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- Post #11,281
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- Feb 9, 2023 1:21pm Feb 9, 2023 1:21pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
- Post #11,282
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- Feb 9, 2023 3:48pm Feb 9, 2023 3:48pm
Hello Benny,
Last week I placed some trades that went bad, so my account was blocked so I opened an account for my daughter and my wife. I just wanted to keep trading, so here are the reports. I am glad that I recovered, never thought it was possible.
Have a wonderful day
Last week I placed some trades that went bad, so my account was blocked so I opened an account for my daughter and my wife. I just wanted to keep trading, so here are the reports. I am glad that I recovered, never thought it was possible.
Have a wonderful day
- Post #11,283
- Quote
- Feb 9, 2023 4:23pm Feb 9, 2023 4:23pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
DislikedHello Benny, Last week I placed some trades that went bad, so my account was blocked so I opened an account for my daughter and my wife. I just wanted to keep trading, so here are the reports. I am glad that I recovered, never thought it was possible. Have a wonderful day {image} {image} {image}Ignored
Good Work That Is How You Learn Using A Demo Account. I am telling you very truthfully you really have skills. We have spend many many hours on the telephone as we both live in the same province and I am now convinced we can use social media and podcasts and modern technology to reach out and teach many traders who really have a need for a one on one teaching session.
We could do regular Zoom Meeting once every two days during the week and probably one on the weekend.
We both know things that few Forex traders in the world know which is why our corporation is called Aviel Forex Learning Edge Corporation.
Our website is located at WWW.AVIELFOREXLEARNINGEDGE.COM
Great work Thanks for making it fun for me and also helping me to become a better Forex trader and teacher as well !!!
- Post #11,284
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- Edited 6:35pm Feb 9, 2023 5:57pm | Edited 6:35pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
https://mail.proton.me/u/1/inbox/aV6...lE7e13MYtIpw==
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https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...a-36214c85fe2c
Is Japan Willing to Cut Its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?
Matthew Ehret
Feb 9
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...b-995aac444fbe
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...e-01771694e402
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...5-b26b60cc0d00
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...4-956a5a453d45
By Cynthia Chung
In case you haven’t been able to hear under all the media thunder of doomsday prophesying by so-called “experts” on China’s future economic performance (which has been going on for close to a decade and is more akin to wishful thinking than economic analysis), Japan’s economy does not require a prophet or crystal ball to tell you what lies ahead in its very near future: that is, that Japan has become the ticking time bomb for the world economy.
Through A Glass Darkly
On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.
By Cynthia Chung
According to NIKKEI Asia, in an October report, Japan’s “yen weakened past 150 against the dollar reaching a new 32-year low as the policy gap widens between the Bank of Japan and the U.S. Federal Reserve…The Fed has repeatedly raised interest rates to tackle inflation, while the Bank of Japan maintains its ultraloose monetary policy to support the economy.
The Fed’s hawkish monetary policy, along with persistent inflation expectations, has pushed the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield up to 4%. The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, is continuing to hold the 10-year Japanese government bond yield near zero. The Japanese central bank conducted a bond-buying operation for the second straight day to keep the yield within its implicit range of -0.25% to 0.25%.
The yield gap is prompting investors to invest in dollars rather than yen, exerting strong downward pressure on the Japanese currency.” [emphasis added]
In response to this the Bank of Japan (BOJ) decided to maintain its “ultra loose monetary policy” as BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda “highlighted downside risks to the economy and indicated his willingness to accept a weaker yen.” By mid-November it was reported that the Japanese economy shrank for the first time in four quarters as inflation and the weak yen hit the country. “Japan has a history of having suffered from extreme yen strength,” Kuroda added, suggesting that excessive weakness is easier to bear than a too-muscular currency.
By mid-November, NIKKEI Asia reported “Bank of Japan’s ultreasy policy under pressure as inflation hits 40-year high,” with food prices increasing by 3.6% on the year in October, well above the 2% target. Governor of the BOJ, Kuroda responded “The bank will continue with monetary easing, aiming to firmly support Japan’s economy and thereby achieve the price stability target of 2% in a sustainable and stable manner, accompanied by wage increases.”
By mid-January Japan had reported a record low in annual trade deficit of $155 billion USD for 2022.
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...6-b9cd6213d6ba
This is not a sudden outcome for Japan’s economy but rather has been a slow burn over a 12 year period. Alex Krainer writes: “Over the ensuing 12 years and several rounds of ever greater QE [quantitative easing], the imbalances have only worsened and in February last year, the BOJ was forced to go full Mario Draghi, all-that-it-takes, committing to buy unlimited amounts of JGB’s [Japanese Government Bonds]. At the same time however, the BOJ capped the interest rates on 10-year JGBs at 0.25% to avoid inflating the domestic borrowing costs…Well, if you conjure unlimited amounts of currency to monetize runaway government debt, and you keep the interest rates suppressed below market levels, you are certain to blow up the currency.”
Not unrelated to this unfolding of Japan’s economy was the meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Tokyo, Japan for their 50th anniversary this past November.
For those who are unaware, the Trilateral Commission was founded in the wake of the Watergate and oil crisis of 1973. It was formed under the pretense of addressing the “crisis of democracy” and calling for a reshaping of political systems in order to form a more “stable” international order and “cooperative” relations among regions.
Alex Krainer writes:
“The commission was co-founded in July of 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a group of American, European and Japanese bankers, public officials and academics including Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. It was set up to foster close cooperation among nations that constituted the three-block architecture of today’s western empire. That ‘close cooperation’ was intended as the very foundation of the empire’s ‘three block agenda,’ as formulated by the stewards of the undead British Empire.”
Its formation would be organized by Britain’s hand in America, the Council on Foreign Relations, (aka: the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown).
Project Democracy would originate out of a Trilateral Commission meeting on May 31st, 1975 in Kyoto Japan, where the Trilateral Commission’s “Task Force on the Govern-ability of Democracies” findings were delivered. The project was overseen by Trilateral Commission Director Zbigniew Brzezinski and its members James Schlesinger (former CIA Director) and Samuel P. Huntington.
It would mark the beginning of the end, introducing the policy, or more aptly “ideology”, for the need to instigate a “controlled disintegration of society.”
However, it appears certain participants of this Trilateral Commission are starting to catch on that this alliance between the United States, Western Europe and Japan for the restructuring of regions (à la League of Nations) is not what they so naively thought it would be, that is, that it would not be just about the disintegration of competing economies but would include their very own.
In the end, all would be expected to bend the knee in subservience to the head of a new world empire. As one of the attendees of this latest Trilateral meeting joked “some…say that all the significant events in the world have been predetermined by the Trilateral Commission,” he said to laughter from the veteran attendees, however, “we don’t know who’s in, what they are saying!”
Interestingly, three reporters from NIKKEI Asia were invited to observe this 50th anniversary gathering of the Trilateral Commission, the first time that press has been allowed entry into the notoriously secretive meetings. The meeting began with Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, delivering his remarks in a speech titled, “Democracy vs. Autocracy: You are going to see 2022 as an Inflection Point in the Success of Democracy.”
Interestingly, it seems that the Asian delegates weren’t too impressed.
NIKKEI Asia reported: “…the press has been invited to highlight a rift that may be emerging between Asia and the other wings of the organization. ‘We feel that the U.S. policy toward Asia, especially toward China, has been narrow-minded and unyielding. We want the people in the U.S. to recognize the various Asian perspectives,’ said Masahisa Ikeda, an executive committee member of the Trilateral Commission. Ikeda has been named the next director of the Asia Pacific Group [of the Trilateral Commission], and is scheduled to assume the position next spring.
…A new sentiment has now emerged from the Asia Pacific Group: Without proper steering, the U.S.-China rivalry may lead the world into a dangerous confrontation.” [emphasis added]
The U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying while democracy is “sloppy” and “messy,” “the institutions of the democratic process, the political stability of the United States, NATO, the European countries, have held.”
However, there were many attendees who disagreed with Emanuel’s pro-U.S., pro-NATO, anti-China stance. “What is the ambassador saying?” a former Japanese official said on background. “We must engage China. If we force countries to choose sides, the Southeast Asian nations will choose China. The key is to not force them to choose,” he said.
“I feel very much embarrassed and disappointed to see the complete void of Chinese participation in this meeting,” said a former Japanese financial official. A veteran member from the Philippines agreed, saying there is no point talking about Asia without the participation of the region’s largest country and expressed concern about dividing the world into two camps. “When two elephants fight, the ants get trampled. And we’re feeling it. When two elephants fight to the death, we will all be dead. And the question is: What for?” [emphasis added]
A South Korean professor told Emanuel in the Q&A period that there are concerns in Asia about the zero-sum thinking in U.S. foreign policy toward China. “We have to develop some deliverable strategy to persuade and engage UN-like-minded countries as well.”
NIKKEI Asia also reported “There were also members who noted how the liberal international order that Washington advocates is different from the original liberal order that was formed after World War II. ‘The original order, led by the U.S., sought a multifaceted extensive international system based on multilateral institutions and free trade among the democratic bloc,’ a South Korean academic said. The Six Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons was one such example of the original order, the academic said, noting that the U.S., China and Russia were all at the table.” [emphasis added]
The NIKKEI Asia report ended with a veteran of the Trilateral Commission – a former Philippine cabinet minister – who stated “Just in the past week, we edged toward a nuclear confrontation,” referring to the missile blast in Poland, that was initially suspected to be a Russian-made missile, but was more likely a Ukrainian air-defense missile that landed in NATO territory ‘by mistake.’ “And we edged toward that because of the type of zero sum games that us elders are playing. Is this what you want for your future? You don’t want a situation in the future where everybody’s edging toward the cliff and being macho about it without realizing that this is a zero-sum game that could wipe out the planet. It is beyond climate change,” the veteran said.
Japan’s “Shock Therapy” as a Response to the “Crisis of Democracy”
The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental body, its members include elected and non-elected officials scattered throughout the world, ironically coming together to discuss how to address the “crisis of democracy” in the most undemocratic process possible. It is an organization meant to uphold the “interests” of its members, regardless of who the people voted into political office.
On Nov 9th, 1978, Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker (Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979-1987) would affirm at a lecture delivered at Warwick University in England: “A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.” However, it would no longer be called by such a name, but rather as a “managed integration.”[1*] This is also the ideology that has shaped Milton Friedman’s “Shock Therapy”. By the time of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, the majority of the government was being run by members of the Trilateral Commission.
