational Look at the So-Called
Covid 19 - Pandemic
Hugo Salinas Price

2,835,205 Americans died in the year 2018. (Source: National Vital Statistics System).

Humans have a habit of dying, and as the population of the US has grown since 2018, the figures we shall eventually see for total deaths in the US in 2019, will very likely be a bit larger, and the same holds for 2020.

Let us take the figures for 2018 – 2,835,205 deaths – and divide by 365 to get the daily death toll for the US: 7,768 Americans died every day in 2018.  Read More

04.15.20- The Tiny Dot
Larken Rose

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04.14.20- When Money Died
Doug Nolan

Sitting at the dinner table, our eleven-year old son inquired: “If a big meteor was about to hit the earth, how much money would the Fed print?” I complimented his sense of humor. Yet it was a sad testament to the historic monetary fiasco that will haunt his generation.

Federal Reserve Assets surpassed $6.0 TN for the first time, having inflated another $272 billion for the week (to $6.083 TN). Fed Assets inflated an astonishing $1.925 TN, or 46%, in only six weeks. Bank of American analysts this week suggested the Fed’s balance sheet could reach $9.0 TN by year-end. Read More

04.13.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Differernt: So, this is how Liberty dies… with thunderous applause?
Author Unknown

We are seeing the most draconian measures enforced at all levels of government that we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes, and yet, rather than being alarmed by the things going on, so many of you applaud.

People are being arrested for spending too much time outside, and you applaud. Pastors are being arrested for daring to hold church services, and you applaud. A child’s birthday party is raided by police, and you applaud. A young woman is ticketed for going on a leisurely drive alone because it’s deemed “non-essential travel”, and you applaud. Read More

04.11.20- The Biggest Risk in the Global Financial System that No One is Discussing
J. Kim

For the duration of the first quarter 2020, I have been astonished that nobody in the financial media has discussed the biggest risk that exists in the global financial system, so I finally felt compelled to write the longest financial article I have written in the last decade to address this issue. I graduated from an Ivy League university, earned two master degrees, one in business administration with a concentration in finance and another in public policy, and have worked for two of the largest financial institutions in America as a Private Wealth Manager/Private Banker. Yet, by far, my greatest understanding of how global financial markets work and of how asset prices are set came nearly entirely from relentless years of self-educational activities pursued completely outside of the academic and corporate world. Read More

04.10.20- And Now, for Someting Entirely Different:We Won’t Be Getting “Back to Normal” ~
Not Soon. Not Ever!
Daisy Luther

When will we get back to normal?

If you yearn for the days before COVID-19 swept across the planet, I regret to inform you that those days are gone.

This isn’t a warm and fuzzy blog post telling you that everything is going to be all right. If you’re looking for reassurance that “we’ve got this,” I’m afraid I can’t provide it. This article wasn’t written to console or coddle you, so if that’s what you’re seeking, you’re going to want to stop reading right now. Read More

04.09.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How To Protect Yourself From Long Term Pandemic Lockdown
Brandon Smith

It has been only two weeks since widespread pandemic lockdowns were implemented in the US and as expected the public is not handling the idea very well. Within one week there were already frantic demands for the economy to reopen by Easter (spurred on by Donald Trump), and mass delusions have developed that this is still going to happen despite the fact that lockdown guidelines have been extended to at least April 30th. People desperately want to believe that this will all be over in a matter of weeks. Read More

04.08.20- The Problem With the Feds’ COVID-19 Response
MN Gordon

Hey… This crisis is really getting bad. Did you hear? Exxon and Mobil had to lay off 25 congressmen. – Popular joke

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – “The worst is behind us,” says an upbeat piece of stock mongering on MarketWatch.

Many investors must think so. The Dow closed up more than 1,600 points yesterday. Read More

04.07.20- Credit Markets – The Waiting Game
Pater Tenebrarum

Everything and the Kitchen Sink

After the first inter-meeting rate cut in early March, we opined that further rate cuts were a near certainty and that “not-QE” would swiftly morph into “QE, next iteration” (see Rate Cutters Unanimous for the details).

As it turned out, the monetary mandarins did not even wait for the official FOMC meeting before deciding to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the markets. Not only were rates insta-ZIRPed, but “not-QE” became “QE on steroids, plus”. Read More

04.06.20- You Need Tangible Assets in a Crisis
Dan Denning

The coronavirus has already triggered a bear market in stocks. Now, it threatens to trigger a global depression. But if you’re over 60, that’s not the biggest risk you face right now. The biggest risk is to your health.

You may never see another one-two punch like this again. That’s why I’m writing to you today.  Read More

04.04.20- The Upside of The Great Depression
of the 2020s
MN Gordon

“The bank is something more than men, I tell you.  It’s the monster.  Men made it, but they can’t control it.” – John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Mass Dollar Debasement

The monster of all monsters is rampaging far and wide.  The Federal Reserve, the central bank responsible for issuing U.S. legal tender notes, is going big.  But its aim is small.  Read More

04.03.20- Donald Trump And The Fed Are Destroying The U.S. Dollar
Billy Bambrough

It's been an historic week for the U.S. with president Donald Trump signing a record $2.2 trillion coronavirus-induced emergency stimulus package. 

