Opinion

Exposed

By on • ( 12 Comments )

While this weekend’s headlines are dominated by who got exposed to and infected by Coronavirus from the President on down I want to make sure other key news items are not lost in the shuffle, specifically those that expose a system that has self corrupted itself and is desperately trying to keep the balls in the air while causing ever more long lasting damage to our global economy.

Let’s face it: This week’s market action was dominated by dozens of stimulus headlines. Stimulus progress and markets rip higher, stimulus disagreements and markets dropped lower exposing markets again to be a toy thing of the liquidity game.

Will they or won’t they is the question on everyone’s mind and many bets are placed that they will, for likely they must as the jobs growth picture is slowing dramatically from the summer sugar recovery high and keeping markets and consumer confidence high into the election is a political imperative.

And don’t think for a second that they are not political imperatives. Market levels are as much a national security imperative as is having a strong military. For the last few years Larry Kudlow’s curiously timed TV appearances have become a fodder of Twitter jokes and yours truly has been at the forefront on Twitter of mocking the ever so obvious attempts to manipulate markets higher at every corner and opportunity.

Oh you’re just a conspiracist. No, I just try to cut to the truth and reality of markets.

And sometimes that truth slips out:

“When we needed markets to go up”.

And there it is. Markets going up exposed as a necessity for political purposes.

And cue the drum roll:

And don’t think it’s just the current administration that is playing these games.
What? You think it’s an accident that on Friday when futures were down hard that Nancy Pelosi came out with this headline 5 minutes after market open immediately putting a floor under the market:

Sometimes it’s hard to avoid getting the impression that the 2 parties are not in fact one in the same putting on a show of choice. They both are living off a market structure they can’t ill afford to lose in trajectory. As George Carlin once opined: “You don’t have a choice. You have owners. It’s a big club”.

Do you really think it’s an accident that the only people placed in charge of the country’s monetary policies are doves? People of the perma intervention kind. It is after all the same Congress comprised of these very two parties that approves all the nominations. Bernanke was a dove, Yellen was a dove, Powell now the perma-dove with interest rates at zero forever and ever amen.

There is no diversity of opinion, there’s no diversity of thinking, and critical viewpoints are either not considered or outright dismissed and mocked.

Indeed central bank career path day appears structured on the notion one must show positive effects of QE on growth whether it’s true or not. Critics don’t get considered for promotion in the ranks apparently:

“A new academic paper casts fresh doubt over the case for QE. Lubos Pastor, an economist at the University of Chicago, and three colleagues have parsed about 50 studies looking at the effect of asset purchases on growth and inflation. They found that researchers working in central banks tend to find a larger impact than academics and conclude that central bankers have incentives (such as possible promotions) to be too kind toward QE. Papers written entirely by central bankers found an impact on growth at the peak of QE that was more than 0.7 percentage points higher than the effect estimated in papers written entirely by academics. The authors then investigate the reason for these discrepancies. They suggest that career concerns may have played a role and provide some evidence that central bank researchers who found the largest impact of QE had a better chance of receiving a promotion.”

You can’t make this stuff up. And it is this very institutional group stink that leads to statements of self delusion such as this:

This from the President of the Minneapolis Fed who, while denying QE’s impact on asset prices, proceeded to dismiss yours truly as a QE conspiracist and “swashbuckling pirate”:

It’s all fun and giggles while markets go up but the dismissive conspiracist voices fell notably silent during the 35% market crash in Q1 2020. Since then we again see the original criticism confirmed as markets rallied to new all time highs despite the largest economic crisis in our lifetimes. Amazing things can happen when you expand your balance sheet by $3 trillion in just 4 months. It’s called market distortion.

And no, that’s not my opinion, it’s a fact confirmed by another nugget of truth that crossed the headlines this week courtesy Dallas Fed president Kaplan:

“My concern about asset purchases is they can distort markets,” Kaplan told the Wall Street Interview in a webcast interview. “It’s a tool that I’d want to be careful with.”

I guess now that we ballooned the balance sheet to a historic $7 trillion and continuing to buy assets at a clip of $120B per month ($1.44 trillion annualized) NOW we want to be careful as it might distort markets.

