Category: Inflation

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Can Central Banks Keep Control of Interest Rates?

MD: I haven’t posted for some time but this article was too pertinent, silly, and misguided to pass up (revealing total cluelessness … and/or corruption … of our current Medium of Exchange (MOE) process.) The article is from the great see-er of all things money oriented … the Wall Street Journal. This is the link to the article which is likely to go away in a short period of time.

Can Central Banks Keep Control of Interest Rates?

 

MD: As usual, the title itself exposes the total lack of understanding of what money is. As anyone knows who has been paying attention here, interest rates are “not” controlled by anyone or anything in a “proper” MOE process. INTEREST collections are perpetually and immediately made to meet DEFAULTs experienced … and if that is under anyone’s control, it is the trader defaulting.

Inflation-adjusted—or ‘real’—rates remain low, lending support to booming , prices for stocks, property and other assets. But some worry that could vanish sooner than markets realize

MD: Actually, what we’re seeing here is the banks farming operation in action. They’ve loaded up the wagon with energized traders’ expectations and resulting risk taking behavior, and they will soon pull the rug out from under them.

By Jon Sindreu
Dec. 26, 2017 7:47 a.m. ET

Investors are elated by a booming global economy and the promise of central banks to tighten monetary policy only gradually. But a question haunts them: Will interest rates develop a mind of their own?

MD: “Will interest rates develop a mind of their own?” Can a stupider question be posed? Interest “rates” are a function of two things. In the numerator, they are a function of continuously accumulated DEFAULT experience. In the denominator they are a function of what someone chooses that denominator to be.  In a “proper” MOE process, the denominator would be related to cumulative defaults for each money-creating class, according to their actuarial propensity to DEFAULT.

While central banks set short-term rates—the 1.5% rate that the Federal Reserve publishes on its website—economists disagree about how much control they have over long-term borrowing costs. These are gauged by government-bond yields, especially those with returns tied to inflation.

MD: These so-called short-term rates are arbitrarily set by our current system. In general, they are about what their target rate of INFLATION is. They target 2%, have historically delivered 4%, while the proper value of inflation is 0%.

Low inflation-indexed—or “real”—rates push money into risky assets, because investors get little extra purchasing power for holding safer securities. According to a new report by BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager, subdued real rates have been 2017’s main driver of returns in global infrastructure debt and investment-grade corporate debt. They also boost gold and real estate, analysts say, which don’t pay coupons but don’t lose value when inflation rises.

MD: “Subdued real rates?” What more direct evidence could their be of the banks farming operation? Do these so-called “asset managers” just accept this? Or are they actually part of the farming operation themselves?  “Main driver of returns?” In a “proper” money process, supply/demand ratios for each product and service are the main … and only real … driver of returns. If the ratio is high, the return will be low and vice-versa. Money has nothing to do with it because its perpetual supply/demand ratio is 1.000.

Many markets could climb off record highs if real rates rise. But it is hard to forecast, said Kevin Gardiner, global investment strategist at Rothschild Wealth Management, because “nobody knows exactly what sets interest rates.”

MD: “Climb off?” … don’t they mean “fall off?”.  Interest rates in the current process only benefit the money changers. With their special privilege, a 1% increase in interest rates yields them a 10% increase in return. In a proper process with perpetual 0% inflation, their privilege becomes no privilege at all … ten times zero is zero (10x 0.0000 = 0.0000)

Real rates have often moved in lockstep with central-bank policy—but not always. In the 1970s, runaway inflation pushed real rates down even as the Fed and other central banks increased nominal rates.

MD: With a “proper” process, the only “policy” is that DEFAULTs are immediately met with INTEREST collections of equal amount. That policy never ever changes. A “proper” process cannot be farmed.

Yields on 10-year inflation-linked Treasurys are currently below 0.5%. Before the 2008 financial crisis, they hovered at around 2%. After the Fed unleashed unseen amounts of monetary stimulus, they hit a record-low of minus 0.87% in 2013. Many analysts and investors see it as a sign that policy makers have strong control over real rates.

MD: With a “proper” process there is no such thing as “monetary stimulus”. Money is in perpetual free supply. That supply is perpetually identical to demand for the money yielding perpetual zero inflation.

“We are overweight global indexed bonds,” said Paul Rayner, head of government bonds at Royal London Asset Management. “We’ve done a lot of analysis on this, and ultimately the biggest driver of government bond yields still remains central bank activity, even for [inflation-linked bonds].”

MD: With a proper MOE process, Rayner is out of work. There is no “lot of analysis” to be done. Their worshiped relation  ((1+”i”)^”n”) … they call it the time value of money … is neutered when “i” is perpetually zero.

