Tag Archives: ECB

The Powers That Be, like central bankers and politicians, are only human.  They err. They have to operate with imperfect information.

But they are also mostly untrained in systems thinking, resource limits, and other such necessary fields — which they could correct for if they cared or dared.

But they aren’t. And because of this, the pace and the scope of the changes happening are beyond their powers of comprehension, let alone their powers to fix.

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On Tuesday, Mario Draghi apparently went rogue on his fellow policymakers and launched into a swan song version of his all-time hit “Whatever it takes”. The next day, Jerome Powell at the Fed confirmed his willingness to ease and let the market know he stands ready to cut rates multiple times over the next year.

That — plus a downed US drone patrolling the Iran border — poured gasoline on gold, which spiked as high as $1,410/oz, finally breaking free of the $1,350 ceiling that had blocked its advance for years.

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It's make or break time in the markets cautions Sven Henrick, technical analyst and lead market strategist for Northman Trader.

His weekly flurry of trendline charts warn that the major indexes have been compressing in rising wedges that increasingly point to a binary outcome: either a massive new leg up that will result in the market making new all time highs, or a bad breadown that could waterfall into a 2008-style correction.

His reams of data increasingly suggest that today's global elevated asset prices are in no way justified by the fundamentals of the underlying world economies. And that someday — perhaps quite soon — a reckoning long overdue will occur.

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A quick and informative video on how to choose the right Fiskars splitting axe for your size and strength. Bigger is not always better.  Happy chopping.

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• More California cops and firefighters are paying for their pensions. Is it too late?
• Reports: Growing number of $100,000-plus public pensions in Illinois cost taxpayers
• India considers IL&FS sale among options to end debt crunch
• Italy's debt costs rise further at auction
• Australians face $700b wealth wipe-out as debt levels rated riskiest in the world: Morgan Stanley
• Treasury Sees 2018 Borrowing Needs Surging to $1.34 Trillion
• UK budget doesn't alter view of high public debt: Moody's
• Whopping 62 percent of jobs don't support middle-class life after accounting for cost of living
• Debt Alarm Ringing
• Treasury Sees 2018 Borrowing Needs Surging to $1.34 Trillion

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• My advice after a year without tech: rewild yourself
• “Find your passion” is bad advice, say Yale and Stanford psychologists
• Combining Antibiotis May Stave Off Future Superbugs
• Precious Metals Price Outlook: Buy Now
• As The Currency Reset Begins – Get Gold As It Is “Where The Whole World Is Heading”
• The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber
• Why Millennials Should Invest In Agriculture
• The Nature Conservancy: 2018 Photo Contest Winners

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This week Doug Noland joins the podcast to discuss what he refers to as the "granddaddy of all bubbles".

He certainly shares our views that prices in nearly every financial asset class have become remarkably distorted due to central bank intervention, first with Greenspan's actions to backstop the markets in the late-1980's, and more recently (and more egregiously) with the combined central banking cartel's massive and sustained liquidity injections in the years following the Great Financial Crisis.

All of which has blown the biggest inter-connected set of asset price bubbles the world has ever seen. Noland foresees tremendous losses as inevitable, as the central banks lose control of the monstrosity they have created:

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"The rates we’ve had in recent years, including right now, are the lowest in history. The book that I co-authored on the history of interest rates traces back to the code of Hammurabi, Babylonian civilization, Greek and Roman civilization, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modern history right up to the present. And I can assure our listeners that the rates that they’re experiencing right now are the lowest in human history."

So says Richard Sylla, Professor Emeritus of Economics and the Former Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is also co-author of the book A History Of Interest Rates. 

We invited Professor Sylla onto the podcast after hearing his work favorably referenced by the panel convened at the recent hearing held by the US Congress titled: “The Federal Reserve’s Impact on Main Street, Retirees and Savings.”

Based on his deep study across the scope of millennia of human history, Sylla warns we are at a dangerous moment in time.

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