The massive cross-party rescue deal is designed to help Americans and businesses cope with the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Read More

04.02.20- How The Fed Sows
Social Division and Mistrust
Nick Hankoff

The Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy and industry bailouts threaten more than just the fragile economy. The very foundation of the social order risks permanent fracturing under this system of moral hazard.

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises defined society as “joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own.” Without social trust, there is no society. Private property and the division of labor, the hallmarks of a civilization, arise out of cooperation. Read More

04.01.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The ‘Small’ Business Administration is now bigger than Walmart
Simon Black

As you’ve probably already heard, the US government unleashed a giant tsunami of money on Friday, passing a $2 trillion stimulus bill to help boost the economy during the Covid pandemic.

Let’s put that number in context:

• $2 trillion is more than it cost to wage 18+ years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  
  
• It’s nearly THREE times the size of the bailout from 2008.
  
  
• It exceeds ALL corporate and individual income tax revenue collected by the IRS last year Read More

03.31.20- And Now. foe Something Entirely Different :The Government Employee Who May Have Saved a Million American Lives
Ron Unz

Dr. Sarah Cody. That’s the name of a local government employee probably unknown to almost everyone reading this. Yet I think there’s a good chance that a million or more Americans will owe her their lives. And therein lies a tale…

Last Tuesday President Donald Trump announced that he expected to lift most health restrictions recently imposed due to the Coronavirus epidemic and send the country back to work by Easter, a possibility that shocked and horrified nearly all mainstream health professionals. Read More

03.30.20- The Fed's Faustian Bargain: "We're Experiencing The End-Game Of The Great Debt Super-Cycle"
Tyler Durden

“In Goethe’s 1831 drama Faust, the devil persuades a bankrupt emperor to print and spend vast quantities of paper money as a short-term fix for his country’s fiscal problems. As a consequence, the empire ultimately unravels and descends into chaos. Today, governments that have relied upon quantitative easing (QE) instead of undertaking necessary structural reforms have arguably entered into the grandest Faustian bargain in financial history." Read More

03.28.20- The Fed’s Monetary “Moon Shot” Puts Inflation on a Powder Keg
Peter Reagan

It might be time to call NASA because the Federal Reserve has recently increased its balance sheet so fast that the resulting line chart could be mistaken for a monetary “moon shot.”

In an unprecedented move, the Fed’s balance sheet has “gone vertical,” shooting up to an astounding $4.67 trillion.

Notice also the Fed now has more assets on its balance sheet than any other time in history. Which brings up an important question… Read More

03.27.20- Fed's 'Unlimited QE' May Prove Futile if US Heads Into 'Great Cessation'
Peter Reagan

The Federal Reserve appears to have pulled out all the stops to try calm the recent whipsawing in the financial markets.

According to a recent Federal Open Market Committee statement, the Fed "is committed to using its full range of tools to support households, businesses, and the U.S. economy overall in this challenging time."Read More

03.26.20- A Brady Bond solution for America’s Economic Crisis and Unpayable Corporate Debt
Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts

Even before the Covid-19 crisis had slashed stock prices nearly in half since it erupted in January, financial markets were in an inherently unstable condition. Years of quantitative easing had loaded so much money into stock and bond prices that stock price/earnings multiples and bond prices were far too high by any normal and reasonable historical standards. Risk premiums have disappeared, with only a few basis points separating U.S. Treasury bills and corporate bonds.Read More

03.25.20- Why QE Is Not Working
Michael Lebowitz

“The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled.” – JK Galbraith

By formally announcing quantitative easing (QE) infinity on March 23, 2020, the Federal Reserve (Fed) is using its entire arsenal of monetary stimulus. Unlimited purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities for an indefinite period is far more dramatic than anything they did in 2008. The Fed also revived other financial crisis programs like the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and created a new special purpose vehicle (SPV), allowing them to buy investment-grade corporate bonds and related ETF’s. The purpose of these unprecedented actions is to unfreeze the credit markets, stem financial market losses, and provide some ballast to the economy.Read More

03.24.20- Rabobank: Many Are Questioning The Point Of Having A Market If The Fed Is Backstopping Everything
Michael Every

Although Powell was still reluctant to call the Fed’s bond purchases quantitative easing last week, the FOMC has now confirmed that they will have no limits when purchasing US Treasuries. An increase of the initial ‘minimum USD 500bn’ target was widely expected, since the Fed already bought over USD 300bn in just the first week after the relaunch of large scale asset purchases. However, the FOMC did not bother to set a new target. Instead, they will purchase bonds “in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy.” Read More

03.23.20- And Now, for Something Entrely Different: This Is Why People All Over America Are Scared To Death Of Being Tested For The Coronavirus…
Michael Snyder

How would you feel if you received a bill for more than $34,000 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus?  This pandemic is showing the entire world that the U.S. healthcare system is deeply, deeply broken, and there is no way that we can continue to go on like this.  If coronavirus testing is quick, inexpensive and widely available all over the rest of the globe, why can’t that be the case here too?  Democrats and Republicans have been fighting about fixing our healthcare system all the way back to the 1990s and they haven’t gotten the job done.  Now we have a system that is a complete and utter embarrassment, and it is about to be overwhelmed by the greatest public health crisis that any of us have ever seen. Read More

03.21.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Pandemic on Cue and
Scarcity by Design
thecrowhouse

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03.20.20- The Everything Bubble Has Burst, Fuse Now Lit On $250 TRILLION Debt Bomb
Graham Summers

The next crisis, the BIG one to which 2008 was the warm-up, is fast approaching…

The Everything Bubble has burst. The next crisis, the BIG one to which 2008 was the warmup, is fast approaching.

