Thursday 10 October 2013

QE And LTRO Forever.



Baltic Dry Index. 2125 -21

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

"The paper standard is self-destructive."

Hans F. Sennholz

This month we have had the clearest signals possible from the central banksters that there will be no “tapering,” let alone unwinding of balance sheets. Just the opposite seems to be about to occur. The Fed sees QE forever as forever, while the Italian cooking the books at the ECB sees it as his role to bring Abenomics to Euroland. Chancellor Merkel’s new coalition partners, whether the SPD or the tree hugging, economy ruining Greens, will block any attempt by Berlin to rein in Draghi in Frankfurt. With Italy and France heading for national bailouts, Greece and Portugal doomed, and Spain mired in a corruption scandal, with its biggest bank about to take a massive hit in Latin America’s biggest bankruptcy, a new Long Term Refinancing Operation can’t come a moments too soon.  Stay long fully paid up physical precious metals. This long term lunacy won’t have gone unnoticed outside of Washington and Frankfurt.

In fact in Frankfurt, the Bundesbank’s representative on the ECB is in near mutiny at the prospect of renewed dangerous monetary folly. Whatever happened to the promise of a wealth generating European single currency? Happily for all of Club Med and the rest of Europe’s union of misfits, delinquents, spendthrifts and feckless, no one in Frankfurt pays the least attention to Jens Weidmann anymore. Germany joined the EMU on a promise that the Euro would be the expanded D. Mark to rival the US dollar.  What it’s got instead is the expanded D. Mark to rival Mr Draghis beloved Italian Lira.

The bankster in his mansion,
The taxpayer at his gate,
Draghi made them High or lowly,
He disordered their estate.

With apologies to All things bright and beautiful.

Draghi’s Next Policy Move Seen Easing Liquidity Not Rates

By Jana Randow & Andre Tartar - Oct 10, 2013 12:01 AM GMT
The European Central Bank’s next monetary-policy move will be a non-standard one, economists say.
While almost three in four of them predict President Mario Draghi will unveil new liquidity measures such as longer-term refinancing operations, the majority of forecasters say interest rates will remain unchanged through the first half of 2015, according to separate surveys by Bloomberg News.

The ECB, which has kept its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent since May, is assessing its options for underpinning the euro area’s nascent recovery as banks remain hesitant to lend. Draghi has fueled expectations of a fresh round of long-term loans by saying the ECB is “ready to act accordingly and as needed” to contain money-market rates.

“As long as soft indicators improve and hard data follows suit, there is no reason for the ECB to cut rates,” said Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING Groep NV in Brussels. “A new LTRO could kill several birds with one stone: it could solve possible liquidity bottlenecks, could lower money-market rates and, above all, would help lock in market expectations.”

In the survey of 43 economists on liquidity options, 74 percent said the ECB will unveil new measures, and 25 economists said a so-called long-term refinancing operation is a probable instrument. In a separate survey of 46 economists, 89 percent said the central bank’s benchmark interest rate will stay at the current level, with the rest saying it’ll be cut by a quarter point.

“There are still many banks which would probably take advantage of more liquidity from the ECB,” said Cyrus De La Rubia, chief economist at HSH Nordbank AG in Hamburg. While German and French banks are unlikely to take new long-term loans, financial institutions in debt-strapped countries are more prone to do so, he said.
More

Oct. 9, 2013, 4:56 p.m. EDT

Obama nominates Yellen to succeed Bernanke

Yellen would be the first woman to lead the U.S. Federal Reserve

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, elevating a woman to the top post for the first time in the central bank’s 100-year history.

In a brief statement at the White House, Obama, flanked by Yellen and Bernanke, urged the Senate to act swiftly to confirm her “given the urgent economic challenges facing our nation.”

Yellen, 67, is currently vice chair of the U.S. central bank.

She said that “more needs to be done to strengthen the recovery,” even though progress has been made.
Economists quickly took note.

“When a prominent, and soon to be most prominent, Fed official says ‘more needs to be done,’ pay attention,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG LLC, in a Twitter post.

ECB’s Weidmann sees no need now for new LTRO

The head of Germany’s Bundesbank sees no need at present for the European Central Bank to make fresh long-term loans to banks and it will not deploy them simply because market interest rates have risen, he said in an interview with Reuters.

Jens Weidmann is widely seen as the most hawkish policymaker on the ECB’s 23-man Governing Council.
Market rates moved higher over the summer on expectations the US Federal Reserve would start unwinding its stimulus and the ECB is watching them closely, concerned that a sustained rise could threaten the eurozone’s fragile economic recovery.