With a “proper” MOE process, there are no “government bonds”. Governments are simply no different than any other trader. If they are responsible, they create money without any interest load. If they are deadbeats, they pay interest accordingly. And since governments “never” return the money they create (they just roll their trading promises over … which is default), the interest paid by them perpetually equals the money they wish to create. In other words, they “can’t” create money.

But classic economic theory says that central banks can only influence rates at first, as people ultimately see through their meddling. So unless officials set policy to reflect the economy’s long-term economic trends—which is how the Fed’s Janet Yellen and Mark Carney at the Bank of England have justified keeping rates low in recent years—inflation or deflation will follow.

MD: “Classic economic theory?” You mean “classic economic stupidity!” don’t you? People never see through banks meddling. It is the farming operation and it has worked as long as the governments they institute protect the operation. Again, this is an open realization that banks have an enormously profitable farming operation. A competing “proper” MOE process would make that farming operation experience perpetual crop failure and/or market opposition.

According to this view, rates are so low because people are saving a lot and these saved funds can be lent out and used to invest, a copious supply that pulls down the cost of borrowing.

MD: Stupid is as stupid does … or as stupid has been duped to think. In our current process there is the illusion that savings play a role. And the 10x leverage privilege retail banks enjoy is directly affected by that. But in the final analysis, it is the Rothschilds that control everything through their control of all but two central banks in the entire world … and of the Bank of International Settlements. They do whatever they please. With a competing process they would be out of business almost instantaneously, never to raise their ugly head and influence again … ever!

Some money managers and analysts now warn that the tide is about to shift, whether central banks keep policy easy or not. By looking at the share of the population aged between 35 and 64—when people save the most—research firm Gavekal predicts real rates will soon rise as people retire and spend their life savings, eroding gains in stock markets.

MD: Boy … this guy is deluded beyond repair I think. The Rothschilds are in total control. The theoretical mechanisms the writer thinks are at work have been propagandized into his head. Yes, a degree in economics is just buying self imposed propaganda. With a proper MOE process, there are no economics … just trading decisions made on a perfectly static level playing field … i.e. buying and selling and producing decisions.

It “could happen tomorrow or 10 years from now, but I’m not counting on the latter,” said Gavekal analyst Will Denyer.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management argues that aging is already starting to push rates higher, meaning that 10-year real yields will be 0.75 percentage point higher over the next 10 years.

Other investors have a different worry: They fear that yields will stay low even if central banks try to tighten policy because they are concerned a recession may be coming. This year, the Fed has nudged up rates three times and yields on long-term government bonds—both nominal and inflation-linked debt—have stayed unchanged or declined, echoing similar issues that then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had in 2005.

MD: Translation: “a recession may be coming” means “harvest time may be coming”. It’s pretty easy to see when it’s time to harvest. You look at how ripe the crop is … i.e. how thoroughly the traders have been sucked in. The farming analogy is near perfect.

Indeed, the yield curve—the yield gap between short and long-term Treasurys—is now at its flattest since 2007, and many investors underscore that, in the past, this has often preceded an economic slowdown in the U.S.

“Unless the evidence is very compelling that’s a false signal, I think the market’s going to be nervous,” said David Riley, head of credit strategy at BlueBay Asset Management, who is now investing more cautiously.

MD: Booga booga … buy gold advises the great see-er.

Still, investors may read too much into what yields say about the economy, said the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of central banks. In new research looking at 18 countries since 1870, the BIS found no clear link between rates and factors like demographics and productivity—it is mostly central-bank policy that matters.

MD: “A consortium of central banks?”…  Rothschield’s holding company you mean?

Does this mean investors can rest easy because rates won’t creep up on them? Not so fast, said Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department at the BIS, because officials may still raise them to contain market optimism. Central banks in Canada, Sweden, Norway and Thailand are thinking along these lines, analysts said.

MD: “Not so fast” says Rothschild’s weather man. We can do anything to the crop we choose to do … when we choose to do it.

If central banks control real rates, then it is inflation that has a life of its own—it isn’t just a reaction to officials deviating from economic trends—and it could explain why central bankers have failed to stoke it for years. So officials might as well raise rates to quash bubbles instead of “fine-tuning inflation so much,” Mr. Borio said.

MD: Anyone who has followed MoneyDelusions analysis of these ridiculous articles has to be holding their sides in pain from laughing too hard.

Still, Isabelle Mateos y Lago, global macro strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute, thinks investors don’t have to worry about this yet.

“The conversation is moving this way, but I don’t think central bankers have a fully articulated view,” she said.

MD: “Central banks don’t have a fully articulated view?” Dream on. They do control the weather of this farming operation you know. And they control the farmers ability to buy seed and tractors and land. But having dropped the obligatory number of names, the write concludes his nonsense for now.