In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.
The study explained that the world financial and economic system needed a complete overhaul according to which key sectors such as energy, credit allocation and food would be placed under the direction of a single global administration. The objective of this reorganization would be the replacement of sovereign nation states (using the League of Nations model).
This is precisely and demonstrably what has occurred to Japan’s economy over the past four decades, as showcased in the Princes of Yen documentary based off of Richard Werner’s book by the same title. As Werner demonstrates, Japan’s economy was purposefully put through multiple economic crises throughout the 80s and 90s in order to push through massive structural reform despite their economy having been one of the world’s top performing before foreign tampering.
As Werner insight-fully remarked, the best way to have a crisis is to manufacture a bubble, that way, nobody will stop you.
To understand the incredible significance of this, we will need a quick review of what occurred to Japan’s economy over a 40-year period.
[COLOR=#808080 !important]Open in app or online[/color]
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...a-36214c85fe2c
Is Japan Willing to Cut Its Own Throat in Sacrifice to the U.S. Pivot to Asia?
Matthew Ehret
Feb 9
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...b-995aac444fbe
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...e-01771694e402
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...5-b26b60cc0d00
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...4-956a5a453d45
By Cynthia Chung
In case you haven’t been able to hear under all the media thunder of doomsday prophesying by so-called “experts” on China’s future economic performance (which has been going on for close to a decade and is more akin to wishful thinking than economic analysis), Japan’s economy does not require a prophet or crystal ball to tell you what lies ahead in its very near future: that is, that Japan has become the ticking time bomb for the world economy.
Through A Glass Darkly
On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.
By Cynthia Chung
According to NIKKEI Asia, in an October report, Japan’s “yen weakened past 150 against the dollar reaching a new 32-year low as the policy gap widens between the Bank of Japan and the U.S. Federal Reserve…The Fed has repeatedly raised interest rates to tackle inflation, while the Bank of Japan maintains its ultraloose monetary policy to support the economy.
The Fed’s hawkish monetary policy, along with persistent inflation expectations, has pushed the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield up to 4%. The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, is continuing to hold the 10-year Japanese government bond yield near zero. The Japanese central bank conducted a bond-buying operation for the second straight day to keep the yield within its implicit range of -0.25% to 0.25%.
The yield gap is prompting investors to invest in dollars rather than yen, exerting strong downward pressure on the Japanese currency.” [emphasis added]
In response to this the Bank of Japan (BOJ) decided to maintain its “ultra loose monetary policy” as BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda “highlighted downside risks to the economy and indicated his willingness to accept a weaker yen.” By mid-November it was reported that the Japanese economy shrank for the first time in four quarters as inflation and the weak yen hit the country. “Japan has a history of having suffered from extreme yen strength,” Kuroda added, suggesting that excessive weakness is easier to bear than a too-muscular currency.
By mid-November, NIKKEI Asia reported “Bank of Japan’s ultreasy policy under pressure as inflation hits 40-year high,” with food prices increasing by 3.6% on the year in October, well above the 2% target. Governor of the BOJ, Kuroda responded “The bank will continue with monetary easing, aiming to firmly support Japan’s economy and thereby achieve the price stability target of 2% in a sustainable and stable manner, accompanied by wage increases.”
By mid-January Japan had reported a record low in annual trade deficit of $155 billion USD for 2022.
https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/...6-b9cd6213d6ba
This is not a sudden outcome for Japan’s economy but rather has been a slow burn over a 12 year period. Alex Krainer writes: “Over the ensuing 12 years and several rounds of ever greater QE [quantitative easing], the imbalances have only worsened and in February last year, the BOJ was forced to go full Mario Draghi, all-that-it-takes, committing to buy unlimited amounts of JGB’s [Japanese Government Bonds]. At the same time however, the BOJ capped the interest rates on 10-year JGBs at 0.25% to avoid inflating the domestic borrowing costs…Well, if you conjure unlimited amounts of currency to monetize runaway government debt, and you keep the interest rates suppressed below market levels, you are certain to blow up the currency.”
Not unrelated to this unfolding of Japan’s economy was the meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Tokyo, Japan for their 50th anniversary this past November.
For those who are unaware, the Trilateral Commission was founded in the wake of the Watergate and oil crisis of 1973. It was formed under the pretense of addressing the “crisis of democracy” and calling for a reshaping of political systems in order to form a more “stable” international order and “cooperative” relations among regions.
Alex Krainer writes:
“The commission was co-founded in July of 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a group of American, European and Japanese bankers, public officials and academics including Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker. It was set up to foster close cooperation among nations that constituted the three-block architecture of today’s western empire. That ‘close cooperation’ was intended as the very foundation of the empire’s ‘three block agenda,’ as formulated by the stewards of the undead British Empire.”
Its formation would be organized by Britain’s hand in America, the Council on Foreign Relations, (aka: the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown).
Project Democracy would originate out of a Trilateral Commission meeting on May 31st, 1975 in Kyoto Japan, where the Trilateral Commission’s “Task Force on the Govern-ability of Democracies” findings were delivered. The project was overseen by Trilateral Commission Director Zbigniew Brzezinski and its members James Schlesinger (former CIA Director) and Samuel P. Huntington.
It would mark the beginning of the end, introducing the policy, or more aptly “ideology”, for the need to instigate a “controlled disintegration of society.”
However, it appears certain participants of this Trilateral Commission are starting to catch on that this alliance between the United States, Western Europe and Japan for the restructuring of regions (à la League of Nations) is not what they so naively thought it would be, that is, that it would not be just about the disintegration of competing economies but would include their very own.
In the end, all would be expected to bend the knee in subservience to the head of a new world empire. As one of the attendees of this latest Trilateral meeting joked “some…say that all the significant events in the world have been predetermined by the Trilateral Commission,” he said to laughter from the veteran attendees, however, “we don’t know who’s in, what they are saying!”
Interestingly, three reporters from NIKKEI Asia were invited to observe this 50th anniversary gathering of the Trilateral Commission, the first time that press has been allowed entry into the notoriously secretive meetings. The meeting began with Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, delivering his remarks in a speech titled, “Democracy vs. Autocracy: You are going to see 2022 as an Inflection Point in the Success of Democracy.”
Interestingly, it seems that the Asian delegates weren’t too impressed.
NIKKEI Asia reported: “…the press has been invited to highlight a rift that may be emerging between Asia and the other wings of the organization. ‘We feel that the U.S. policy toward Asia, especially toward China, has been narrow-minded and unyielding. We want the people in the U.S. to recognize the various Asian perspectives,’ said Masahisa Ikeda, an executive committee member of the Trilateral Commission. Ikeda has been named the next director of the Asia Pacific Group [of the Trilateral Commission], and is scheduled to assume the position next spring.
…A new sentiment has now emerged from the Asia Pacific Group: Without proper steering, the U.S.-China rivalry may lead the world into a dangerous confrontation.” [emphasis added]
The U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying while democracy is “sloppy” and “messy,” “the institutions of the democratic process, the political stability of the United States, NATO, the European countries, have held.”
However, there were many attendees who disagreed with Emanuel’s pro-U.S., pro-NATO, anti-China stance. “What is the ambassador saying?” a former Japanese official said on background. “We must engage China. If we force countries to choose sides, the Southeast Asian nations will choose China. The key is to not force them to choose,” he said.
“I feel very much embarrassed and disappointed to see the complete void of Chinese participation in this meeting,” said a former Japanese financial official. A veteran member from the Philippines agreed, saying there is no point talking about Asia without the participation of the region’s largest country and expressed concern about dividing the world into two camps. “When two elephants fight, the ants get trampled. And we’re feeling it. When two elephants fight to the death, we will all be dead. And the question is: What for?” [emphasis added]
A South Korean professor told Emanuel in the Q&A period that there are concerns in Asia about the zero-sum thinking in U.S. foreign policy toward China. “We have to develop some deliverable strategy to persuade and engage UN-like-minded countries as well.”
NIKKEI Asia also reported “There were also members who noted how the liberal international order that Washington advocates is different from the original liberal order that was formed after World War II. ‘The original order, led by the U.S., sought a multifaceted extensive international system based on multilateral institutions and free trade among the democratic bloc,’ a South Korean academic said. The Six Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons was one such example of the original order, the academic said, noting that the U.S., China and Russia were all at the table.” [emphasis added]
The NIKKEI Asia report ended with a veteran of the Trilateral Commission – a former Philippine cabinet minister – who stated “Just in the past week, we edged toward a nuclear confrontation,” referring to the missile blast in Poland, that was initially suspected to be a Russian-made missile, but was more likely a Ukrainian air-defense missile that landed in NATO territory ‘by mistake.’ “And we edged toward that because of the type of zero sum games that us elders are playing. Is this what you want for your future? You don’t want a situation in the future where everybody’s edging toward the cliff and being macho about it without realizing that this is a zero-sum game that could wipe out the planet. It is beyond climate change,” the veteran said.
Japan’s “Shock Therapy” as a Response to the “Crisis of Democracy”
The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental body, its members include elected and non-elected officials scattered throughout the world, ironically coming together to discuss how to address the “crisis of democracy” in the most undemocratic process possible. It is an organization meant to uphold the “interests” of its members, regardless of who the people voted into political office.
On Nov 9th, 1978, Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker (Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979-1987) would affirm at a lecture delivered at Warwick University in England: “A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.” However, it would no longer be called by such a name, but rather as a “managed integration.”[1*] This is also the ideology that has shaped Milton Friedman’s “Shock Therapy”. By the time of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, the majority of the government was being run by members of the Trilateral Commission.
In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.
The study explained that the world financial and economic system needed a complete overhaul according to which key sectors such as energy, credit allocation and food would be placed under the direction of a single global administration. The objective of this reorganization would be the replacement of sovereign nation states (using the League of Nations model).
This is precisely and demonstrably what has occurred to Japan’s economy over the past four decades, as showcased in the Princes of Yen documentary based off of Richard Werner’s book by the same title. As Werner demonstrates, Japan’s economy was purposefully put through multiple economic crises throughout the 80s and 90s in order to push through massive structural reform despite their economy having been one of the world’s top performing before foreign tampering.
As Werner insight-fully remarked, the best way to have a crisis is to manufacture a bubble, that way, nobody will stop you.
To understand the incredible significance of this, we will need a quick review of what occurred to Japan’s economy over a 40-year period.