Give me a break. Markets are already grossly distorted. After all:

There’s little doubt a renewed stimulus package would be beneficial to asset prices again in the short term, no matter the valuations.

The question for all of us is how long the valuation disconnect jig so constantly danced by monetary and government authorities can be maintained in the face of its ever more self evident failure:

While career focused central bankers are keen on promoting the fantasy that QE promotes growth the ever more frantic interventions from cycle to cycle amid ever slowing growth cycles ever more dependent on expanding debt strongly suggest otherwise.

Indeed this week’s frantic market action chasing every single stimulus headline not only again highlights how utterly dependent markets are on artificial stimulus to maintain lofty valuations, but how fragile the underlying economic construct really is.

For after 11 years of nonstop interventions, the building of a $7 trillion Fed balance sheet (and ever growing larger), zero rates, a US debt now exceeding $27 trillion (a $17 trillion increase since just 2007) and heading toward $30 trillion, it takes ever more to support this market valuation construct:

And still, with all this, over half of Americans may retire poor.

I suggest this is not a record of success but of systemic failure that has left the country poorer, and long term growth prospects weaker as the forces of deflation and demographics will be with us for years to come. Indeed the monetary and government cheerleaders of ever higher asset prices find their narratives confronted with a brutal long term reality:

“If you’re worried about the short-term economic outlook, I have bad news: the long-term outlook is worse. That’s what emerges from the latest long-term budget outlook released by the Congressional Budget Office last week. It contained this sobering number: the agency expects annual economic growth to average just 1.6% over the next three decades—down by about a quarter of a point from its forecast a year ago—and just 1.5% by the 2040s. The U.S. hasn’t had trend growth that low since the 1930s.”

I submit that to approach this structural reality with record indebtedness and the highest market valuations in history is a math equation that does not solve itself with a positive outcome.

But for now the rallying cry is for more stimulus again:

Where is the rallying cry for structural solutions? It doesn’t exist. Instead the rallying cry is to cheerlead markets higher at every opportunity, to convince of policy success when there isn’t any, to maintain confidence at all cost. Wall Street wants more Fed stimulus. The Fed wants more fiscal stimulus. Everybody wants more and more so not to risk the great unwind that is staring us all in the face.

We can’t know when and how the unwind will present itself, but at least we know when Larry Kudlow will go on TV. “When we need markets to go up”.

Looks like we will see Larry on TV a lot more, especially if there’s no stimulus deal. But hey, maybe they’ll get one done after all for without there is nothing but hope for another Fed bailout following the December Fed meeting:

Stimulus. Fed injections. No solutions.

For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.

All content is provided as information only and should not be taken as investment or trading advice. Any investments, trades, and/or speculations made in light of the ideas, opinions, and/or forecasts, expressed or implied herein, are committed at your own risk, financial or otherwise. For further details please refer to the disclaimer.

Categories: Opinion

12 replies »

  1. Careful with that axe Eugene…

    Yes, you are right, and the stink keeps getting worse. I can see no solution to the systemic problems without a major reset (economic or societal collapse / revolution / reinvention of economic and financial systems). The present systems seem incapable of changing sufficiently and have shown very little inclination to do so. How has it come to this? Probably the vesting of power in institutions whose primary goal is their own enrichment and the status quo fostering that. If they have an iota of perception and wisdom they know it eventually crashes down but they probably don’t care.

    I berate my mother for her profligate unneccesary use of aluminium foil and say she’s destroying the planet, her response: “I don’t care I won’t be here”, she’s 87 years old. I have a dilemma.

    ….AAAAARRRGGH

    Reply

    • Significant, I would say. Frodo’s Solution was written over a decade ago:
      https://www.transitionblackisle.org/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=10
      premised on peak oil breaking the prevailing economic system. That didn’t happen but the fundamental fragility persists and that solution remains appropriate. Two core takeaways: we must learn to think as a species; we must change and become something different from that which has made us successful as a species throughout our evolution. It’s that or humans are probably history.

      I don’t think that was the answer you asked for Brian, it is the bigger answer. The smaller answer more appropriate to your question: there probably are none while present structures persist, break them and see what happens. But ultimately that’s of little matter; be there 1 million or 10 billion humans change we must.