Write to Jon Sindreu at jon.sindreu@wsj.com
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MD: Please do write Jon as he begs … and send him a link to this exposure of his Money Delusion.

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Dollar Cost Averaging (Quora question)

“How can I evaluate returns from a dollar cost averaging (automatic investment) into a leveraged fund (e.g. SSO) over a longer term (10+yrs)?”

(Link to Quora question and answer)

Early in my career I wrote an application for “financial criminals” to move people away from “whole life” insurance to “term” insurance, and investing the premium saved by dollar-cost-averaging into their mutual fund. The “illustrations” I produced for them were dramatic. Basically, the “investment income” goes to you and the mutual fund managers and not to the insurance company.

Well, to do this, the “law” demanded lots of small print. But it also demanded I show the cash flows precisely as if they were done into the mutual fund historically. That meant going back the 30 years (the planning window) and saying “if the next 30 years are exactly the same, this is where you would be”.

But it was really pitching “if you’d done this 30 years ago with our mutual fund, this is where you’d be” … and it was dramatically better than what the whole life scenario delivered (unless you used a poorly performing mutual fund … or had zero inflation).

This was 30+ years ago. Back then you had “whole life” insurance salesmen … with a comfortable annual commission stream. It tipped their cart. These insurance salesmen now call themselves “financial analysts”. Follow the money.

None of this would work if we had a “proper” Medium of Exchange (MOE) process … that “guaranteed” zero inflation … all the time and everywhere. If we had that, you could put your surplus money under a rock and do better than either alternative.

Leveraging doesn’t work with zero inflation (i.e. (1+i)^n is always “1.000” for all “n” when “i” is perpetually zero). So don’t expect a “proper” MOE process to be adopted any time soon. It puts the money changers and the governments they institute out of business.

(see http://MoneyDelusions.com (http://MoneyDelusions.com))

Todd Marshall
Plantersville, TX

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Venezuela’s currency crumbles

Venezuela’s currency crumbles at dizzying speed

© AFP/File / by Alexander MARTINEZ | In one year, Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, has lost 94 percent of its value

MD: Currencies cannot and do not crumble under a “proper” MOE process. Let’s see what delusion this writer is under as he blindly leads the blind.

CARACAS (AFP) – Venezuela’s money, the bolivar, is sinking faster and faster under an intensifying political and economic crisis that has left citizens destitute and increasingly desperate.

MD: You can be sure it has already sunk. People in Venezuela are already getting what they need through barter and theft. Money can’t be involved at all at this point.

Its depreciation accelerated this week, after a disputed vote electing an all-powerful “Constituent Assembly” filled with allies of President Nicolas Maduro, which the opposition and dozens of countries have called illegitimate.

MD: Democracy with more than 50 people involved doesn’t work. The people are not involved. And Maduro is working in a democracy containing less than 50 people, you can be sure. But those 50 people are really endangered now by the masses. Soon, Maduro will be standing alone … as he gets out of Dodge himself. And then the people will sort this all out for themselves in small groups … of 50 people or less.

On Thursday alone, the bolivar slumped nearly 15 percent on the black market, to be worth 17,000 to one US dollar.

In a year, the currency has lost 94 percent.

The decline has been dizzying — yet largely ignored by the government, which uses an official rate fixed weekly that is currently 2,870 to the dollar.

MD: Remember when our USA government used an official rate for the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold. The real world knew for some time it was really above $70. They only delude themselves. France wasn’t deluded.

Ordinary Venezuelans, however, refer only to the black market rate they have access to, which they call the “dolar negro,” or “black dollar.”

“Every time the black dollar goes up, you’re poorer,” resignedly said Juan Zabala, an executive in a reinsurance business in Caracas.

– Salaries decimated –

His salary is 800,000 bolivares per month. On Thursday, that was worth $47 at the parallel rate. A year ago, it was $200.

MD: Yet he still goes to work? I think I would be looking for someone besides my employer to trade with long before this. I’d walk out into the country side and offer my services to help defend some farmer and harvest his crop.

The inexorable dive of the money was one of the most-discussed signs of the “uncertainty” created by the appointment of the Constituent Assembly, which starts work Friday.

As a result, those Venezuelans who are able to are hoarding dollars.

MD: What are they going to think when the USA, suffering from the same delusions as Venezuela, has their dollars go up in smoke.

“People are protecting the little they have left,” an economics expert, Asdrubal Oliveros of the Ecoanalitica firm, told AFP.