- Post #11,285
- Quote
- Feb 9, 2023 6:37pm Feb 9, 2023 6:37pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/m...gmrefcode=gata
Money and recession
Feb 9, 2023·Alasdair Macleod
How reliable is the link between money supply growth and the economic outlook?
Monetarists are warning now that money supply has stopped growing and even turned negative, so we are heading for a recession. This article examines the position for US dollar M2 money supply and the prospects for the US economy.
But monetary growth, or the lack of it, doesn’t only affect GDP, but a large element of economic activity which is not included in it, principally financial activities, and the acquisition of assets such as property.
This raises the question: is the downturn in money supply due to financial activities, or the non-financial economy? What is its actual relevance?
In this article, I delve into the relationship between credit and the economy. I examine the process of credit contraction. I conclude that rather than relying solely on the monetarist’s favorite indicator, an understanding of the credit cycle and loan officer surveys are more valuable evidence.
The credit cycle
In the current economic climate, there are increasing fears of recession. Because the definition of a recession is imprecise, I prefer to call it a downturn in economic activity, or if it is significant, a slump. Either way, it begs the question as to what the cause is. Other than the consequence of the withdrawal of bank credit, all other explanations are unsatisfactory.
Before Keynes discredited markets in favor of government intervention, it was commonly understood that intervention was not the solution. Austrian economists had perfected their business cycle theory, which explained the relationship between variations in credit and economic activity. But no matter; Keynes was determined that government intervention was preferred to the boom and bust under free markets. He observed the failure of free markets, failing to understand it was the consequence of credit cycles.
Perhaps the Austrians should have called it a credit cycle, instead of a business cycle. It is credit which drives business activity, and perhaps a wider appreciation of credit cycles would have made Austrian business cycle theory more widely understood. Indeed, the best way to counter the Keynesians who rewrote economics to suit their statist sponsors is to explain the role of bank credit. And with legal money removed from the picture, which is physical gold, all economic transactions are settled in credit — bank notes which are central bank credit and deposit accounts which are the counterpart to credit created by commercial banks. Together, they are erroneously described as money, as in the phrase “money supply”.
The point about real money is that its value was recognized across jurisdictions by everyone. But apart from smaller amounts settling transactions in silver and copper coin, money was always less convenient than money substitutes, which we can define as credit where its value differed from money only in respect of counter-party risk. The amount of this credit or currency rapidly became considerably greater than the money it represented, but so long as its expansion was within credible limits, it retained the value of money as its substitute.
Credibility, and not the quantity was key. Where monetarism originally erred by tying a currency’s purchasing power to its quantity was in dismissing human confidence in the purchasing power of gold, and so long as people believed the link with currency was sound, they would accept it as a substitute, despite changes in its quantity. But how could this be, when mathematics clearly indicate that the expansion of a currency’s quantity would dilute its purchasing power?
The answer is that the tendency for prices to rise as the quantity of a gold substitute is expanded is countered by individuals deciding not to pay the higher prices, preferring to hold onto their money substitutes instead. In other words, they place values on not only goods and services, but on gold as well. But when the link between money and a currency is broken, this confidence is displaced by confidence in the currency. And that is the case today, with the state now telling everyone that its currency is money, and not gold. We are commanded to use it by fiat. Instead of a globally accepted money without counter-party risk, we now must rely on faith and credit in our state as issuer and guardian of its value, and everyone else is equally reliant on their government currencies as well.
Consequently, the current monetary system is inherently unstable in terms of its purchasing power. No longer are changes in its quantity automatically absorbed by its users as if it was a credible gold substitute. The issue has become more complex. We only use our currencies as if they are gold substitutes by way of habit. People hold onto their deposits in the banks and are prepared to accept a gold-like return on their government bonds, which is why with CPI roaring ahead US Treasuries’ ten-year maturities are acceptably priced for a yield of 3.5%. Underlying this backwardation between the Federal Government’s obligations and reality is a legacy of faith, that when the dollar and the entire global currency system abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement, nothing actually changed. Really? The history of the relationship between gold’s purchasing power and the major fiat currencies tells us otherwise.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...67eb947363.png
Eventually, government abuse of their fiat currencies always leads to their demise — that is the lesson of history, and we are currently observing the process. This is the big-picture background against which today’s central banks are tasked with managing the upcoming recession. We know from official monetary policies that central banks rely on the expansion of credit to prevent recessions.
More specifically, they rely on credit at the central bank level to kick-start things. Originally it was pure Keynesian-ism, with deficit spending being the means of stimulation, but that has now evolved into attempts at wider economic management by suppressing interest rates, quantitative easing, and even direct injections of central bank credit into individuals’ bank accounts. And now there are even plans to bypass commercial bank credit by the invention of an entirely new class of central bank liability, central bank digital currencies, not as a replacement for central bank currency but an addition to it.
The unrecognized danger comes from commercial bank credit taking its cue from fiat currencies and not gold. When a central bank increasingly expands its credit, there comes a point when it is realized that the state’s fiat currency is nothing like a gold substitute and is in acute danger of becoming worthless. Economic actors begin to realize that it’s not prices which are rising, but the purchasing power of a currency falling.
In our interconnected world, the dawning of this realization commences in the foreign exchanges, long before domestic users of a currency become aware of its debauchment. But in time, they will learn that their government’s substitute for genuine money is not backed by anything, and nor is all its associated credit.
As stated above, every fiat currency ends this way, and we can safely assume that today’s fiat currencies will equally prove to be ephemeral. In theory, at least, their demise can be gradual, taking decades. The chart above, which shows the dollar has already lost over 98% of its purchasing power since the last tenuous link with gold was abandoned, has been declining for over five decades. And that’s not including the dollar’s 40% devaluation in 1934.
The relevance of this background is that the currency issue is becoming center stage to geopolitics, with the US Government’s abuse of its currency hegemony now being challenged by China and Russia. These powerful nations are not easily destabilized by currency embargoes. And they have attracted the majority of the world’s population away from the fiat dollar regime into a yet-to-be-defined currency future. But all the indications are that the Asian hegemons realize that international trade requires sound currencies, and that they must return to some sort of gold backing.
It is extraordinary that these developments are as yet on no one’s radar in America and her western allies. So far as we are concerned the currency emperor is richly clothed. The reality is not only very different, but obvious to anyone who cares to look with independent eyes.
We are shortly to see a new phase of the proxy war in Ukraine, potentially leading to nuclear brinkmanship. From his statements, President Putin understands the currency question. He has most of the world on his side — which may surprise some readers who are blinded by their own media. In partnership with China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and BRICS, Russia has the backing of 3.8 billion Asians, a billion Africans, and a further billion or so who are attracted by trade opportunities and a willingness to escape from America’s weaponized currency regime. It compares with 1.2 billions in the western alliance — America, NATO, five-eyes, Japan, and various hangers on.
All Putin has to do is reveal plans to incorporate gold into a new Asia-led currency regime, and the dollar will suffer a debilitating flight into commodities. It is the nature of these events that the American public will be the last to wake up to this danger, stubbornly believing that the dollar is money which everyone around the world will always need. But when Asia’s hegemons declare that their interests are served best by backing their currencies with gold and escaping from the west’s manipulative currency schemes, the collapse of our currency illusion could be a speedy process.
Common errors in the monetarist approach
The economic consequences of governments intervening in their economies is a controversial subject. Before Keynes, it was generally understood that government intervention was undesirable. Following Keynes, it became a primary objective. And as described above, intervention has spread from deficit stimulus to increasingly desperate means of expanding central bank credit. Currency and credit expansion has become a one-way ticket, and any sign of it faltering is viewed with horror.
That is why modern monetarists are ringing alarm bells over slowing monetary growth, and in some cases turning negative. In common with the Keynesians, monetarists are inflationists, believing in the state’s management of the economy by regulating the expansion of credit.
At the inaugural Mont Pellerin Society meeting in 1947, the debate turned to how to save liberalism. Some attendees argued that their approach needed to be modified, and on his first trip abroad from America, Milton Friedman, argued “we need to agree on the necessity for a positive approach”. Instead of being a debating forum for the evolution of economic knowledge, in effect these attendees were attempting to enter into political management of outcomes.
According to the record of the meeting:
“Not all meeting attendees agreed such a reformulation was necessary. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was a vocal dissenter, at one point declaring “you’re all socialists!” and storming out of the room. Mises was among a minority contingent who remained uncomfortable with any revision of liberalism that justified an expanded role for the state.”[i]
Freidman was reportedly stunned at Mises’s behavior, but he failed to understand the implications of compromising the fundamental precepts of a science. Mises refused any compromise. He had lived through the Austrian and German inflation, working as an adviser to the Handelskammer (the Vienna Chamber of Commerce), dealing with issues of finance, currency, credit, and tax policy. In his Memoirs, he wrote that his only regret was his willingness to compromise by permitting politics to corrupt his science. He was not about to make that mistake again at Mont Pellerin.
Von Mises had lived through an episode that completely disproved monetarism as promoted by Freidman. In a fiat currency, the concept that managing the quantity of credit would deliver economic outcomes had failed spectacularly in Austria and Germany. Instead of credit expansion by the central bank delivering economic recovery, it led to total economic collapse. And claims by modern observers that the abuse of credit was primarily to fund the state and not engender economic recovery amounts to skating on very thin ice, both factually and intellectually.
The role of commercial bank credit
It is with this important caveat that we must with skepticism regard any supposed link between changes in the quantity of credit and economic outcomes.
Apart from the work of early Austrians, few attempts have been made to understand the role of commercial bank credit in the economy. Bank credit is over 90% of circulating media, yet some mainstream economists even deny the ability of banks to create it out of nothing, let alone understanding the process, exposing their ignorance of this important subject. To complicate matters even further, they fail to understand that when they talk of economic growth measured by GDP, they are actually talking about the expansion of commercial bank credit. Without that, there is no economic “growth”, because GDP is the sum of credit deployed in all GDP transactions.
Furthermore, we must distinguish between economic progress, which surely, is what we really mean when we use the term, “growth”, and the financial record of qualifying transactions. Changes in GDP are not measures of progress, but a summary of changes in credit deployed. It is impossible to measure progress.
However, without an understanding of credit, all monetary analysis is worthless. And now, we face a contraction of bank credit in the world’s reserve currency, as the chart below shows.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...99d597cf7a.png
Since the abandonment of Bretton Woods, the average quarterly change in US M2 was $68 billion up to a year ago, increasing over time. Since then, a serious contraction has set in with M2 appearing to implode. With the currency element still growing, the collapse of M2 is purely down to deposits at the commercial banks, the principal means of their balance sheet funding.