During the 2008 crisis, the Fed did three things: Read More

03.19.20- The "Deeply Flawed, Immoral, & Unlawful" House Of Cards That Ben Built
Steve Brown

After credit markets froze in the subprime crash of 2008-2009 Ben Bernanke and the Fed conjured up a number of monetary tricks to keep the system afloat.  POMO, Twist, QE, TARP, repos, and currency swaps (and other monetary tricks) were used to provide liquidity to an essentially bankrupt system sporting a weaponized US dollar.

Even though the monetary tricks worked – or seemed to – they were based on a deeply flawed, immoral, and unlawful prospect: the privatization of profit enabled by the socialization of loss. Read More

03.18.20- "Close the Whole Thing Up"
Brian Maher

“If this doesn’t work,” wonders Seema Shah, Principal Global Investors central strategist…

“What will?”

“This” is of course the Federal Reserve’s desperate harum-scarum yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Powell and crew knocked down rates one entire percentage point. The federal funds rate now squats between 0% and 0.25%. Read More

03.17.20- Zoltan Stares Into The Abyss: Here Is What The Fed Must Do Right Now To Avoid Global Devastation
Tyler Durden

Two weeks ago, on March 3, before a liquidity panic had gripped capital markets, corporations and global banks, Credit Suisse repo icon and former NY Fed staffer, Zoltan Pozsar issued a recommendation to halt the funding crisis early in its tracks, writing that the Fed should "combine rate cuts with open liquidity lines that include a pledge to use the swap lines, an uncapped repo facility and QE if necessary." Unfortunately, since then the coronavirus supply chain (and payments) crisis has been joined by the oil price war, which has crippled the petrodollar exchange system by sending the price of oil sharply lower and exacerbating the dollar funding shock. Read More

03.16.20- How The Economic Machine Works
Ray Dalio

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03.14.20- Jim Rickards and Ed Steer: Eventually central banks will restore gold as
the currency benchmark
Ed Steer

I had a short e-mail exchange with Jim Rickards on Tuesday. Here it is in its entirety -- and posted with his permission.

* * *

Hi, Jim:

What do you read into this, if anything? 

"A Shift in the Global Financial Order Is Upon Us"
by John Authers, senior editor of Bloomberg News -- Read More

03.13.20- U.S. Throws More Stimulus Money at Economy to Counteract Coronavirus
Bill Bonner

SALTA, ARGENTINA – Yesterday brought more excitement… and the first hint of the debacle ahead.

The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. It’s Public Enemy #1 in the bug world.

As for the stock market, Warren Buffett said it was the damndest thing he had ever seen, “a big one-two punch.” Read More

03.12.20- Rate Cutters Unanimous 
Pater Tenebrarum

Easy Money Becomes Even Easier

Last week the FOMC surprised the markets with a rare inter-meeting rate cut. As the FOMC statement released on the occasion reveals, the decision to cut the  federal funds rate by a hefty 50 basis points was unanimous. The much-lamented “zero bound” is coming closer rather quickly. Read More

03.11.20- Feds to Pump More Fake Money Into Inflated Financial System
Bill Bonner

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!

…She’s dead, of course!– Nursery rhyme Read More

03.10.20- Central Banking is Socialism
Ron Paul

Last week, the Federal Reserve responded to Wall Street’s coronavirus panic with an “emergency” interest rate cut. This emergency cut failed to revive the stock market, leading to predictions that the Fed will again cut rates later this month.

More rate cuts would drive interest rates to near, or even below, zero. Lowering interest rates punishes people for saving, thus encouraging consumers and businesses to spend every penny they make. This may give the economy a short-term boost. But, it inhibits long-term economic growth by depleting the savings necessary for investments in businesses and jobs. The result of this policy will be more pressure on the Fed to indefinitely maintain low interest rates and on the Congress and president to create another explosion of government “stimulus” spending. Read More

03.09.20- End The Fed!
Charles Hugh Smith

In response to the potential economic downturn in the economy arising from the spread of the Coronavirus, the Federal Reserve dropped the federal funds rate by half a point - to a range of 1% to 1.25%. Ironically, after the Fed’s announcement, the stock market dropped 786 points or 2.9%.

The Fed’s aim is to stimulate economic activity. By lowering interest rates, the idea is to get businesses to expand operations with more loans and to get consumers to go deeper into debt by purchasing more items.  Read More

03.07.20- Why the Fed Won’t Save the Market
Charles Hugh Smith

A very convenient conviction is rising in the panicked financial markets that the Federal Reserve will “save the market” from a COVID-19 collapse. But they won’t.

“Buy-the-dip” punters are placing bets on the belief the Fed can’t possibly let the current bubble pop.

Oh yes they can and yes they will. Why?

It’s about control. Here’s what I mean  Read More

03.06.20- Stockman: "Hey, Jay, Enough Of Your Stinkin' Easy Money!"
David Stockman

It doesn’t get any more pathetic than this. The Fed cuts the absurdly low money market rate by another 50 basis points at 10AM and before noon the Donald is banging the podium for more.