MD: How are they protecting it? How can they protect it? They should apply everything they have to becoming more skillful traders … traders who don’t use money. It’s too much to hope for them to institute a “proper” MOE process at this point. Maybe after the reset, one or more of the small groups will see the light and implement a proper MOE process for their own use … and that “will” spread.

But Zabala — who is considered comparatively well-off — and other Venezuelans struggling with their evaporating money said they now spent all they earned on food. A kilo (two pounds) of rice, for instance, cost 17,000 bolivares.

MD: Better go make a relation with a farmer. Help him with his crop … and in protecting his property … in exchange for food.

The crisis biting into Venezuela since 2014 came from a slide in the global prices for oil — exports of which account for 96 percent of its revenues.

MD: It came from an attack by USA money changers. They bought debt for pennies on the dollar. Now they’re using the power of the USA to turn those pennies back into dollars.

The government has sought to monopolize dollars in the country through strict currency controls that have been in place for the past 14 years. Access to them have become restricted for the private sector, with the consequence that food, medicines and basic items — all imported — have become scarce.

MD: Institute a proper MOE process to compete with the others and you are the guaranteed winner.

According to the International Monetary Fund, inflation in Venezuela is expected to soar above 700 percent this year.

MD: That’s meaningless. At 700% or 1500 % or anything close makes money a fiction. They are paying people with nothing. The people are trading their HULs (Hours of Unskilled Labor) to the employers for nothing. They would be better off taking that time and setting up barter trading agreements in their own neighborhoods.

In June, Maduro tried to clamp down on the black market trade in dollars through auctions of greenbacks at the weekly fixed rate, known as Dicom. There is also another official rate, of 10 bolivars per dollar, reserved for food and medicine imports.

MD: Some clueless economist recommended this. There is only one thing that can fix Venezuela. Institute a proper MOE process to compete with international bankers, and release “all” government employees. The resulting chaos with be less devastating that taking these nonsensical steps. The people will work it all out themselves. They will slowly re-institute governments democratically (i.e. with less than 50 people involved).

“Things are going up in price faster than salaries,” noted Zabala, who spends 10 percent of his income on diabetes treatment, when he can.

MD: When you have inflation this is always the case. When inflation is guaranteed to be zero, salaries and prices are in perpetual lock step. They don’t change. Salaries are paid in units of HULs. The skill factor (the number of equivalent HULs a person trades for … on average about 3.5x in the USA … thus making about $50,000 per year) is also constant … unless their skill changes.

– ‘No limit’ –

Maduro has vowed that a new constitution the Constituent Assembly is tasked with writing will wean Venezuela off its oil dependency and restart industry, which is operating at only 30 percent of capacity.

MD: It needs to wean itself off the money changers. If oil is what you have to trade, trade it?

But the president, who links the “black dollar” with an “economic war” allegedly waged by the opposition in collaboration with the US, has not given details on what would be implemented.

On Thursday, Maduro promised “speculators” setting their prices in line with “the terrorist criminal dollar in Miami” would go to jail.

MD: That will change nothing. Institute a proper MOE process and those same speculators die on the vine. Unfortunately for Maduro, so does government. But it “is” the fix to the problem for the people.

For the past four months, Maduro has been the target of protests which have been forcefully confronted by security units, resulting in a toll of more than 125 deaths.

 MD: Ultimately, they weren’t able to control the French revolution. This is at the same stage as that was. The security units will fear for their own lives. They won’t have time to secure Maduro.

The opposition says the new Constituent Assembly is an effort to create a “dictatorship” along the lines of Communist Cuba.

MD: So stop it. Don’t pay taxes to it. Find a way to do without government entirely. It will just blow itself up again and again and again.

Against that backdrop of tensions, “there is no limit on how far the black dollar can go,” according to Ecoanalitica.

But a director of the firm, Henkel Garcia said he believed the current black market rate “didn’t make sense” and he noted that in the past currency declines weren’t linear.

Oliveros said increased printing of bolivares by the government was partly the reason for the black dollar’s rise.

MD: Partly? It’s the only thing!

“When you inject bolivares into the market, that means that companies, individuals go looking for dollars, which are scarce,” he said, estimating that the shortfall of dollars this year was some $11 billion.

MD: It’s not about scarcity. It’s about being static. If your exchange media changes, you must make it stop doing that. That media should “never” be scarce. It must always be in free supply. But defaults must be immediately mitigated by interest collections of like amount.

The horizon is darkened further with big debt repayments Venezuela has to make, for instance $3.4 billion the state oil company PDVSA has to reimburse in October. That debt is denominated in dollars.

MD: Reimburse to whom? Declare bankruptcy. Fold your tent. Then shoot the bill collectors when they come after you. It’s called a reset.

by Alexander MARTINEZ

© 2017 AFP