Infinite Unknown

- Japan Has Officially Gone Insane (ZeroHedge, May 23, 2013):

On one hand:

• BOJ OFFERS TO BUY 300B YEN DEBT WITH MORE THAN 10YR MATURITY
• BOJ OFFERS TO BUY 600B YEN IN 5-10YR GOVT DEBT

and on the other

• ABE SAYS BOJ ISN’T DIRECTLY BUYING GOVERNMENT DEBT

We give up: raging schizophrenia and a sado-maso fetish is now a core prerequisite for anyone who wishes to follow the daily lies these central planning sociopaths spew with impunity.

Tags: Bank of Japan, Bonds, Central Bank, Debt, Global News, Government, Japan, Shinzo Abe

- Deutsche Bank: “We Fully Understand Why The Authorities Wouldn’t Want Free Markets To Operate Today” (ZeroHedge, May 9, 2013):

A brief stroke of brilliance from Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid: Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Banking, Deutsche Bank, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Global News, Government, Greece, Jim Reid, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Society, U.S.

Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Bill Fleckenstein (28m:26s)

- Bill Fleckenstein: Hold Tight To Your Gold (PeakProsperity, April 21, 2013):

Why it’s going to go “one hell of a lot” higher

The bond market is an accident waiting to happen.

When the bond market finally does crack, it is going to be one epic nightmare that is going to make 2008 and 2009 seem like a picnic. It will be a different kind of a crisis; but it will be an enormous crisis. These people that are bullish about stocks and bonds and the bond market, they do not understand anything.

We will hit a moment in time where there will be a rapid acceleration of the perception that people are being cheated via inflation by these money-printing policies. Why Americans seem to think there is no inflation just because the CPI says so, when their checkbooks every day ought to tell them there is, I cannot explain that. But there will be a change in psychology, and there will be a massive stampede into gold here and everywhere else around the world, because it is the only way you can protect yourself against these policies.

Pity the wise money manager these days. Our juiced-up financial markets, force-fed liquidity by the Fed the other major world central banks, are pushing asset prices far beyond what the fundamentals merit.

If you see this reckless central planning behavior for what it is – a deluded attempt to avoid reality for as long as possible – your options are limited if you take your fiduciary duty to your clients seriously.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Ben Bernanke, Bill Fleckenstein, Bonds, Bubble, Central Bank, Debt, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Fleckenstein Capital, Global News, Gold, Government, Japan, Politics, precious metals, Real Estate, Stock Market, U.S.

Compare Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article to …

- Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: The Assault On Gold – Assault On Gold UPDATE

- Fed and Bank of Japan caused gold crash (Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard April 17, 2013):

Commodity prices have been falling since September, culminating in a rout over the past two weeks. That is a classic warning for the global economy.

It is becoming ever clearer that the roaring boom in global equities since last summer has priced in an economic recovery that does not in fact exist. The International Monetary Fund has had to nurse down its global growth forecasts yet again. We are still stuck in an old-fashioned trade depression, with pervasive over-capacity in manufacturing plant and a record global savings rate of 25pc of GDP.

German car sales fell 17pc in March. That should puncture the last illusions that Germany is about to pull Europe out of a self-inflicted slump.

As you can see from the chart below, the divergence between stock markets and the Deutsche Bank index of raw materials is astonishing to behold, so like the pattern in early 1929. Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Banking, Ben Bernanke, China, Collapse, Commodities, Cyprus, ECB, Economy, EU, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, GDP, Global News, Gold, Government, Great Depression, IMF, Japan, precious metals

Don’t miss!

- Ex-Soros Advisor Sells “Almost All” Japan Holdings, Shorts Bonds; Sees Market Crash, Default And Hyperinflation (ZeroHedge, April 14, 2013):

Previously, we have pointed out why Japan’s attempt at reincarnating its economy, geared solely at generating a stock market-based “wealth effect”, and far less focused on boosting the country’s trade surplus or current account, is doomed to failure, namely due the drastically lower equity participation by the general population and financial institutions in the country’s stock market. Sure, foreign investors will come and go renting each rally for a period of time, but unless the local population participates in the “reflation attempt” (which has already sent the price of luxury goods, energy and food through the rood), or in other words change the behavioral patterns of two generations of Japanese in under two years, the inflationary shock will simply leads to a loss of faith in the government and ultimately Abe’s second untimely demise. Not surprisingly, 4 months after Japan set off on the most ludicrous economic experiment in history, and one week after the BOJ announced its plans to double its balance sheet, Abe’s approval rating has already begun sliding with a poll by Asahi just reporting that popular support of Abe’s cabinet is already down to 60%, down from 71% a month ago. Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of Japan, Bonds, Collapse, Debt, Economy, George Soros, Goldman Sachs, Government, Japan, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Shinzo Abe, Stock Market

- Japan’s Full Frontal: Charting Abenomics So Far (ZeroHedge, April 13, 2013)

Tags: Bank of Japan, Economy, Global News, Government, Japan, Politics, Shinzo Abe

- Is It Beginning? Biggest JGB Price Collapse In Over 10 Years Triggers TSE Circuit Breakers (ZeroHedge, April 5, 2013)

Tags: Bank of Japan, Bonds, cds, Debt, Japan

- Japan’s Debt Crisis Visualized (ZeroHedge, April 4, 2013):

In just a few short minutes, inspired by Kyle Bass, Addogram presents a short visual explanation of Japan’s debt problem. In the time it takes Ben Bernanke to print $13.7 million you’ll have a deep understanding of Aso, Abe, and Kuroda’s impending debt crisis.