So if you ever needed a final warning to get out of the casino, today’s back-to-back eruption of financial insanity from the two most powerful economic actors on the planet should be it. Read More

03.05.20- Dropping Interest Rates Negative Will Wake the Bear
Jim Hoffer

This week’s announcement that the Fed is cutting interest rates by a half of a percent, to keep cash flowing amid coronavirus concerns, could be just the beginning.

President Donald Trump wants to take interest rates into the negative, as part of his latest bid to push inflation and stimulate the economy. This will effectively punish savers and encourage more Americans to take loans, thereby keeping more people on the hamster wheel of the monolithic banking structures. Read More

03.04.20- EXPOSED: The Fed’s Deepest Secret
Brian Maher

Today we don our reporter’s fedora, sit at our typewriter… and pursue a question truly scandalous.

We will be denounced for fanning “conspiracy theories.” Social media will excommunicate us for hawking “fake news.”

We expect fully to be tried for sedition… and packed off to the gallows for offending God and king. Read More

03.03.20- US Federal Reserve cuts interest rates to shield economy from coronavirus impact
RT

The US Federal Reserve has announced a surprise cut in interest rates as an emergency measure to shield the US economy from the growing impact of the coronavirus epidemic. Stocks surged after the news.

In a statement on Tuesday, the central bank said it was cutting rates by half a percentage point to a range of 1-1.25 percent. Read More

03.02.20- Why A Bear Market Will Lead To A Dollar Collapse
Alasdair Macleod

Falling equity markets this week are likely to signal the onset of a bear market, responding to a combination of the coronavirus spreading beyond China and persistent indications of a developing recession.

This has provoked a flight into US Treasuries, with the ten-year yield falling to an all-time low of 1.1141%. This will prove to be a mistake, given US price inflation which on independent estimates is running close to ten per cent, exposing US Treasuries as badly overpriced. Read More

02.29.20- A cash flow problem? Credit game over!
Bill Holter

We have been telling you it is all about credit for years … you will soon see the real world reasons why. It is clear the real global economy was already seriously slowing down in Q4 prior to the coronavirus outbreak. Now, China who has been the supplier to the world and the great hope to be the engine of growth to pull the world forward, is all but frozen up.

Within a very short period of time, we will begin to see more and more real world examples of products not being produced which affects downstream ability to get final products to market. The latest example of this is the Audi electric vehicle plant “pausing” production because they cannot procure batteries. Just watch how many other various products cannot and will not be produced in the coming weeks … Read More

02.28.20- Potential Coronavirus Pandemic Sends Fed Into Crisis Mode
Bill Bonner

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.- Donald J. Trump, Feb. 2020

The subprime problem is contained. - Ben Bernanke, former Federal Reserve chairman, March 2007

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – We watched the tape again yesterday, while Tom Dyson was surfing in front of the house.

In the morning, the stock market was “stabilizing,” said The Wall Street Journal. It was “recovering,” said Barron’s. Read More

02.27.20- "The Jig Is Up!" - Covid-19 And The Defenestration Of The Central Bankers
David Stockman

Let it be said that historians will surely marvel - and at some point soon - about the grand delusion of the present era. Namely, the near universal belief that central bankers could print, peg and palaver the main street economy into unfailing expansion and ever rising prosperity and that there were essentially no macro-risks to soaring stock prices that their toolkits couldn’t contain and counteract. Read More

02.26.20- No, The Fed Will Not "Save the Market"...Here's Why
Charles Hugh Smith

The greater the excesses, speculative euphoria and moral hazard, the greater the reversal.

A very convenient conviction is rising in the panicked financial netherworld that the Federal Reserve and its fellow dark lords will “save the market” from COVID-19 collapse. They won’t. I already explained why in The Fed Has Created a Monster Bubble It Can No Longer Control (February 16, 2020) but it bears repeating. Read More

02.25.20- The World’s Central Banks Are Creating a “New Normal”
Andy Krieger

Central banks love stability… and hate surprises.

Like it or not, though… they’re about to see less of the former, and a lot more of the latter.

The currency market has been jammed into ever-narrowing trading ranges over the past five years. This compression is both unnatural and potentially dangerous.

And there’s evidence it’s about to break loose… which means a lot of the old themes dictating today’s market action will fly out the window Read More

02.24.20- When It Comes to Raw Power, Few Have More of It Than Central Bankers
Per Bylund

A common retort to the claim that in voluntary exchange both parties expect to become better off (or they wouldn’t do it) is that exchanges are seldom, if ever, a matter of horizontal, equal exchange of values. Instead, any such interaction between people is ultimately a matter of their exercising power over one another. The implication, and often explicitly stated conclusion, is that there is no voluntariness, that exploitation is always present, that one party necessarily gains at the other’s expense. Read More

02.22.20- Did The Fed Just Reveal Its Plans For A Digital Dollar Replacement?
Birch Gold Group

Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the idea that you can go into a store and anonymously purchase something with cash might soon be obsolete.

Why? Because they’re developing something called Fedcoin, which would be based on blockchain technology.