The rise subsided after the Fed delayed a reduction in its bond purchases, but the early repayment of two previous long-term loans to banks, or LTROs, extended by the ECB in late 2011 and early 2012 is sucking “excess liquidity” out of the system and risks pushing up market rates.

“One cannot infer an automatic monetary policy reaction from a change in money market rates,” Weidmann told Reuters in an interview conducted on Monday and published yesterday. “There is no such automatism.”

“LTROs are only one of many possible instruments,” he added. “Which instrument we, if necessary, deploy, we will then have to discuss. But at the moment I see no need. We are always ready, if it is necessary, to act,” Weidmann said.

ECB experts are analysing the option of issuing LTROs.

The central bank deployed these cheap loans to inject over 1tn euros ($1.36tn) into the system soon after Mario Draghi took over as ECB president in November 2011 — a policy measure he has said “avoided a major, major credit crunch”.

New LTROs could be used to avoid what Draghi last week called a “liquidity accident” - banks running short of funds — but the ECB experts have yet to finish their work, which the Council will review before deciding whether to use the loans.
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Elsewhere tiny Iceland’s options diminish. Just imagine what happens in Iceland if the Fed or ECB reneged on QE and LTRO forever.  Does Iceland still have time to apply to join Canada?

"Paper money has had the effect in your state [Rhode Island] that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”
                                               
George Washington 1787.

Icelanders Run Out of Cash to Repay Foreign Debts: Nordic Credit

By Omar R. Valdimarsson - Oct 9, 2013 10:53 AM GMT
Iceland’s private sector is running out of cash to repay its foreign currency debt, according to the nation’s central bank.

Non-krona debt owed by entities besides the Treasury and the central bank due through 2018 totals about 700 billion kronur ($5.8 billion), the bank said yesterday. The projected current account surpluses over the next five years aren’t estimated to reach even half of that and will equal a shortfall of about 20 percent of gross domestic product

The nation faces a “repayment risk of foreign debt by private entities in the economy, who don’t have access to foreign financial markets,” Sigridur Benediktsdottir, head of financial stability at the Reykjavik-based central bank, said yesterday in an interview. “We view this as being exacerbated or made worse by the fact that our current account is actually declining.”

Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson has said Iceland’s foreign exchange shortfall is “a matter of huge concern” as he tries to scale back currency controls in place since 2008. The government’s biggest challenge is to allow capital to flow freely without triggering a krona sell-off that would cause Iceland’s foreign debt to spike and undermine the nation’s economic recovery

The yield on Iceland’s 5.875 percent dollar $1 billion bond due May 2022 has soared this year to as high as 5.71 percent last month from a low in May of 3.81 percent. Its spread to the U.S. Treasury curve widened to 314 basis points yesterday from a May 28 low of 210 basis points, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Foreign creditors hold about $7.2 billion that are trapped behind the controls Iceland designed to protect the $14 billion economy from capital flight in 2008. Gunnlaugsson has said he wants offshore bank creditors to accept writedowns on 461 billion kronur in claims to avoid a sell-off as soon as the restrictions are eased.

Iceland’s plight in dealing with the unintended consequences of its capital restrictions shows how difficult it is to exit such a regime without putting an economy at risk. The central bank said yesterday that while the controls are still needed to protect the nation, their long-term effect risks distorting asset prices.
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Staying with the Iceland thought for now. Below, will Europe’s grannies survive the coming winter if it’s another cold one. Years of politically correct “green” policy errors are now coming home to roost. Cap Gemini’s solution, yes you guessed it more of the same market interference and greater bureaucracy. Europe’s grannies are dead women walking.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Albert Einstein

Cold European Winter Could Create Energy Crisis, Cap Gemini Says

By Sally Bakewell - Oct 10, 2013 12:01 AM GMT
A cold winter may plunge Europe into an energy crisis because of the over-reliance on renewable energy and the shutting of natural gas-fired generators, Cap Gemini SA (CAP) said in a report.

Gas-fired generators are running at utilization rates that are too low to meet their fixed costs as grids favor subsidized renewable power, the Paris-based management consultancy said today. About 60 percent or 130,000 megawatts of Europe’s gas-generation capacity is at risk of closing by 2016, it said, citing IHS Inc. (IHS) estimates.

“These plants -- that are indispensable to ensure security of supply during peak hours -- are being replaced by volatile and non-schedulable renewable energy installations that are heavily subsidized,” according to the report, produced with Exane BNP Paribas, law firm CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre Lyon SELAS and think tank VaasaETT.