      Reply

    • A shift away from the short sighted political system that locks policy makers into the trap of trying to secure short term gains at the expense of long term growth. With an eye on the “next” election cycle which is always just around the corner, pandering to those who can make financial donations to increase the likelihood of a politicians success in the next round locks all of society in a downward spiral which does nothing but accentuate social divisions based on wealth. Wealth wants nothing more than more wealth and thus a perpetual moral hazard is created. The way to save capitalism is by having a “socialist” political system in the sense that, 1) slam shut the revolving door between public and private sector, 2) make clear from go that if one wants to get into politics their income levels will forever be capped and tied to a certain level of average national income, and 3) make their job security incentive based so that if they dont raise the living standards of the bottom tranches of society they will forfeit eligibility to even run again for public office. 4) Actually punish corruption and dont reward it. The only way to run free markets is to keep the politicians on a leach, a very very short one. Those who truly want to serve and contribute wont mind. Just some have baked thoughts as to how to save capitalism.

      Reply

  3. Trade the market you’re in, not the market that should exist. Invest in your ability to dance between two realities.

    Reply

  4. It’s over Sven. The money spigot was turned off last March. The Fed and Central bankers just threw in some more bucket fulls of cash. The reservoir from the money flow is slowly soaking into the ground. Once empty, the sun will bake it hard and dry. Wait for it…………the next slow grind down is already in play. As an aside, we are not in a second wave of Covid-19 yet. We never reached full suppression from the first wave. They locked everything down preventing the virus form continuing to spread. As we all get back to work and school the first wave will continue spreading even faster than last spring because we have given the virus time to mutate into a stronger more contagious and virulent strain. Nearly everyone on this planet will get this virus….there is no stopping it. We all just have to live with it. Immunity with this virus wears off over time so there will be no successful vaccine…….ever…….for this virus.

    Reply

  5. Sven his political bias stops him from understanding the monetary system. Look at the ever lower inflation, the FED does not stimulate.

    Reply

  6. Once again, you’ve addressed, through thorough, accurate research, the undeniable facts, Sven. The power, greed and pervasive dishonesty of the powers that be accelerates. I am deeply sad for our Country.

    Reply

  7. Beware market volatility ahead:

    Stimulus passes, retest of 3588?
    Vaccine “announced”, retest of 3588?
    2nd wave with shut-downs, restest of 3,000?
    Election chaos, retest of 3,000?
    Mix the match the above four events and get 2,850 to 3,600 range possible???

    Point being, we are all gamblers for at least the next 3 to 6 months. This is not “investing”, yet the Fed has left us no other choice for yield. And with the top 1% owning nine-times (900%) more stocks than the bottom 90%, it really is a game of “can the super rich keep the balls in the air long enough to cash out before the next market reset???”. At some point, we will all run out of luck…

    Reply

  8. According to the website Chapwood Index, published by a private investment advisory firm that has no connection to the u.S. government, the actual U.S. inflation rate in 50 American cities is between 8% and 13%, depending on which city you live in. Chapwood bases this conclusion on its biannual surveys of what 4,000 of its subscribers pay for 500 goods and services. Full disclosure: I am not an investor, employee, or subscriber to Chapwood Investments company. However, I believe that their survey of the U.S. inflation rate is more accurate than the Federal government’s, and goes further to explain the increasing poverty of many Americans and our slow rate of economic growth.

    Reply

  9. Sven Great work again all on point! But we are traders and can only follow the markets as to tells that give incite. Every thing is distorted big time from the Fed and are New herd of day traders that cause over shoots on every story stock. We did have are old herd BTFD and there still in the game, just like to days gap SPY above the 50dma SPY all on news feed of Trump & new bill $ we open then ISM hit wire and Herd jumped as shorts covered. 338.40 was 1 target then 339 shpu;d follow 2 & 3 would be 340 as a big call build. HFT Army’s will run Herd to price as they run this like a ATM just pulling $ out non stop every day on news feeds just running set programs to builds on $. I do what to say you are one of the smartest people out there telling the truth on Game! Thank you for you hard work and you wife is a rock star on charts! Could you be so kind and unblock me on Twitter or ask you staff too?

    Reply

Comment:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.