If you’re unfamiliar with blockchain technology, you’re not alone. Here’s how a piece on Motley Fool describes it: Read More

02.21.20- Gold Chases The Money Supply Higher
Dave Kranzler

Q: “Why is the Fed reluctant to let the boom-bust nature of markets play out?”

A: “Because it what’s they’ve always done [since the Fed was founded in 1913]…Once you’re in power, you’re going to do what you can to defend the system as it is”

The best official measure of the money supply created by the Fed was M3.  “Was” because the Fed under Helicopter Ben removed M3 from public view.  But the “effective” money supply is the currency printed plus the “spendable” currency created by debt issuance. Currency from a loan behaves like printed money until the loan is repaid.  But for the last 10 years the amount of the loans outstanding, and therefore the supply of “spendable” currency,  has risen at an increasing rate. Read More

02.20.20- U.S. GDP Could Get Hammered
Nomi Prins

February is half over, and we’re that much closer to spring.

As far as the markets go, this past week has been driven by a lackluster set of new economic data and heightened concerns about whether the coronavirus is contained or not, whether the Chinese have downplayed the figures or not and what the real economic impact in China and around the world might be.

But we could already be feeling the effects here at home… Read More

02.19.20- The Fed is a “Pickle”
Gary Christenson

Breaking news: The Wall Street casino created another all-time high for the S&P 500 Index during the week ending February 14. Regular new highs reassure people, but others fear they are symptoms of another Fed inspired bubble.

The “pickle” description is explained below. Stay tuned.

The Federal Reserve is monetizing bonds—directly funding the federal deficit because congress and the administration spend more than their revenues. The coming recession will increase the shortfall, expand debt and force more monetization. Stagflation anyone? Read More

02.18.20- The Real 'Tragicomedy' - Who's Ready To Buy The 'Dip' Again Now?
Sven Henrich

We’re all frogs getting our perception of reality boiled in the pot of price perversion central banks have unleashed on the world.

A tragicomedy of epic proportions continues to unfold in front of our own eyes. On Friday global markets again closed at record highs and this week everybody is already crying again for more stimulus and central bankers across the world are too eager to oblige. Read More

02.17.20- The Recession Called “Repocalypse”
David Haggith

There is, at least, one highly recognized economist who agrees with me that a recession started forming in the summer of 2019 and is still emerging, in spite of the Fed’s strongest efforts to stop it — David Rosenberg:

We recall all too well the euphoria that followed the early 2001 and late 2007 Fed rate cuts and curve-steepening shifts, that then switched to malaise as the recession nobody saw coming took hold in the next few months. The lags between monetary policy and the real economy are both long and variable…. Read More

02.15.20- Federal Reserve Monetizing US Debt Faster than its Previous Tightening
David Haggith

During its brief and utterly failed attempt to reduce its balance sheet (called quantitative tightening), the Federal Reserve only rolled off securities at a rate of $50 billion a month. It is now purchasing US treasuries at a rate of more than $55 billion a month: 

The Federal Reserve continues to add more US government securities to its securities portfolio and these have been bought outright…. Since January 1, 2020, the Fed has added $113.7 billion to its securities portfolio.

Seeking Alpha Read More

02.14.20- Federal Reserve Sinks Into Funny-Money “Normalcy”
Jim Wyckoff

Facts of Life

Life goes on. People collide. Genes… atoms… facts… and opinions, too. Republicans and Democrats. Bull markets, bear markets, booms and busts… Truth and lies. Trump and Romney.

Sometimes the collisions are fruitful. Sometimes, they are disappointing.

So, let’s go to the news. A headline from Bloomberg tells us what we already knew. The Federal Reserve has run into the reality of an Inflate-or-Die world. There’s no going back to “normalcy”: Read More

02.13.20- The Great War of Stocks and Bonds
Brian Maher

Two options rise before us this day…

Option 1: The stock market is right. Option 2: The bond market is right.

The stock market is cheery and confident. It presently goes at record heights… and bursts with belief in a superior tomorrow.

Moreover, it has a decade of nearly unbroken prosperity in back of it.

The bond market - meantime - is dark, dour, down in the mouth. Read More

02.12.20- The Triumph of Madness
MN Gordon

Historic Misjudgments in Hindsight

Viewing the past through the lens of history is unfair to the participants.  Missteps are too obvious.  Failures are too abundant.  Vanities are too absurd.  The benefit of hindsight often renders the participants mere imbeciles on parade.

Was George Armstrong Custer really just an arrogant Lieutenant Colonel who led his men to massacre at Little Bighorn?  Maybe.  Especially when Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and numbers estimated to be over ten times his cavalry appeared across the river. Read More

02.11.20- The Fed Has Pumped $500 Billion Into the Repo Market. Where Does It End?
Colin Harper

In September 2019, the interest rate for the overnight money market — a short-term lending market where banks borrow cash from each other to meet reserve requirements at the end of a business day — surged to 10 percent.

Banks weren’t willing to lend out capital for the Federal Reserve’s target interest rate of 2 percent. The Fed responded to the cash crunch by financing these so-called repurchasing agreements (repos, for short) directly. It offered the 2 percent interest on these short-term loans (they’re usually paid back in days or weeks) to bring the interest rate down and pump cash into a strapped lending market. It has been offering these overnight loans on a daily basis ever since. Read More

02.10.20- The scale of the Fed's "repo" market manipulation is truly breathtaking and threatens to destabilize global economy
Mike Whitney

A five-alarm fire has broken out in a little known, but critically important area of the financial system where high-quality bonds are swapped for cash. The "repo" market, which is short for repurchase agreements, is part of the nondeposit, shadow banking system that remains largely unregulated despite the fact that it was ground zero in the 2008 financial crisis. 