A significant application of money supply is for non-qualifying GDP transactions, principally financial in nature or for the acquisition of non-financial assets, particularly residential and commercial property. The chart below shows how the quantity of credit has changed with respect to one aspect of financial transactions in the US, the application of credit to speculation in listed securities.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...34112db543.png
Since October 2021, margin loans have contracted by $330bn. Virtually all this bank credit is secured by collateral, which in the case of distressed borrowers would have been liquidated. Losses to the lending banks would have been negligible. But to understand the consequences for money supply statistics which principally consist of commercial bank liabilities to their depositors, we must delve into how deposits are created and extinguished.
A bank deposit comes into existence when a loan is made to a customer. It must be the case, because double entry bookkeeping requires there always to be a balancing ledger entry. Having taken out a loan, the bank’s customer will draw down his facility (i.e., his bank deposit) to pay his obligations. In effect, he novates his credit at his bank in favor of other parties. When it is nova-ted to another party with an account at the same bank, then the bank’s overall deposit obligations do not change. But if the deposit obligation is nova-ted to another bank, then the lending bank must replace it with another deposit obligation. In practice, payments between banks occur all the time, so that balancing a bank’s deposit liabilities with its assets is a function of lending surplus deposits or borrowing to make up a deficiency from other banks. This is why wholesale money markets exist. Assuming all the banks in a banking network are continuously solvent, then novations of credit across the system must always balance. Daily excesses and shortfalls only occur in individual banks.
Monetary statistics are a summation of the entire banking system’s deposit liabilities. To understand the effects of transfers between individual banks is therefore unnecessary, so the way to understand how changes in money supply come about is to treat the entire commercial banking system as a single entity.
This permits us to consider the consequences for monetary statistics of the withdrawal of total credit of $330bn from lending to finance the acquisition of listed securities. For simplicity, let us assume that a bank forecloses on its loan by selling the collateral for exactly the value of the loan. Therefore, on its balance sheet, the proceeds of the sale balance the deposit obligation to the customer, and both are written off the balance sheet. The bank no longer has the loan as an asset, the depositor has no deposit obligation from the bank in his favor, and the collateral has been removed. In other words, outstanding bank credit has been extinguished.
Therefore, since US M2 money supply includes this $330bn contraction, we can also conclude that if financial assets continue to fall in value, more money supply will be liquidated. And we can extend this analysis into non-financial lending, which is the engine that creates bank deposits for the wider population.
The same procedure applies. A bank will make a loan for various non-financial purposes, either secured or unsecured by collateral, to businessmen and consumers alike. While their accounts at a bank may not reflect the accounting position (commonly recording a customer’s account as overdrawn with a credit limit instead) in the bank’s books all loans will have balancing entries of deposits in favor of the customers to which they are made. When a loan is extinguished, the balancing entry is as well. If the asset side of an entire banking system contracts, then so will its liabilities. Deposits will be cancelled, and where losses occur, they are written off against shareholders’ funds.
The position of deposits which have been novated to savers who have no matching obligations to their bank is secure, so long as the bank discharges its credit obligations. The origin of their deposits will have been loans to an earlier party, deposit obligations that may have been nova-ted many times. But once nova-ted, they cannot be written off by a bank because they are an obligation to a customer against which the bank has no counterclaim.
If a bank develops a view that it must reduce its risk, then it will either call in or refuse to extend the loans which it deems are most at risk of failure. These actions will affect the supply of credit to the non-financial sector, reflected in a downturn in deposits, and therefore money supply statistics. And when an entire banking cohort takes this view, the withdrawal of credit reflected in money supply statistics results in an economic downturn, commonly referred to as a recession.
It should be noted that a recession does not emanate from businesses turning collectively cautious over trading prospects, but from the contraction of bank credit.
REPO markets are increasingly important
Back in 1979, I got my first consultancy contract with a London-based bank. I observed that imbalances in the consortium bank I worked with were settled daily in the inter bank market. In the absence of retail customers, after participating in syndicated loans and trading in floating rate notes this bank always had surpluses to lend into the inter bank market. The inter bank market is uncollateralised, and the consortium bank controlled its counter party risk by having position limits with all the other banks operating in that market.
In those days, the limits for all but the largest banks were no more than a few million pounds. Moving on to today, the inter bank market still operates this way, but for larger imbalances collateral is required. The Bank of England introduced repurchase agreements (repos) for the gilt market in 1995, and the use of repos, which are collateralized loan agreements, has spread into routine bank liquidity finance, and is used for financing additional security leverage.
According to the European Repo Market Survey of October 2022, in the UK and Europe repos totaled a record €9,680 billion last June: 54.7% was in euros, 15.6% in sterling, and 20.3% in US dollars, with the balance in yen and other currencies. Clearly, since the repo market kicked off in Europe, it has evolved into a major element in banking liquidity. We await with interest to see what happens to these markets as interest rates and repo rates continue to rise, and collateral values fall — as they will surely do, when the Ukraine conflict escalates in the coming weeks.
In the US, repos are also a major means of obtaining liquidity, but there is an additional feature. The Fed offers a reverse repo facility which currently absorbs excess liquidity from the banking system amounting to over $2 trillion. Eligible counter-parties are money market funds, primary dealers, banks, and government-sponsored enterprises. For these institutions, they are in effect operating a deposit account at the Fed.
The reason reverse repos at the Fed have increased is mainly due to the Basel 3’s net stable funding ratio, which penalises banks with large individual deposit liabilities, favoring retail depositors instead. This is why JPMorgan is expanding its global retail funding sources through its Chase brand, while turning away money-market funds.
For the dollar, at least, while these large deposits have been removed from public circulation by being deposited at the Fed, the reverse repo facility is overwhelmingly short-term and should be added back to the M2 statistic. M2 so adjusted is illustrated below.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...956433f48e.png
From this adjustment we learn that since 2010, the quantity of currency and deposits has increased by 175%, and that the downturn in the last year has been more marked than M2 appears to be on an unadjusted basis. In an economy whose GDP transactions totaled an estimated $26 trillion to last December, to have a circulating medium totaling $23.4 trillion is plainly excessive, suggesting that a substantial element of it is funding financial transactions. The Financial Stability Board’s estimate of the US’s shadow banking system in 2021 totaled $20.5 trillion on a narrow measure. Shadow banks do not create credit, merely borrowing to fund for profitable returns.[ii] Therefore, most of their activities are funded by borrowing from commercial banks, matched by deposits as described above.
The future course of M2 money supply will be heavily dependent on the interest rate outlook and how that affects shadow banking activity. There will always be turns to be made in any interest rate environment, but the growth in shadow banking has primarily been a response to declining and ultra-low interest rates. For insurance companies and pension funds, the use of financial leverage to obtain nominal returns is now set to decline.
Put another way, the everything financial bubble which has progressively grown with the financialisation of the US economy is being deflated by a change in the underlying interest rate trend. The consequences for the dollar’s M2 money supply, of which bank deposits are 90.5% of our adjusted M2 in the chart above, will see a continuing decline as shadow banking withers.
This has little to do directly with a downturn in the non-financial economy, which makes up GDP. If we could truly isolate bank credit which applies to GDP, then that portion of it would be relevant insofar as a reduction in the circulating medium is restricting economic activity. But we cannot do this exercise. Perhaps more relevant is to acknowledge that a stagnating or contracting M2 money supply, only so far as it applies to non-financial activities, should be adjusted for a rising level of producer and consumer prices. Producer prices are likely to be the more reliable deflator of the money supply statistic because the CPI has been heavily corrupted over the decades. In the case of the US, that would knock about 6% currently off the unknowable GDP portion of M2.
At a best guess basis, the withdrawal of credit from non-financial business is in its infancy. The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey for January released earlier this week confirmed “tighter standards and weaker demand for commercial and industrial loans to large, middle-market, and small firms over the fourth quarter [of 2022]”. Banks responded to the survey that they anticipated a less favorable economic outlook, a reduced tolerance for risk, and the worsening of industry-specific problems. Clearly, the banking cohort’s appetite for balance sheet expansion into non-financials is turning sour. Banks are also reported to be tightening standards on high-margin credit card lending.
This survey is more defining than money supply statistics, much of which do not relate to GDP spending, because it tells us where the US economy is in the credit cycle. It is a mistake to think that money supply statistics reliably quantify the economic outlook or tell us anything we already know.
[i] The incident was related in an article for the Mont Pellarin Society by Jennifer Burns: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default.../mps_burns.pdf
[ii] See Global Monitoring Report on Non-Bank Financial Intermediation 2022
Copyright 2023 Goldmoney Inc. All rights reserved.
Money and recession
Feb 9, 2023·Alasdair Macleod
How reliable is the link between money supply growth and the economic outlook?
Monetarists are warning now that money supply has stopped growing and even turned negative, so we are heading for a recession. This article examines the position for US dollar M2 money supply and the prospects for the US economy.
But monetary growth, or the lack of it, doesn’t only affect GDP, but a large element of economic activity which is not included in it, principally financial activities, and the acquisition of assets such as property.
This raises the question: is the downturn in money supply due to financial activities, or the non-financial economy? What is its actual relevance?
In this article, I delve into the relationship between credit and the economy. I examine the process of credit contraction. I conclude that rather than relying solely on the monetarist’s favorite indicator, an understanding of the credit cycle and loan officer surveys are more valuable evidence.
The credit cycle
In the current economic climate, there are increasing fears of recession. Because the definition of a recession is imprecise, I prefer to call it a downturn in economic activity, or if it is significant, a slump. Either way, it begs the question as to what the cause is. Other than the consequence of the withdrawal of bank credit, all other explanations are unsatisfactory.
Before Keynes discredited markets in favor of government intervention, it was commonly understood that intervention was not the solution. Austrian economists had perfected their business cycle theory, which explained the relationship between variations in credit and economic activity. But no matter; Keynes was determined that government intervention was preferred to the boom and bust under free markets. He observed the failure of free markets, failing to understand it was the consequence of credit cycles.
Perhaps the Austrians should have called it a credit cycle, instead of a business cycle. It is credit which drives business activity, and perhaps a wider appreciation of credit cycles would have made Austrian business cycle theory more widely understood. Indeed, the best way to counter the Keynesians who rewrote economics to suit their statist sponsors is to explain the role of bank credit. And with legal money removed from the picture, which is physical gold, all economic transactions are settled in credit — bank notes which are central bank credit and deposit accounts which are the counterpart to credit created by commercial banks. Together, they are erroneously described as money, as in the phrase “money supply”.
