Tag Archive: central banks

ECB Assets Hit 35 percent Of Eurozone GDP; Draghi Owns 9.2 percent Of European Corporate Bond Market

As global markets bask in the glow of the Trumpflation recovery, the ECB continues to be busy providing the actual levitating power behind what DB recently dubbed global "helicopter money", by buying copious amounts of bonds on a daily basis (at least until tomorrow when the ECB goes on brief monetization hiatus, and Italy will be on its own for the next two weeks).

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Smart Programs of Capital Destruction

These days everything must be smart. There are smart cities, smart grids, smart policies, smart TVs, smart cars, smart phones, smart watches, smart shoes, and smart glasses. There’s even something called smart underwear. Before long everything around us will be so smart we’ll no longer have to do one critically important thing. We’ll no longer have to think; smart algorithms will think for us. What’s more, the possibilities for not thinking are...

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Gold Price Skyrockets in India after Currency Ban – Part V

India’s Prime Minister announced on 8th November 2016 that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes will no longer be legal tender. Linked are Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, and Part-IV, which provide updates on the rapidly encroaching police state

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US True Money Supply Growth Jumps, Part 1: A Shift in Liabilities

The growth rates of various “Austrian” measures of the US money supply (such as TMS-2 and money AMS) have accelerated significantly in recent months. That is quite surprising, as the Fed hasn’t been engaged in QE for quite some time and year-on-year growth in commercial bank credit has actually slowed down rather than accelerating of late. The only exception to this is mortgage lending growth – at least until recently. Growth in mortgage loans is...

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Good Money and Bad Money

OUZILLY, France – Last week’s U.S. jobs report came in better than expected. Stocks rose to new records. As we laid out recently, a better jobs picture should lead the Fed to raise rates. This should cause canny investors to dump stocks.

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Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: “Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash”

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered "fake news" within the "serious" financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs? In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough "A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary", the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks...

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BIS: The VIX is Dead, The Dollar is the new “Fear Indicator”

Over the past few years, one of the recurring themes on this website has been an ongoing discussion of how the VIX has lost its predictive value as a market risk indicator. This culminated recently with a note by Russel Clark who explained in clear term why the "VIX is now broken." Today, in a fascinating note Hyun Song Shin, head of research at the Bank for International Settlements, the "central banks' central bank" has agreed with the...

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Two Types of Credit — One Leads to Booms and Busts

In the slump of a cycle, businesses that were thriving begin to experience difficulties or go under. They do so not because of firm-specific entrepreneurial errors but rather in tandem with whole sectors of the economy. People who were wealthy yesterday have become poor today. Factories that were busy yesterday are shut down today, and workers are out of jobs.

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You’ll Only Understand Trump and Brexit If You Understand the Failure of Globalization

You can only understand the victory of Donald Trump and Brexit once you understand the failure of globalization… Trump made rejection of globalization a centerpiece of his campaign. In his July 21st acceptance speech as the Republican nominee, he said: Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.

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Dollar Illiquidity Getting Critical: A $10 Trillion Short Which The Fed Does Not Understand

In the latest report from ADM ISI’s strategy team, “Dollar Liquidity Threat is Getting Critical and Fed is M.I.A.”, Paul Mylchreest argues that mainstream economic luminaries (like Carmen Reinhart) are finally acknowledging the evolving crisis due to the dollar shortage outside the US, a topic which even the head researcher at the BIS shone a spotlight on yesterday suggesting that the strength of the dollar, not the VIX is the new "fear...

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We’re All Hedge Funds Now – Central Banks Become World’s Biggest Stock Speculators

At first, the idea of central banks intervening in the equity markets was probably seen even by its fans as a temporary measure. But that’s not how government power grabs work. Control once acquired is hard for politicians and their bureaucrats to give up. Which means recent events are completely predictable.

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Former Treasury Secretary Summers Calls For End Of Fed Independence

At an event in Davos, Switzerland earlier today, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, argued that Central Bank independence from national governments should be scrapped in favor of a coordinated effort between politicians, central bankers and treasury to engineer inflation. Seems reasonable, right?...what could possibly go wrong?

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Jim Grant Puzzled by the actions of the SNB

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of a crash in sovereign debt, is puzzled over the actions of the Swiss National Bank and bets on gold.

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Cashless Society – Is The War On Cash Set To Benefit Gold?

Cash is the new “barbarous relic” according to many central banks, regulators, and some economists and there is a strong, concerted push for the ‘cashless society’. Developments in recent days and weeks have highlighted the risks posed by the war on cash and the cashless society.

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Financial Repression Is Now “In Play”

A FALLING MARKET CANNOT BE ALLOWED – at any cost! The Central Bankers have clearly painted themselves into a corner as a result of their self-inflicted, extended period of “cheap money”. Their policies have fostered malinvestment, excessive leverage and a speculative casino approach to investments. Investors forced to take on excess risk for yield and scalp speculative investment returns, must operate in an unstable financial environment ripe for...

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The ECB Made A Mistake During Its Daily Bond Purchases

Something unexpected happened when the ECB released its latest bond purchase data at during its scheduled release time on Monday: in addition to the purchase of at least 20 separate corporate bonds under the bank's CSPP bond buying program during the week ended October 14, amounting to a total of €1.84 billion, which lifted the number of securities held by the central bank to 660, bringing the total to amount of its holdings to €33.8 billion, or...

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Why Krugman, Roubini, Rogoff And Buffett Hate Gold

A couple of weeks ago an article appeared on Bitcoin Magazine entitled ‘Some economists really hate bitcoin’. I read it with a sigh of nostalgia. As someone who has been writing about gold for a few years, I am used to reading similar criticisms as those bitcoin receives from mainstream economists, about gold.

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Is Someone Trying To Buy The Swiss National Bank?

By now it is well-known that as we profiled previously, one of the most ravenous buyers of US stocks in recent years, has been a central bank: the Swiss National Bank... However, it is far less known that not only is the Swiss National Bank also a publicly traded stock, but is also one of the best performing stocks in the world this year.

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Will The ECB Buy Stocks?

Debate about the ECB’s stimulus options have continued to rage, with an equity purchase plan mentioned as a possibility. We think the ECB could legally buy ETFs that fit its requirements… but it would be controversial and we question the benefits. An ETF programme could total EUR 200bn, which would not be large compared to the overall QE programme.

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Deutsche Bank Fuels Silver

Keith Weiner's weekly look on Gold. Gold and silver prices, Gold-Silver Price Ratio, Gold basis and co-basis and the dollar price, Silver basis and co-basis and the dollar price.

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