On September 17, 2019, the repo market was whipsawed by a sudden spike in short-term interest rates that rose from the Fed's target rate of roughly 2% to an eye-popping 10% in a matter of hours. The incident, that put traders into an immediate frenzy, sent the Fed scrambling for the printing presses where it swiftly rolled-off $75 billion to finance additional short-term loans and to add liquidity to a market in need of cash.

02.08.20- Weekend Rant:
The Next "Minsky Moment" Is Inevitable
Lance Roberts

In 2007, I was at a conference where Paul McCulley, who was with PIMCO at the time, was discussing the idea of a “Minsky Moment.”  At that time, this idea fell on “deaf ears” as the markets, and economy, were in full swing.

However, it wasn’t too long before the 2008 “Financial Crisis” brought the “Minsky Moment” thesis to the forefront. What was revealed, of course, was the dangers of profligacy which resulted in the triggering of a wave of margin calls, a massive selloff in assets to cover debts, and higher default rates. Read More

02.07.20- Another Massively Oversubscribed Term Repo Confirms Persisting Liquidity Woes
Tyler Durden

Two days after dealers unexpectedly flooded the first reduced term-repo (from $35BN previously to $30BN) offered by the Fed, the liquidity shortage in the repo market - which was supposed to be temporary and few if any strategists said would continue beyond year-end - persists, and today the Fed announced that in its latest 2-week term repo (maturing Feb 20), it was $57.25BN in submissions ($35.75BN in TSYs, $21.5BN in MBS) for a maximum $30BN in available reserves. Read More

02.06.20- Giga-Stupidity Has No Limits...
Harris Kupperman

Don’t worry, this isn’t another detailed article on Tesla. I’ve permanently sworn those off. As far as I’m concerned, there are two camps of investors; those who think it’s a fraud and those who aren’t very good at math.

However, that doesn’t mean that Tesla cannot be a good long or short at the right moments in time - yeah, I know, hypocrisy; right? Well, at least I recognize it for what it is; TSLA is a ticker symbol without any bearing on the actual business fundamentals. You see, ever since the Federal Reserve stepped in this fall with their “not QE” the last vestigial tethers to fundamental underpinnings have forever been cast adrift. There’s a business in the abstract sense and then there’s the meta-narrative which often seems to derive a lot of its meaning from the stock chart. Read More

02.05.20- “Hidden” Inflation
Isn’t Really Hiding at All
Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The subject is inflation. How does it work? Why bother to think about it?

Don’t we have anything better to do?

(Next month, we’ll study the animal even more closely. We’re returning to Argentina, where consumer prices are rising at a 54% annual rate.) Read More

02.04.20- Crisis-O-Rama
James Howard Kunstler

All of a sudden, events are looking a bit fluxy out there, as though the world is shuddering through some spooky ch-ch-ch-changes, like a monster waiting to be born, with strange convergences of ecology, politics and economy, and there’s only so much you can do to prepare. Criticality is in the air!

The horses are out of the barn on the Wuhan Coronavirus. Air travel was curtailed too late in the game — and still only partially — with asymptomatic-but-infectious human carriers winging to every corner of the world and probably contaminating airports all along the way. There’s plenty of thought and counter-thought on what exactly is going on behind the scenes in China. Read More

02.03.20- Time to give Powell Truth Serum
Brian Maher

The coronavirus has gone… “viral.” At the very least its media coverage has.

You may have therefore missed the news yesterday:

The Federal Reserve concluded its January FOMC meeting. It thereupon announced it is holding interest rates steady.

The federal funds target rate stays sandwiched between 1.50% and 1.75%. Read More

02.01.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Former Ukraine Prosecutor DEMANDS Criminal Charges Against Joe Biden, Evidence SUPPORTS Trump's Case
Tim Pool

Former Ukraine Prosecutor DEMANDS Criminal Charges Against Joe Biden, Evidence SUPPORTS Trump’s Case. The Former prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin sent a letter demanding that the Ukrainian authorities begin investigating Joe Biden for criminal interference in law enforcement activity.

Biden famously got the prosecutor fired with a quid pro quo over 1 billion dollars in US loan guarantees. Read More

01.31.20- No Way Out
John Hathaway

On September 17, 2019, overnight repo rates spiked 121 basis points, climbing from 2.19% to 3.40%, providing yet another crucial buttress for the bullish rationale for gold. The spike signaled that the U.S. Federal Reserve (“Fed”) had lost control of the price of money. Without subsequent massive injections of liquidity by the Fed into the repo market, out of control, short-term interest rates would have undermined the leverage that underpins record financial asset valuations. Going forward, unless the Fed continues to expand its balance sheet, it risks a meltdown in equity and bond prices that could exceed the damage of the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite consensus expectations, there appears no escape from this treadmill. Read More

01.30.20- Fed's Core Mission Now Includes Climate Change
Michael Shedlock

The Fed, ECB, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan have now embraced climate change as part of their mission.It’s bad enough that central bankers are clueless about inflation.They now want their hands in another thing they do not understand and cannot control even if they did.Fed’s Core Mission Change

Lael Brainard, Chair of the Fed’s Committee on Financial Stability, says Climate Change Matters for Monetary Policy and Financial Stability. Read More

01.29.20- The Crack-Up Boom And Gold And Silver
Darryl Robert Schoon

Monetary edema: a monetary phenomenon occurring in late-stage capitalist economies when repeated attempts to restore economic growth causes excess money to be trapped in financial markets; asset prices then rise to record levels in a crack-up boom (per Ludwig von Mises), which ends with a “flight into real values [gold and silver] and the whole monetary system founders.”