YouTube

Tags: Bank of Japan, Ben Bernanke, Bonds, Collapse, Debt, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Global News, Government, Kyle Bass, Politics

- Kyle Bass: “Japan Will Implode Under Weight Of Their Debt” (ZeroHedge, April 4, 2013):

As the fast-money flabber-mouths stare admiringly at the rise in nominal prices of Japanese (and the rest of the world ex-China) stock prices amid soaring sales of wheelbarrows following Kuroda’s ‘shock-and-awe’ last night, it is Kyle Bass who brings these surrealists back to earth with some cold-hard-facting. Out of the gate Bass explains the massive significance of what the Japanese are embarking on, “they are essentially doubling the monetary base by the end of 2104.”

It is a “Giant Experiment,” he warns, but when you are backed into a corner and your debts are north of 20 times your government tax revenue, “you’re already insolvent.” Simply put, Bass says they have to do something and they have to something big because they are “about to implode under the weight of their debt.” For a sense of the scale of the BoJ’s ‘experimentation’, Bass sums it up perfectly (and concerningly), “the BoJ is monetizing at a rate around 75% of the Fed on an economy that is one-third the size of the US!”

What they are trying to do is devalue the currency to attempt to become more competitive while holding their rates market flat – the economic zealots running the world’s central banks believe they can live in that Nirvana – and Bass believes that is not the case, as they will lose control of rates, since leaving the zone of insolvency is impossible now. His advice, “if you’re Japanese, spend! or take it out of your country. If you’re not, borrow in JPY and invest in productive assets.” Do not be long JPY or Japanese assets as he concludes with the reality of Japan’s “hollowed out” manufacturing industry and why USDJPY is less important that KRWJPY.

Tags: Bank of Japan, Bonds, Central Bank, Collapse, Debt, Economy, Global News, Government, Hyperinflation, Inflation, Japan, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Yen

- The Reflation Party Is Ending As China Withdraws Market Liquidity For First Time In Eight Months (ZeroHedge, Feb 19, 2013):

Since institutional memories are short, it is time to remind readers that it was the threat, and subsequent reality, of China overheating in the spring and summer of 2011 (when record high food prices sent the entire North African region in a state of coordinated revolt and gradually moved far east), when even the Great firewall of China could not block news of frequent break outs of localized violence from hungry and angry mobs, that halted and broke the spine of the great reflation trade then (and yes, 2013 has so far been a carbon copy replica of 2011 as we summarized in “It’s Deja Vu, All Over Again: This Time Is… Completely The Same“).

Furthermore, as only Zero Hedge forecast back in mid-2012, when ever other commentator was shouting over the rooftops that an RRR or interest rate cut out of Beijing was imminent, the PBOC would be the last to stimulate the market with monetary easing as it was well-aware that an entire developed world reflating at the same time would hit none other than China the fastest as the hot money flew straight into Shanghai. Just as it did in 2011. So instead China proceeded to engage in a series of daily reverse repos, or ultra-short term liquidity injections that prevented the advent of wholesale inflation: after all the Fed, the BOJ, the ECB and soon, the BOE, were doing it for them. And the last thing the country with the highest allotment of CPI, or book inflation, to food and energy can afford, is to let foreign central banks dictate its price level. After all, it has more than enough of its own.

Well, the Chinese New Year celebration is now over, the Year of the Snake is here, and those following the Shanghai Composite have lots to hiss about, as two out of two trading days have printed in the red. But a far bigger concern to not only those long the SHCOMP, but the “Great Reflation Trade – ver. 2013″, is that just as two years ago, China appears set to pull out first, as once again inflation rears its ugly head. And where the PBOC goes, everyone else grudgingly has to follow: after all without China there is no marginal growth driver to the world economy.

End result: China’s reverse repos, or liquidity providing operations, have ended after month of daily injections, and the first outright repo, or liquidity draining operation, just took place after eight months of dormancy.

From the WSJ:

Chinese authorities took a step to ease potential inflationary pressures Tuesday by using a key mechanism for the first time in eight months.

The move by the central bank to withdraw cash from the banking system is a reversal after months of pumping cash in. That cash flood was meant to reduce borrowing costs for businesses as the economy slowed last year—but recent data has shown growth picking up, along with the main determinants of inflation: housing and food prices.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of China, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Central Bank, China, ECB, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Food, Food Prices, Global News, Government, Inflation, Politics, Yuan