The point about real money is that its value was recognized across jurisdictions by everyone. But apart from smaller amounts settling transactions in silver and copper coin, money was always less convenient than money substitutes, which we can define as credit where its value differed from money only in respect of counter-party risk. The amount of this credit or currency rapidly became considerably greater than the money it represented, but so long as its expansion was within credible limits, it retained the value of money as its substitute.
Credibility, and not the quantity was key. Where monetarism originally erred by tying a currency’s purchasing power to its quantity was in dismissing human confidence in the purchasing power of gold, and so long as people believed the link with currency was sound, they would accept it as a substitute, despite changes in its quantity. But how could this be, when mathematics clearly indicate that the expansion of a currency’s quantity would dilute its purchasing power?
The answer is that the tendency for prices to rise as the quantity of a gold substitute is expanded is countered by individuals deciding not to pay the higher prices, preferring to hold onto their money substitutes instead. In other words, they place values on not only goods and services, but on gold as well. But when the link between money and a currency is broken, this confidence is displaced by confidence in the currency. And that is the case today, with the state now telling everyone that its currency is money, and not gold. We are commanded to use it by fiat. Instead of a globally accepted money without counter-party risk, we now must rely on faith and credit in our state as issuer and guardian of its value, and everyone else is equally reliant on their government currencies as well.
Consequently, the current monetary system is inherently unstable in terms of its purchasing power. No longer are changes in its quantity automatically absorbed by its users as if it was a credible gold substitute. The issue has become more complex. We only use our currencies as if they are gold substitutes by way of habit. People hold onto their deposits in the banks and are prepared to accept a gold-like return on their government bonds, which is why with CPI roaring ahead US Treasuries’ ten-year maturities are acceptably priced for a yield of 3.5%. Underlying this backwardation between the Federal Government’s obligations and reality is a legacy of faith, that when the dollar and the entire global currency system abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement, nothing actually changed. Really? The history of the relationship between gold’s purchasing power and the major fiat currencies tells us otherwise.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...67eb947363.png
Eventually, government abuse of their fiat currencies always leads to their demise — that is the lesson of history, and we are currently observing the process. This is the big-picture background against which today’s central banks are tasked with managing the upcoming recession. We know from official monetary policies that central banks rely on the expansion of credit to prevent recessions.
More specifically, they rely on credit at the central bank level to kick-start things. Originally it was pure Keynesian-ism, with deficit spending being the means of stimulation, but that has now evolved into attempts at wider economic management by suppressing interest rates, quantitative easing, and even direct injections of central bank credit into individuals’ bank accounts. And now there are even plans to bypass commercial bank credit by the invention of an entirely new class of central bank liability, central bank digital currencies, not as a replacement for central bank currency but an addition to it.
The unrecognized danger comes from commercial bank credit taking its cue from fiat currencies and not gold. When a central bank increasingly expands its credit, there comes a point when it is realized that the state’s fiat currency is nothing like a gold substitute and is in acute danger of becoming worthless. Economic actors begin to realize that it’s not prices which are rising, but the purchasing power of a currency falling.
In our interconnected world, the dawning of this realization commences in the foreign exchanges, long before domestic users of a currency become aware of its debauchment. But in time, they will learn that their government’s substitute for genuine money is not backed by anything, and nor is all its associated credit.
As stated above, every fiat currency ends this way, and we can safely assume that today’s fiat currencies will equally prove to be ephemeral. In theory, at least, their demise can be gradual, taking decades. The chart above, which shows the dollar has already lost over 98% of its purchasing power since the last tenuous link with gold was abandoned, has been declining for over five decades. And that’s not including the dollar’s 40% devaluation in 1934.
The relevance of this background is that the currency issue is becoming center stage to geopolitics, with the US Government’s abuse of its currency hegemony now being challenged by China and Russia. These powerful nations are not easily destabilized by currency embargoes. And they have attracted the majority of the world’s population away from the fiat dollar regime into a yet-to-be-defined currency future. But all the indications are that the Asian hegemons realize that international trade requires sound currencies, and that they must return to some sort of gold backing.
It is extraordinary that these developments are as yet on no one’s radar in America and her western allies. So far as we are concerned the currency emperor is richly clothed. The reality is not only very different, but obvious to anyone who cares to look with independent eyes.
We are shortly to see a new phase of the proxy war in Ukraine, potentially leading to nuclear brinkmanship. From his statements, President Putin understands the currency question. He has most of the world on his side — which may surprise some readers who are blinded by their own media. In partnership with China in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and BRICS, Russia has the backing of 3.8 billion Asians, a billion Africans, and a further billion or so who are attracted by trade opportunities and a willingness to escape from America’s weaponized currency regime. It compares with 1.2 billions in the western alliance — America, NATO, five-eyes, Japan, and various hangers on.
All Putin has to do is reveal plans to incorporate gold into a new Asia-led currency regime, and the dollar will suffer a debilitating flight into commodities. It is the nature of these events that the American public will be the last to wake up to this danger, stubbornly believing that the dollar is money which everyone around the world will always need. But when Asia’s hegemons declare that their interests are served best by backing their currencies with gold and escaping from the west’s manipulative currency schemes, the collapse of our currency illusion could be a speedy process.
Common errors in the monetarist approach
The economic consequences of governments intervening in their economies is a controversial subject. Before Keynes, it was generally understood that government intervention was undesirable. Following Keynes, it became a primary objective. And as described above, intervention has spread from deficit stimulus to increasingly desperate means of expanding central bank credit. Currency and credit expansion has become a one-way ticket, and any sign of it faltering is viewed with horror.
That is why modern monetarists are ringing alarm bells over slowing monetary growth, and in some cases turning negative. In common with the Keynesians, monetarists are inflationists, believing in the state’s management of the economy by regulating the expansion of credit.
At the inaugural Mont Pellerin Society meeting in 1947, the debate turned to how to save liberalism. Some attendees argued that their approach needed to be modified, and on his first trip abroad from America, Milton Friedman, argued “we need to agree on the necessity for a positive approach”. Instead of being a debating forum for the evolution of economic knowledge, in effect these attendees were attempting to enter into political management of outcomes.
According to the record of the meeting:
“Not all meeting attendees agreed such a reformulation was necessary. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was a vocal dissenter, at one point declaring “you’re all socialists!” and storming out of the room. Mises was among a minority contingent who remained uncomfortable with any revision of liberalism that justified an expanded role for the state.”[i]
Freidman was reportedly stunned at Mises’s behavior, but he failed to understand the implications of compromising the fundamental precepts of a science. Mises refused any compromise. He had lived through the Austrian and German inflation, working as an adviser to the Handelskammer (the Vienna Chamber of Commerce), dealing with issues of finance, currency, credit, and tax policy. In his Memoirs, he wrote that his only regret was his willingness to compromise by permitting politics to corrupt his science. He was not about to make that mistake again at Mont Pellerin.
Von Mises had lived through an episode that completely disproved monetarism as promoted by Freidman. In a fiat currency, the concept that managing the quantity of credit would deliver economic outcomes had failed spectacularly in Austria and Germany. Instead of credit expansion by the central bank delivering economic recovery, it led to total economic collapse. And claims by modern observers that the abuse of credit was primarily to fund the state and not engender economic recovery amounts to skating on very thin ice, both factually and intellectually.
The role of commercial bank credit
It is with this important caveat that we must with skepticism regard any supposed link between changes in the quantity of credit and economic outcomes.
Apart from the work of early Austrians, few attempts have been made to understand the role of commercial bank credit in the economy. Bank credit is over 90% of circulating media, yet some mainstream economists even deny the ability of banks to create it out of nothing, let alone understanding the process, exposing their ignorance of this important subject. To complicate matters even further, they fail to understand that when they talk of economic growth measured by GDP, they are actually talking about the expansion of commercial bank credit. Without that, there is no economic “growth”, because GDP is the sum of credit deployed in all GDP transactions.
Furthermore, we must distinguish between economic progress, which surely, is what we really mean when we use the term, “growth”, and the financial record of qualifying transactions. Changes in GDP are not measures of progress, but a summary of changes in credit deployed. It is impossible to measure progress.
However, without an understanding of credit, all monetary analysis is worthless. And now, we face a contraction of bank credit in the world’s reserve currency, as the chart below shows.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...99d597cf7a.png
Since the abandonment of Bretton Woods, the average quarterly change in US M2 was $68 billion up to a year ago, increasing over time. Since then, a serious contraction has set in with M2 appearing to implode. With the currency element still growing, the collapse of M2 is purely down to deposits at the commercial banks, the principal means of their balance sheet funding.
A significant application of money supply is for non-qualifying GDP transactions, principally financial in nature or for the acquisition of non-financial assets, particularly residential and commercial property. The chart below shows how the quantity of credit has changed with respect to one aspect of financial transactions in the US, the application of credit to speculation in listed securities.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...34112db543.png
Since October 2021, margin loans have contracted by $330bn. Virtually all this bank credit is secured by collateral, which in the case of distressed borrowers would have been liquidated. Losses to the lending banks would have been negligible. But to understand the consequences for money supply statistics which principally consist of commercial bank liabilities to their depositors, we must delve into how deposits are created and extinguished.
A bank deposit comes into existence when a loan is made to a customer. It must be the case, because double entry bookkeeping requires there always to be a balancing ledger entry. Having taken out a loan, the bank’s customer will draw down his facility (i.e., his bank deposit) to pay his obligations. In effect, he novates his credit at his bank in favor of other parties. When it is nova-ted to another party with an account at the same bank, then the bank’s overall deposit obligations do not change. But if the deposit obligation is nova-ted to another bank, then the lending bank must replace it with another deposit obligation. In practice, payments between banks occur all the time, so that balancing a bank’s deposit liabilities with its assets is a function of lending surplus deposits or borrowing to make up a deficiency from other banks. This is why wholesale money markets exist. Assuming all the banks in a banking network are continuously solvent, then novations of credit across the system must always balance. Daily excesses and shortfalls only occur in individual banks.
Monetary statistics are a summation of the entire banking system’s deposit liabilities. To understand the effects of transfers between individual banks is therefore unnecessary, so the way to understand how changes in money supply come about is to treat the entire commercial banking system as a single entity.