As aggregate levels of debt exponentially expand in capitalism’s endgame, markets become increasingly destabilized and central bankers become the primary participant in markets they once regulated. Read More

01.28.20- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Contagion!
James Rickards

The world is confronting the effects of the “coronavirus.” It likely originated in Wuhan, China, where it jumped from animals to humans at a local food market. It has since spread to other parts of China and beyond.

So far, there are 2,886 confirmed total cases of the coronavirus. All but 61 of them are in mainland China. The death toll so far is 81.

But cases have also been found in France, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. That list includes the world’s three largest economies (the U.S., China and Japan). Read More

01.27.20- Will the Federal Reserve Boost the Stock Market With Another Rate Cut?
Matthew Frankel, CFP

The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, is set to meet on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 28 and 29, to decide whether to cut interest rates, raise them, or leave rates alone for now. While the policy-making arm of the Federal Reserve isn't expected to make any major policy changes, the meeting's outcome is far from certain at this point.

With that in mind, here's what investors can expect from the January 2020 FOMC meeting -- and what could be in store going forward. Read More

01.25.20- The Fed's Swan Song: The Mother of All Financial Disasters
Ron Paul

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01.24.20- Why You MUST Bet Against the Debt Now
Gregory Mannarino

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01.23.20- Social Security COLA Lags Behind Fed's Inflation Target
Peter Reagan

Since 1975, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has provided automatic Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs), which increase Social Security benefit payouts. For 2020, the adjustment officially ended up at 1.6%.

According to the SSA, this adjustment is "enacted by legislation that ties COLAs to the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index . The change means that inflation no longer drains value from Social Security benefits."Read More

01.22.20- 5,000 Years of Interest Rates
Brian Maher

“At no point in the history of the world has the interest on money been so low as it is now.”

Here the good Sen. Henry M. Teller of Colorado hits it square.

For 10 years plus, the Federal Reserve has waged a nearly ceaseless warfare upon interest rates.

Savers have staggered under the onslaughts. But the timeless laws of economics will not be forever put to rout. Read More

01.21.20- A World Gone Mad
Brian Maher

Today we gasp, stagger, reel.

The enormity of it all has finally overmatched our capacities. Consider…

Total global debt presently piles up to 322% of GDP — a record.

Total “developed world” debt piles higher yet — 383% of GDP — another record.

The world’s stock markets combine to $88 trillion, or 100% of global GDP. That is another record yet. Read More

01.20.20- A Tale of Two Markets
Gary Christenson

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of QE, it was the age of fiscal foolishness, it was the epoch of the Fed Put, it was the epoch of Greater Fool Theory, it was the season of golden light, and it was the season of fiat darkness.

My apologies to Charles Dickens.

IT’S ALL ABOUT LIQUIDITY. Central banks created currency units and levitated stock and bond markets since the financial crisis over a decade ago.Read More

01.18.20- Living On Borrowed Time
MN Gordon

Practically the entirety of Congress now believes that the ability to pay should not limit the ability to promise people whatever they want.  There’s no poll of members of Congress to support this assertion.  We base it on what they’ve communicated by real, material actions.

Remember, per the Constitution, Congress – and in particular, the House of Representatives – is vested with the “power of the purse.”  They retain the authority to tax and spend public money for the federal government.  Over the last 50 years Congress has demonstrated they give less than half a rip about the government’s ability to pay. Read More

01.17.20- Why is bank credit so destructive?
Alasdair Macleod

“Because your question searches for deep meaning, I shall explain in simple words.”  – Dante, Inferno

Periodic economic destruction by bank credit is not new. It has been a problem for millennia. The basis of it, the ownership of bank deposits which should be safely held as assets in custody and not taken into ownership by the banks, goes back even to ancient Greece. Read More

01.16.20- Presently In A Staggering Bail-Out
Of The Banking System
Brian Maher

The present operation will ultimately outsize even the great bailouts of the financial crisis…

Dear Reader,

“Journalism is about covering important stories,” said one scalawag. “With a pillow.”

A staggering bailout of the banking system presently proceeds apace.

The mainstream financial press has seized a bed pillow, placed it over this important story… and pressed down murderously. Read More

01.15.20- “Last Hurrah” for Central Bankers
Jim Rickards

We’ve all seen zombie movies where the good guys shoot the zombies but the zombies just keep coming because… they’re zombies!