Generators are switching to cheaper coal for baseload power as the U.S. exports the fuel amid a shale-drilling boom that has driven up domestic gas demand, Cap Gemini said. The collapse of the cost of carbon credits has strengthened the appeal of the polluting fuel.
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We end for today with yet more news from our new lawless age. Why do we profess to keep seeing the mote in Russia’s President Putin’s eye but not anywhere else. Below, yet another bankster scandal surfaces. Is there anywhere on the planet such a thing as an honest banker?

"All previous attempts to base money solely on intangibles such as credit or government edict or fiat have ended in inflationary panic and disaster."

Donald Hoppe

Mizuho’s Sato Under Pressure as FSA Scrutinizes Crime Loans

By Monami Yui & Takako Taniguchi - Oct 10, 2013 4:20 AM GMT
Pressure on Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411) President Yasuhiro Sato mounted after Japan’s financial regulator told the bank to explain how and when top executives found out about its loans to crime groups.

The Financial Services Agency issued the order yesterday after Mizuho said it erred in reporting only lower-ranking officials knew of the loans, an FSA official told reporters in Tokyo, asking not to be named in accordance with its policy.

The order, the first against the parent company about the matter, comes less than two weeks after the FSA told Mizuho’s banking unit to improve compliance for allowing members of crime groups to borrow money through a consumer credit affiliate. Sato said this week that he was unaware of the lending until the regulator’s investigation in March.

“The situation is clearly getting more negative,” said Shinichiro Nakamura, a Tokyo-based analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “The worst-case scenario that President Sato has to resign may come in sight.”
Satoru Nishibori, president of Mizuho’s banking unit at the time, knew of the loans in 2010, Sato said on
Oct. 8, amending earlier statements by the bank that four senior compliance officials were aware and didn’t inform superiors.

----“This is completely different from what they first reported,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news briefing in Tokyo today. “They bear great responsibility as an organization and I believe the people of Japan will feel the same.”

Since becoming president of Japan’s third-biggest bank by market value in June 2011, Sato has overseen the merger of the its corporate and retail lending units to better integrate the company under its “One Mizuho” brand. The lender was formed from the combination of three banks more than a decade ago.
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"Buy gold and sit on it. That is the key to success."

Dr. Franz Pick

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 43.15 Moz, Eligible 122.21 Moz, Total 165.36 Moz.  


Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

While we all complacently await peace to break out in Washington, possibly as early as today, and a reasonable common sense compromise to be reached to allow the US government and money markets to start functioning normally again, below what can happen when things go really wrong. While official inflation is subdued everywhere for now, although don’t suggest that to the hapless poor of India, the Arab Spring, nor the rioters of Rio, nor the poor of Argentina, on QE and LTRO and Abenomics forever, it’s just lurking out there ready to explode the moment the leading global economies really gain escape velocity from the Great Recession.

"From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation."

Henry Hazlitt

Factional conflicts have the power to destroy empires - and republics

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Bitter fights in Washington are making the US economy look much worse than it is.

The US Founding Fathers abhorred factions. The 10th Federalist Paper by James Madison in 1787 is a study of how to defend the fledgeling republic against the dangers of organised zealotry, the curse that blighted earlier republics in world history.

Madison defined factions as groups of citizen "united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".

The bone of contention was thought to be disputes over the "unequal distribution of property", and so it has proved to be as we see today in the bitter fight between debtors and creditors, or between those who live off government and those who pay for it.

Madison believed a powerful continental Congress -- rooted in Washington rather than state legislatures -- would work against factions. Regional diversity would muddy the ideological waters. This is in fact what happened.

For much of the 20th Century the Democratic Party was a coalition of blacks, Jews, and Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholic immigrants in the North, and "Bol Weevil" conservatives in the South.

They had little in common. This allowed for fluid political deals on Capitol Hill, with alliances crossing party lines. Gridlock was mostly avoided even though the US constitution fosters divided government.

This coalition no longer exists. Democrat dalliance with "leftist" social doctrines since the 1970s -- Roe v Wade, gun control, et al -- has turned the South into a Republican stronghold. While Northern cities have become more militantly Democrat.

The numbers of voters who split their tickets fell to 11pc in the 2012 elections, an all-time low. A record number identify themselves as hard-core Democrats or Republicans, and they are more concentrated in their bastions.

"Republican districts are redder than ever: Democrat districts are bluer. Ideological polarisation in the House is wider than it has ever been," said the Washington Post.
More

"...there seems to be a correlation between the intensity of the official attacks on gold and the severity of monetary crises."

Hans F. Sennholz

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September:
DJIA: +167 Up. NASDAQ: +213 Up. SP500: +203 Up. All three are back positive again, thanks to continued Fed QE.  High risk speculators will now use any stocks sell-off to go long. After the last Fed meeting and QE U-turn, the Bernocchio put is back on.

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