This permits us to consider the consequences for monetary statistics of the withdrawal of total credit of $330bn from lending to finance the acquisition of listed securities. For simplicity, let us assume that a bank forecloses on its loan by selling the collateral for exactly the value of the loan. Therefore, on its balance sheet, the proceeds of the sale balance the deposit obligation to the customer, and both are written off the balance sheet. The bank no longer has the loan as an asset, the depositor has no deposit obligation from the bank in his favor, and the collateral has been removed. In other words, outstanding bank credit has been extinguished.
Therefore, since US M2 money supply includes this $330bn contraction, we can also conclude that if financial assets continue to fall in value, more money supply will be liquidated. And we can extend this analysis into non-financial lending, which is the engine that creates bank deposits for the wider population.
The same procedure applies. A bank will make a loan for various non-financial purposes, either secured or unsecured by collateral, to businessmen and consumers alike. While their accounts at a bank may not reflect the accounting position (commonly recording a customer’s account as overdrawn with a credit limit instead) in the bank’s books all loans will have balancing entries of deposits in favor of the customers to which they are made. When a loan is extinguished, the balancing entry is as well. If the asset side of an entire banking system contracts, then so will its liabilities. Deposits will be cancelled, and where losses occur, they are written off against shareholders’ funds.
The position of deposits which have been novated to savers who have no matching obligations to their bank is secure, so long as the bank discharges its credit obligations. The origin of their deposits will have been loans to an earlier party, deposit obligations that may have been nova-ted many times. But once nova-ted, they cannot be written off by a bank because they are an obligation to a customer against which the bank has no counterclaim.
If a bank develops a view that it must reduce its risk, then it will either call in or refuse to extend the loans which it deems are most at risk of failure. These actions will affect the supply of credit to the non-financial sector, reflected in a downturn in deposits, and therefore money supply statistics. And when an entire banking cohort takes this view, the withdrawal of credit reflected in money supply statistics results in an economic downturn, commonly referred to as a recession.
It should be noted that a recession does not emanate from businesses turning collectively cautious over trading prospects, but from the contraction of bank credit.
REPO markets are increasingly important
Back in 1979, I got my first consultancy contract with a London-based bank. I observed that imbalances in the consortium bank I worked with were settled daily in the inter bank market. In the absence of retail customers, after participating in syndicated loans and trading in floating rate notes this bank always had surpluses to lend into the inter bank market. The inter bank market is uncollateralised, and the consortium bank controlled its counter party risk by having position limits with all the other banks operating in that market.
In those days, the limits for all but the largest banks were no more than a few million pounds. Moving on to today, the inter bank market still operates this way, but for larger imbalances collateral is required. The Bank of England introduced repurchase agreements (repos) for the gilt market in 1995, and the use of repos, which are collateralized loan agreements, has spread into routine bank liquidity finance, and is used for financing additional security leverage.
According to the European Repo Market Survey of October 2022, in the UK and Europe repos totaled a record €9,680 billion last June: 54.7% was in euros, 15.6% in sterling, and 20.3% in US dollars, with the balance in yen and other currencies. Clearly, since the repo market kicked off in Europe, it has evolved into a major element in banking liquidity. We await with interest to see what happens to these markets as interest rates and repo rates continue to rise, and collateral values fall — as they will surely do, when the Ukraine conflict escalates in the coming weeks.
In the US, repos are also a major means of obtaining liquidity, but there is an additional feature. The Fed offers a reverse repo facility which currently absorbs excess liquidity from the banking system amounting to over $2 trillion. Eligible counter-parties are money market funds, primary dealers, banks, and government-sponsored enterprises. For these institutions, they are in effect operating a deposit account at the Fed.
The reason reverse repos at the Fed have increased is mainly due to the Basel 3’s net stable funding ratio, which penalises banks with large individual deposit liabilities, favoring retail depositors instead. This is why JPMorgan is expanding its global retail funding sources through its Chase brand, while turning away money-market funds.
For the dollar, at least, while these large deposits have been removed from public circulation by being deposited at the Fed, the reverse repo facility is overwhelmingly short-term and should be added back to the M2 statistic. M2 so adjusted is illustrated below.
https://gm-media-library.s3.eu-west-...956433f48e.png
From this adjustment we learn that since 2010, the quantity of currency and deposits has increased by 175%, and that the downturn in the last year has been more marked than M2 appears to be on an unadjusted basis. In an economy whose GDP transactions totaled an estimated $26 trillion to last December, to have a circulating medium totaling $23.4 trillion is plainly excessive, suggesting that a substantial element of it is funding financial transactions. The Financial Stability Board’s estimate of the US’s shadow banking system in 2021 totaled $20.5 trillion on a narrow measure. Shadow banks do not create credit, merely borrowing to fund for profitable returns.[ii] Therefore, most of their activities are funded by borrowing from commercial banks, matched by deposits as described above.
The future course of M2 money supply will be heavily dependent on the interest rate outlook and how that affects shadow banking activity. There will always be turns to be made in any interest rate environment, but the growth in shadow banking has primarily been a response to declining and ultra-low interest rates. For insurance companies and pension funds, the use of financial leverage to obtain nominal returns is now set to decline.
Put another way, the everything financial bubble which has progressively grown with the financialisation of the US economy is being deflated by a change in the underlying interest rate trend. The consequences for the dollar’s M2 money supply, of which bank deposits are 90.5% of our adjusted M2 in the chart above, will see a continuing decline as shadow banking withers.
This has little to do directly with a downturn in the non-financial economy, which makes up GDP. If we could truly isolate bank credit which applies to GDP, then that portion of it would be relevant insofar as a reduction in the circulating medium is restricting economic activity. But we cannot do this exercise. Perhaps more relevant is to acknowledge that a stagnating or contracting M2 money supply, only so far as it applies to non-financial activities, should be adjusted for a rising level of producer and consumer prices. Producer prices are likely to be the more reliable deflator of the money supply statistic because the CPI has been heavily corrupted over the decades. In the case of the US, that would knock about 6% currently off the unknowable GDP portion of M2.
At a best guess basis, the withdrawal of credit from non-financial business is in its infancy. The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey for January released earlier this week confirmed “tighter standards and weaker demand for commercial and industrial loans to large, middle-market, and small firms over the fourth quarter [of 2022]”. Banks responded to the survey that they anticipated a less favorable economic outlook, a reduced tolerance for risk, and the worsening of industry-specific problems. Clearly, the banking cohort’s appetite for balance sheet expansion into non-financials is turning sour. Banks are also reported to be tightening standards on high-margin credit card lending.
This survey is more defining than money supply statistics, much of which do not relate to GDP spending, because it tells us where the US economy is in the credit cycle. It is a mistake to think that money supply statistics reliably quantify the economic outlook or tell us anything we already know.
[i] The incident was related in an article for the Mont Pellarin Society by Jennifer Burns: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default.../mps_burns.pdf
[ii] See Global Monitoring Report on Non-Bank Financial Intermediation 2022
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NATO is Already in Ukraine
Blog/War
Posted Feb 10, 2023 by Martin Armstrong
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COMMENT: I want to apologize. I did not believe you that the West had been the aggressor. It turns out, NATO has troops already there because Ukraine has lost so many men. You were right. NATO troops are there and will be operating the tanks and aircraft. This is already world war III which has been undeclared. I yield to your sources.
Sincerely
PD
REPLY: I am against war. I know the objectives and the reasoning. This is not a conspiracy theory. Besides being asked to invest $10 billion back in 1999 to seize control of Russia, I have even been asked for advice on redesigning the monetary system after Bretton Woods II. Quite frankly, there is nothing I can do. These people have already made up their minds and they pat themselves on their backs for taking down Russia will save the planet.
NATO troops are already there. They pretend to be mercenaries. I am fully aware of your Austrian colonel Markus Reisner, who bluntly told a journalist, that NATO troops will run the tanks. He explained what everyone has already known. He admitted that “we don’t need to send NATO soldiers to Ukraine, I just take off my uniform and sign a contract with a private security company and I am going to Ukraine as I am no longer a member of the Austrian armed forces but a mercenary.”
So-called “foreign mercenaries” have been there fighting in Ukraine from the start. I know two French who returned disgusted about the war crimes and theft of equipment that the Ukrainians are carrying out. Another fact is that where there have been NATO “advisers” killed in action, they have been beheaded and their hands chopped off so the Russians have no proof that NATO has been in Ukraine.
Look, this war could end in one week. All they have to do is comply with the Minsk Agreement. The West WANTS this war – they NEED IT! People who think the government would never lie are beyond hope and probably wear a mask when they sleep at night – just in case. If you do not want to believe that, that’s your problem. Perhaps you will finally wake up when your future is totally gone. And they probably believe all inflation is Putin’s fault as well.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ity-in-War.png
I am glad you kept an open mind. QUESTION everything and perhaps you will arrive at the truth, which is always the first casualty in war. NEVER believe what any government says. Just like Ukraine, they have been hiding their losses.
NATO is playing a very dangerous game. They are pushing this to the limit and are praying for Russia to attack anywhere outside of Ukraine so they can then claim it was an unprovoked attack – another fake Day that will live in Infamy!
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...l-May-2023.png
They are looking to force Russia to throw up its hands and declare war on NATO to save its own people, culture, and history. These Neocons NEVER even weight the risks because they are so arrogant, they assume they will win and never have Plan B.
Categories: War
« Zelensky the Man to Destroy the Future of the Entire World
NATO is Already in Ukraine
Blog/War
Posted Feb 10, 2023 by Martin Armstrong
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...18/07/NATO.jpg
COMMENT: I want to apologize. I did not believe you that the West had been the aggressor. It turns out, NATO has troops already there because Ukraine has lost so many men. You were right. NATO troops are there and will be operating the tanks and aircraft. This is already world war III which has been undeclared. I yield to your sources.
Sincerely
PD
REPLY: I am against war. I know the objectives and the reasoning. This is not a conspiracy theory. Besides being asked to invest $10 billion back in 1999 to seize control of Russia, I have even been asked for advice on redesigning the monetary system after Bretton Woods II. Quite frankly, there is nothing I can do. These people have already made up their minds and they pat themselves on their backs for taking down Russia will save the planet.
NATO troops are already there. They pretend to be mercenaries. I am fully aware of your Austrian colonel Markus Reisner, who bluntly told a journalist, that NATO troops will run the tanks. He explained what everyone has already known. He admitted that “we don’t need to send NATO soldiers to Ukraine, I just take off my uniform and sign a contract with a private security company and I am going to Ukraine as I am no longer a member of the Austrian armed forces but a mercenary.”
