The Sky is Falling
“We believe monetary policy is in a good place.”
– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, October 30, 2019.
The man from the good place. “As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, Oh how I wish he’d go away!” [PT]
Wildfire Surge
The hillsides are always brown in the land of fruits and nuts come autumn. After baking away all summer long in the hot sun, the dense sage and chaparral covering the coastal hillsides and canyons are dry and toasty. Though, before conditions get better, they must first get worse.
California is ablaze again… as every year. [PT]
Photo credit: Noah Berger / AP
Planning on Your Behalf
Watch out! At this very moment, professional economists of all stripes are making plans on your behalf. They are dreaming and scheming new and innovative ways to spend your money long before you have earned it.
Strange and strangely persistent beliefs… [PT]
Under the Influence
“This feels very sustainable.”
– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, October 8, 2019
Understandable confusion… [PT]
21st Century Hooverville
There are places in Los Angeles where, although the sun always shines, they haven’t seen a ray of light in over 100-years. There’s a half square mile of urban decay centered on the Union Rescue Mission at 545 South San Pedro Street, where depravity, chaos, addiction, insanity and archaic diseases multiply and ricochet about like metastatic cancer.
One of LA’s modern-day Hoovervilles in San Pedro Street… In 2015 it was reported that Union Rescue Mission CEO Reverend Andy Bales had caught three different bacterial infections from merely walking around in the area. One of the infections rendered him unable to ever walk again (doctors eventually had to amputate his foot, which had fallen prey to flesh-eating bacteria). In short, this is not exactly the most hygienic and healthy environment. [PT]
Photo credit: Mike Blake / REUTERS
Groping in the Dark
This week central planners pursued their primary mission with steadfast conviction. They planned. They prodded. They prearranged tomorrow to save us from ourselves. Some also grubbed a little graft for their trouble. Other central planners took to debasing the dollar to price fix the federal funds rate within a narrow band of tolerance. What in the world do they think they are doing?
Central planning committee in the analysis and forecasting phase… [PT]
An Odd Combination of Serenity and Panic
The United States, with untroubled ease, continued its approach toward catastrophe this week. The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate 25 basis points, thus furthering its program of mass money debasement. Yet, on the surface, all still remained in the superlative.
S&P 500 Index, weekly: serenely perched near all time highs, in permanently high plateau nirvana. [PT]
The Future and the Past
Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 156 requires financial institutions to advise investors to not be idiots. Hence, the disclosure pages of nearly every financial instrument in the U.S. are embedded with the following admission or variant thereof:
“Past Performance Is Not Indicative of Future Results”
“Buy and hold”… “The market goes always up”… “No-one can time the market”… “Buy the dip” “With what? You said not to sell anything”… “Simple, mortgage the farm…” The image above shows roughly what happens right after everybody feels the warm & fuzzies due to the fact that the market has been going up without a hitch for quite some time. Once the conviction that it can only rise further is widespread and firmly embedded in investor psyches (who cares about valuations?), this is often what the next scene looks like… [PT]
A Case of Highway Robbery
What if the savings in your bank account lost 55 percent of its value over the last 12 months? Would you be somewhat peeved? Would you transfer some of your savings to another currency?
USD-ARS, weekly. For several years the Argentine Peso has followed a certain pattern: it declines mildly, but steadily, with little volatility for long time periods, and then spikes in crash waves whenever a crisis situation comes to a head. In early 2011, it took roughly four pesos to buy one US dollar – which was already an enormous loss of value relative to the 1:1 exchange rate that prevailed under Argentina’s currency board prior to the government default and banking system collapse of 2001. When Mr. Macri was elected president, it was widely held that his market reforms would finally repair Argentina’s economy, which had been ruined by almost two decades of economic mismanagement and inflation under the previous Peronist administration. Alas, Macri made a mistake no Argentine government that gains the trust of foreign investors seems able to resist: he embarked on a big borrowing spree, much of it denominated in USD, until it became clear that the government would no longer be able to defend the peso or service its debt. Then he exacerbated his mistake by borrowing even more money from the IMF – which should be filed under “a movie we have seen before”. And just as had happened in that earlier escapade, his government is now likely to default on its IMF loan as well. Not surprisingly, the peso has collapsed – and in well-worn fashion Macri is now trying to save the village by destroying it and has introduced capital controls. [PT]
Brainwashed by Academe
Not a day goes by that doesn’t supply a new specimen of inane disclarity. Muddy ideas are dredged up from tainted minds like lumps of odorous pond muck. We do our part to clean up the mess, whether we want to or not.
No longer in demand: famous Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who is widely considered the “Father of Liberalism” (classical liberalism, that is). [PT]
The Pointlessness of Negative Yields
If there are any virtues of debt instruments with negative yields we have yet to realize them. Certainly, we understand that as bond yields fall, bond prices rise, and bond investors are rewarded with capital appreciation. But when capital is appreciating as a consequence of negative yields, we suspect there is something fundamentally wrong with the capital itself.
Not only is the stock of negative-yielding debt at a new record high of almost $17 trillion, lately there has been a big surge in corporate debt sporting negative yields-to-maturity. [PT]
Not Adding Up
One of the more disagreeable discrepancies of American life in the 21st century is the world according to Washington’s economic bureaus and the world as it actually is. In short, things don’t add up. What’s more, the propaganda is so far off the mark, it is downright insulting.
Coming down from the mountain with the latest data tablet… [PT]
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Austrian Theory and Investment
Realtime Charts
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