Market observers can’t be blamed for feeling the same way about former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

Bernanke was Fed chair from 2006–2014 before handing over the gavel to Janet Yellen. After his term, Bernanke did not return to academia (he had been a professor at Princeton) but became affiliated with the center-left Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Read More

01.14.20- The Fed Has Already Lost Control
Bill Holter

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01.13.20- The Counterfeit Society Is Heading Towards A Horrendous Disaster
Dr. Ron Paul

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01.11.20- The Fed Protects Gamblers at the Expense of the Economy
Ellen Brown

Although the repo market is little known to most people, it is a $1-trillion-a-day credit machine, in which not just banks but hedge funds and other “shadow banks” borrow to finance their trades. Under the Federal Reserve Act, the central bank’s lending window is open only to licensed depository banks; but the Fed is now pouring billions of dollars into the repo (repurchase agreements) market, in effect making risk-free loans to speculators at less than 2%. Read More

01.10.20- The Fed Can't Reverse The Decline Of Financialization And Globalization
Charles Hugh Smith

The global economy and financial system are both running on the last toxic fumes of financialization and globalization.

For two generations, globalization and financialization have been the two engines of global growth and soaring assets. Globalization can mean many things, but its beating heart is the arbitraging of the labor of the powerless, and commodity, environmental and tax costs by powerful to increase their profits and wealth. Read More

01.09.20- WTF: What The Fed?!
Mike Maloney, Chris Martenson, Grant Williams & Charles Hugh Smith

“The plain truth is… we are in the middle of QE4 right now” – Grant Williams

Something is not adding up.

And Mike Maloney agrees…

He recently recorded a free event dedicated exclusively to the topic of the Fed’s recent actions… to help you understand what it’s doing and what it means to your wallet.

It’s called, “WTF: What the Fed.”

And it’s hosted by our good friends Peak Prosperity Chris Martenson and Adam Taggart. Read More

01.08.20- Is This Why Central Banks Are Rushing
to Buy Gold?
Brandon Smith

Gold has seen an impressive price spike in the past 18 months, and if you are wondering what the cause is, you’ll find almost everyone has a different theory. That said, certain factors in historic gold rallies tend to be ignored. For example, the mainstream financial media often hyper focuses on stimulus measures by the Federal Reserve as the cause, but I would remind people that the most recent upward trend in gold started while the Fed was tightening liquidity and raising interest rates, not stimulating. Also, many analysts suggest that precious metals absorb investment cash flows when equities are sliding, yet, for now, stocks have been rallying for the past year as gold prices also trend upward. So, what is the mainstream missing here? Read More

01.07.20- 2020 FINANCIAL CRISIS...Has it started? The $500 Billion Dollar Question
Yanasa Ama Ranch

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01.06.20- How the Fed Robs You of Your Life
MN Gordon

Fiat Currency Rankings – From Bad to Worse

Today, as we step into the New Year, we reach down to turn over a new leaf.  We want to make a fresh start.  We want to leave 2019’s bugaboos behind. But, alas, lying beneath the fallen leaf, like rotting food waste, is last year’s fake money.  We can’t escape it.  But we refuse to believe in its permanence.

This is what “monetary stability in the Fed-administered fiat money regime looks like: in the year the Fed was established it took $3.80 to buy what $100 buy today – provided the government’s CPI data are actually a valid gauge of the dollar’s purchasing power. Read More

01.04.20- Winter Is Coming...
Ritesh Jain

...'Cause I’ve had the time of my life..and I owe it all to you..

The original song from Dirty Dancing is one of my all time favourites and somehow reminds me of the Global Markets performance this year.Every conceivable asset class (except cash) posted positive returns ,thanks to the LIQUIDITY provided by global central banks. The Fed, in my view, moved to implement the “ high pressure economy” regime outlined in former chair Janet Yellen’s 2014 speech at theFed Reserve bank. Read More

01.03.20- One Essential Insight For The Year Ahead
MN Gordon

On Christmas Day 2018, roughly one year ago, President Trump provided the following market analysis:

“I think it’s a tremendous opportunity to buy.  Really a great opportunity to buy.”

If you recall, the U.S. stock market was in freefall when Trump made these utterances.  Between September 20, 2018 and Christmas Day 2018, the S&P 500 dropped 19.78 percent – within a hairline of an official bear market.  What’s more, the S&P 500 was at a 20 month low. Read More

01.02.20- Helicopter Money Is Here: How The Fed Monetized Billions In Debt Sold Just Days Earlier
Tyler Durden

The Fed's charter prohibits its from directly purchasing bonds or bills issued by the US Treasury: that process is also known as monetization and various Fed chairs have repeatedly testified under oath to Congress that the Fed does not do it. Of course, the alternative is what is known as "Helicopter Money", when the central bank directly purchases bonds issued by the Treasury and forms the backbone of the MMT monetary cult.

But what if there is at a several day interval between Treasury issuance and subsequent purchase? Well, that's perfectly legal, and it's something the Fed has done not only during QE1, QE2 and QE3, but is continuing to do now as part of its "QE4/NOT QE." Read More

01.01.20- Fed’s balance sheet expansion is creating a less favorable environment for the dollar
Matías Salord

Analysts at MUFG Bank, argue the Federal Reserve has signaled that it plans to continue expanding its balance sheet at least through the first half of this year, thereby extending less favorable conditions for the US dollar. They point out the options market is expecting more US dollar weakness over the next six months. Read More