So-called “foreign mercenaries” have been there fighting in Ukraine from the start. I know two French who returned disgusted about the war crimes and theft of equipment that the Ukrainians are carrying out. Another fact is that where there have been NATO “advisers” killed in action, they have been beheaded and their hands chopped off so the Russians have no proof that NATO has been in Ukraine.
Look, this war could end in one week. All they have to do is comply with the Minsk Agreement. The West WANTS this war – they NEED IT! People who think the government would never lie are beyond hope and probably wear a mask when they sleep at night – just in case. If you do not want to believe that, that’s your problem. Perhaps you will finally wake up when your future is totally gone. And they probably believe all inflation is Putin’s fault as well.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...ity-in-War.png
I am glad you kept an open mind. QUESTION everything and perhaps you will arrive at the truth, which is always the first casualty in war. NEVER believe what any government says. Just like Ukraine, they have been hiding their losses.
NATO is playing a very dangerous game. They are pushing this to the limit and are praying for Russia to attack anywhere outside of Ukraine so they can then claim it was an unprovoked attack – another fake Day that will live in Infamy!
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/w...l-May-2023.png
They are looking to force Russia to throw up its hands and declare war on NATO to save its own people, culture, and history. These Neocons NEVER even weight the risks because they are so arrogant, they assume they will win and never have Plan B.
Categories: War
« Zelensky the Man to Destroy the Future of the Entire World
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Excessive Debt is the Greatest Risk
Via Birch Gold Group
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If there is one common theme to the vast range of the world’s financial crises, it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.
– Carmen Reinhart (with Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly)
By Phillip Patrick for Birch Gold Group
The Institute of International Finance tracks global debt levels, which are predicted to surpass $300 trillion as of December 31, 2022. (I suppose it takes them a long time to add up all the numbers.) That’s $36 trillion above pre-pandemic debts. Globally, the world owes about $3.50 for every $1 in economic output.
That’s not just a lot, it’s also a record high debt load.
Intuitively, this sounds bad. Especially when we compare those figures to the typical American household, which has $121,700 net worth – and that’s net of liabilities.
However, we also know that governments aren’t quite the same as households. Most households can’t print their own money, or demand more income from taxpayers.
Today I want to show you some useful ways to think about government debt – both global and here in the U.S. – and explain why “excessive” debt is a massive risk to financial stability…
Is debt necessarily bad?
Generally speaking, I have nothing against debt. Without mortgages, the median home price in the U.S. ($454,900 as of this writing) would be simply unattainable for the typical American family, who only make $70,784 per year. That works out to saving 100% of your income for 6.5 years before buying a home!
But I’m not here to talk about home prices today. My point is this:
Debt is not always a bad thing.
Ray Dalio’s video, How the Economic Machine Works, does a great job of explaining this in just a couple minutes (watch to 6:22 – or watch the whole thing if you like! It’s well worth your time):
Essentially:
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Excessive Debt is the Greatest Risk
Via Birch Gold Group
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If there is one common theme to the vast range of the world’s financial crises, it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.
– Carmen Reinhart (with Kenneth Rogoff, co-author of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly)
By Phillip Patrick for Birch Gold Group
The Institute of International Finance tracks global debt levels, which are predicted to surpass $300 trillion as of December 31, 2022. (I suppose it takes them a long time to add up all the numbers.) That’s $36 trillion above pre-pandemic debts. Globally, the world owes about $3.50 for every $1 in economic output.
That’s not just a lot, it’s also a record high debt load.
Intuitively, this sounds bad. Especially when we compare those figures to the typical American household, which has $121,700 net worth – and that’s net of liabilities.
However, we also know that governments aren’t quite the same as households. Most households can’t print their own money, or demand more income from taxpayers.
Today I want to show you some useful ways to think about government debt – both global and here in the U.S. – and explain why “excessive” debt is a massive risk to financial stability…
Is debt necessarily bad?
Generally speaking, I have nothing against debt. Without mortgages, the median home price in the U.S. ($454,900 as of this writing) would be simply unattainable for the typical American family, who only make $70,784 per year. That works out to saving 100% of your income for 6.5 years before buying a home!
But I’m not here to talk about home prices today. My point is this:
Debt is not always a bad thing.
Ray Dalio’s video, How the Economic Machine Works, does a great job of explaining this in just a couple minutes (watch to 6:22 – or watch the whole thing if you like! It’s well worth your time):
Essentially:
- Any two parties can create credit out of thin air
- Credit is both an asset to the lender, and a liability or debt to the borrower
- Credit allows increased economic activity – because one person’s spending is another person’s income
If we spend that money on things of value, like a good education or remodeling a 1970s era kitchen, we’re likely better off. We’ve increased the likelihood that we’ll earn more money in the future, or that the house will be worth more when we sell it.
If we spend that money on consumption items, like a well-deserved vacation or an 85” QLED 4K UHD smart TV, our quality of life may increase. But we aren’t financially better off.
Obviously, these two categories aren’t clear-cut. In corporate accounting, they’re separated into two groups:capital expenses, major assets like heavy machinery and buildings with lasting value that add to the bottom line; and operating expenses, payroll and rent and utilities, that subtract from the bottom line)
The take-away here is that debt can be used to finance useful, valuable transactions.
Spending borrowed money isn’t the problem – what you spend on is the crucial consideration.
Here’s what bad debt looks like
Let’s take a look at the $1.7 trillion “Fiscal Year Omnibus Appropriations Bill,” also known as “the budget” and H.R.2471 – Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022. It’s 4,400 pages long. (Don’t bother trying to read it – no one else has.)
This law requires the U.S. to spend $1.7 trillion. Just so we’re clear, the federal government’s income is $1.03 trillion.
Going by the guidelines I specified above, spending 70% more than you make in a year isn’t necessarily a bad idea. So how will the money be spent?
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Here are a few highlights:
- $410 million border security funding for Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman
- $375 million for a new FBI building (However, a Government Accountability Office report suggests the project would cost over $1 billion)
- $200 million for gender equity programs in Pakistan
- $70 million for Pacific coastal salmon – $65 million for recovery efforts and another $5 million for environmental impact studies on salmon populations
- $26 million fo the House of Representatives’ Office of Diversity and Inclusion
Which of the items on this list strike you as smart spending?
Based on the rules of corporate accounting, only one of the items above could be considered an investment in a thing of value, and that’s #2 – a new FBI building. Though I’m leery of any project the GAO says will actually cost nearly 3x its budget…
Because, regardless of its intended purpose, beyond a certain level all debt becomes a hazard. Here’s why…
High debt levels create systemic instability
Again, this is something we understand intuitively as individuals. Prudent and responsible people know that, if your budget is already tight, you wouldn’t want to buy a bigger house and take on a more expensive mortgage.
Simply put, we never want our debt payments to outgrow our income. Most people don’t want their debt payments to come anywhere close to their incomes – because we have “operating expenses” (food, utility bills, insurance payments etc.) not to mention those unanticipated emergencies that inevitably pop up…
When you’re young, and you have a good job or other steady income and you’re anticipating more (a promotion, maybe, or entrepreneurial business growth),
taking on debt is less intimidating. Not a major cause for concern. After all, you rationalize, even if I don’t have the money now I will soon…
Here’s the thing: when you take on certain debt that’s balanced by the hope of future income growth, you’re making a devil’s bargain. Your creditors will demand payment, whether or not you get that promotion. Whether or not your business does well.
Whether or not the debt results in profitable growth, it definitely requires repayment.
And the more debts we have, the more money we owe, the fewer decisions we get to make about where our income goes. Essentially, debts constrain your economic freedom.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that debt is “modern slavery” – I think that comparison is just meant to be shocking. However, there are parallels. The more you owe, the less autonomy you have.
The less autonomy you have, the more your decisions are driven by outside forces.
Making the same mistake
I started this article with a quote from Reinhart and Rogoff’s book because they do a great job of highlighting how frequently individual households, corporations and governments make this same mistake, over and over. (It’s a great book and I strongly recommend it.)
As the authors summarize for Foreign Policy:
What is certainly clear is that again and again, countries, banks, individuals, and firms take on excessive debt in good times without enough awareness of the risks that will follow when the inevitable recession hits. The fact that basic data on domestic debt are so opaque and difficult to obtain is proof that governments will go to great lengths to hide their books when things are going wrong, just as financial institutions have done in the contemporary [2008-09] financial crisis.
Here’s what I want you to remember:
- Debt isn’t necessarily bad
- Excessive debt is always bad
- As debt rises, autonomy and economic freedom decline
When we consider that both the U.S. and the entire world are already so heavily indebted – and that leaders worldwide seem to think they can just borrow even more to somehow spend their way out of debt…
It’s a truly alarming proposition.
Many Birch Gold Group customers I speak to daily agree. They understand the downsides of debt, the hazards of irresponsible spending – on a personal as well as on a national level.
That’s a major reason why so many American families are diversifying their savings away from debt-based assets, into physical gold and silver. When you own tangible, physical precious metals, you own a real asset. It’s not an IOU or a promise to pay.
Ray Dalio agrees:
There is an old saying that “gold is the only financial asset that isn’t someone else’s liability.” That is because it has widely accepted intrinsic value, unlike debt assets or other assets that require an enforceable contract or a law to ensure the other side will deliver on its promise to deliver whatever it promised to deliver (which when it’s just “paper” currency that can easily be printed isn’t much of a promise).
I understand how dangerous excessive debt is. Does our political leadership? More importantly, do you?
While we work to return fiscal sanity to Washington, D.C. I strongly encourage you to do what the safety briefings on airlines instruct: save yourself first.
You can learn more about diversifying your retirement savings with a Gold IRA here.
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Categories Economy, Politics, Social IssuesTags debt
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Credit Suisse Tanks Yesterday to $3.02; It’s Lost Over 90 Percent of Its Market Value Since 2007; It’s Not Alone
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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 10, 2023 ~
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Credit Suisse continued its long death spiral yesterday, losing 15.64 percent of its market value in one trading session to close at $3.02 on the New York Stock Exchange. The trading action came on the heels of an earnings report that was excruciatingly bad – even for Credit Suisse.
The Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB), which means it’s interconnected to other G-SIBs that could bring down the global financial system, reported yesterday that its clients had yanked over $100 billion in just the fourth quarter — which was more than eight times the outflow in the third quarter. Its pre-tax loss for the quarter was $1.51 billion, marking its fifth consecutive earnings loss.
Credit Suisse is Switzerland’s second largest bank, after UBS, but its troubled history looks more like that of a bank in a banana republic. On March 26, 2021, the family office hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management, defaulted on margin calls to its prime brokers and went belly up, leaving major investment banks with more than $10 billion in losses. Credit Suisse took the lion’s share of those losses, acknowledging a loss of more than $5.5 billion. (To fully appreciate the wild risks that mega banks were taking with Archegos, see our report: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)
The Board of Credit Suisse decided to hire the Big Law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, to conduct an internal investigation of the Archegos fiasco. Paul Weiss issued a 165-page report in July of 2021, detailing its version of what had happened. Paul Weiss, reliably, found that no fraud had occurred — just zombie risk management at a Global Systemically Important Bank. (Some shareholders might have been more comforted with a finding of fraud.)
Paul Weiss investigators portrayed the zombie risk managers at Credit Suisse as follows:
“The Archegos-related losses sustained by CS [Credit Suisse] are the result of a fundamental failure of management and controls in CS’s Investment Bank and, specifically, in its Prime Services business. The business was focused on maximizing short-term profits and failed to rein in and, indeed, enabled Archegos’s voracious risk-taking. There were numerous warning signals — including large, persistent limit breaches — indicating that Archegos’s concentrated, volatile, and severely under-margined swap positions posed potentially catastrophic risk to CS. Yet the business, from the in-business risk managers to the Global Head of Equities, as well as the risk function, failed to heed these signs, despite evidence that some individuals did raise concerns appropriately.”
Credit Suisse’s reputation has taken more hits from its involvement in the Greensill Capital scandal and the infamous spy-gate scandal in 2019 where the bank spied on and followed various employees. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Nervousness about Credit Suisse reached a pivotal moment in the fall of last year. On November 30, its 5-year Credit Default Swaps (CDS) blew out to 446 basis points. That was up from 55 basis points in January of 2022 and more than five times where CDS on its peer Swiss bank, UBS, were trading. The price of a Credit Default Swap reflects the cost to traders, or investors with exposure, to insuring themselves against a debt default by the bank.
The big move in CDS on Credit Suisse had started in early October of 2022. On October 3, 2022, Dennis Kelleher, President of the nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, summed up the situation and its potential impact on American taxpayers as follows:
“As the financial condition of Credit Suisse continues to deteriorate, raising questions of whether it will collapse, the world and U.S. taxpayers should be deeply worried as multiple, simultaneous shocks shake the foundations of economies worldwide. Credit Suisse is a global, systemically significant, too-big-to-fail bank that operates in the U.S. and is deeply interconnected throughout the global financial system. Its failure would have widespread and largely unknown repercussions from the inconvenient to the possibly catastrophic.
“That is due, in part, to the failure of the Federal Reserve to properly regulate the activities of foreign banks that have U.S.-based operations. The U.S. has a largely ineffective regulatory framework with gaping loopholes that fail to include some of even the most basic safety and soundness requirements, which incentivizes regulatory arbitrage. As a result, the U.S. financial system and economy are needlessly threatened.
“An effective and appropriate regulatory framework for large foreign banks that covers all of their U.S.-based affiliates should have been established when the Fed set up so-called U.S.-based intermediate holding companies (‘IHCs’) that they regulate. Instead, U.S.-based branches of foreign banks (which are not consolidated within the IHC) face significantly weaker standards than the IHC, remarkably including no specific capital requirements in the U.S. Furthermore, the branches have significantly weaker liquidity requirements. This has resulted in many foreign banks – including in particular Credit Suisse – engaging in regulatory arbitrage by shifting large amounts of assets from their IHCs to their branches, entities that are entirely reliant on the resources of their foreign-based parent companies. The 2008 financial collapse proved that these resources are not available in periods of stress, which is why the U.S. bailed out so many foreign banks operating in the U.S. The Fed should have stopped that long ago.
“As is well-known, risks in the global financial system that materialize elsewhere easily end up becoming risks here in the U.S. and threaten our financial system and economy. Those risks are amplified by the unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies attempting to address the many unexpected shocks from the pandemic and war. The Fed must see Credit Suisse as a warning sign and improve the regulatory framework for large foreign banks and all banks to ensure that the American financial system and economy are properly protected.”
Unfortunately, Credit Suisse is far from alone. As the chart above indicates, Credit Suisse, Barclays (U.K.), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Citigroup (U.S.) have lost the bulk of their market value since January 1, 2007 – or prior to the financial crisis of 2008. And all of these banks are also G-SIBs and interconnected to one another through derivatives, loan relationships and the like.
The bottom line is that Congress, the Fed and other federal regulators have seriously failed in their obligation to ensure that there is not another replay of the Wall Street mega bank meltdown of 2008 – which brought on the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
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Credit Suisse Tanks Yesterday to $3.02; It’s Lost Over 90 Percent of Its Market Value Since 2007; It’s Not Alone
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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 10, 2023 ~
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Credit Suisse continued its long death spiral yesterday, losing 15.64 percent of its market value in one trading session to close at $3.02 on the New York Stock Exchange. The trading action came on the heels of an earnings report that was excruciatingly bad – even for Credit Suisse.
The Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB), which means it’s interconnected to other G-SIBs that could bring down the global financial system, reported yesterday that its clients had yanked over $100 billion in just the fourth quarter — which was more than eight times the outflow in the third quarter. Its pre-tax loss for the quarter was $1.51 billion, marking its fifth consecutive earnings loss.
Credit Suisse is Switzerland’s second largest bank, after UBS, but its troubled history looks more like that of a bank in a banana republic. On March 26, 2021, the family office hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management, defaulted on margin calls to its prime brokers and went belly up, leaving major investment banks with more than $10 billion in losses. Credit Suisse took the lion’s share of those losses, acknowledging a loss of more than $5.5 billion. (To fully appreciate the wild risks that mega banks were taking with Archegos, see our report: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)
The Board of Credit Suisse decided to hire the Big Law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, to conduct an internal investigation of the Archegos fiasco. Paul Weiss issued a 165-page report in July of 2021, detailing its version of what had happened. Paul Weiss, reliably, found that no fraud had occurred — just zombie risk management at a Global Systemically Important Bank. (Some shareholders might have been more comforted with a finding of fraud.)
Paul Weiss investigators portrayed the zombie risk managers at Credit Suisse as follows:
“The Archegos-related losses sustained by CS [Credit Suisse] are the result of a fundamental failure of management and controls in CS’s Investment Bank and, specifically, in its Prime Services business. The business was focused on maximizing short-term profits and failed to rein in and, indeed, enabled Archegos’s voracious risk-taking. There were numerous warning signals — including large, persistent limit breaches — indicating that Archegos’s concentrated, volatile, and severely under-margined swap positions posed potentially catastrophic risk to CS. Yet the business, from the in-business risk managers to the Global Head of Equities, as well as the risk function, failed to heed these signs, despite evidence that some individuals did raise concerns appropriately.”
Credit Suisse’s reputation has taken more hits from its involvement in the Greensill Capital scandal and the infamous spy-gate scandal in 2019 where the bank spied on and followed various employees. (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Nervousness about Credit Suisse reached a pivotal moment in the fall of last year. On November 30, its 5-year Credit Default Swaps (CDS) blew out to 446 basis points. That was up from 55 basis points in January of 2022 and more than five times where CDS on its peer Swiss bank, UBS, were trading. The price of a Credit Default Swap reflects the cost to traders, or investors with exposure, to insuring themselves against a debt default by the bank.
The big move in CDS on Credit Suisse had started in early October of 2022. On October 3, 2022, Dennis Kelleher, President of the nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, summed up the situation and its potential impact on American taxpayers as follows:
“As the financial condition of Credit Suisse continues to deteriorate, raising questions of whether it will collapse, the world and U.S. taxpayers should be deeply worried as multiple, simultaneous shocks shake the foundations of economies worldwide. Credit Suisse is a global, systemically significant, too-big-to-fail bank that operates in the U.S. and is deeply interconnected throughout the global financial system. Its failure would have widespread and largely unknown repercussions from the inconvenient to the possibly catastrophic.
“That is due, in part, to the failure of the Federal Reserve to properly regulate the activities of foreign banks that have U.S.-based operations. The U.S. has a largely ineffective regulatory framework with gaping loopholes that fail to include some of even the most basic safety and soundness requirements, which incentivizes regulatory arbitrage. As a result, the U.S. financial system and economy are needlessly threatened.
“An effective and appropriate regulatory framework for large foreign banks that covers all of their U.S.-based affiliates should have been established when the Fed set up so-called U.S.-based intermediate holding companies (‘IHCs’) that they regulate. Instead, U.S.-based branches of foreign banks (which are not consolidated within the IHC) face significantly weaker standards than the IHC, remarkably including no specific capital requirements in the U.S. Furthermore, the branches have significantly weaker liquidity requirements. This has resulted in many foreign banks – including in particular Credit Suisse – engaging in regulatory arbitrage by shifting large amounts of assets from their IHCs to their branches, entities that are entirely reliant on the resources of their foreign-based parent companies. The 2008 financial collapse proved that these resources are not available in periods of stress, which is why the U.S. bailed out so many foreign banks operating in the U.S. The Fed should have stopped that long ago.
“As is well-known, risks in the global financial system that materialize elsewhere easily end up becoming risks here in the U.S. and threaten our financial system and economy. Those risks are amplified by the unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies attempting to address the many unexpected shocks from the pandemic and war. The Fed must see Credit Suisse as a warning sign and improve the regulatory framework for large foreign banks and all banks to ensure that the American financial system and economy are properly protected.”
Unfortunately, Credit Suisse is far from alone. As the chart above indicates, Credit Suisse, Barclays (U.K.), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Citigroup (U.S.) have lost the bulk of their market value since January 1, 2007 – or prior to the financial crisis of 2008. And all of these banks are also G-SIBs and interconnected to one another through derivatives, loan relationships and the like.
The bottom line is that Congress, the Fed and other federal regulators have seriously failed in their obligation to ensure that there is not another replay of the Wall Street mega bank meltdown of 2008 – which brought on the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
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- Post #11,293
- Quote
- Feb 11, 2023 7:13pm Feb 11, 2023 7:13pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
February 11, 2023
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A thought-provoking new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first noting the announcement that President Putin will deliver his annual message to the Federal Assembly on 21 February, says this was joined by the Russian Central Bank announcing “Russia’s economy is set to grow again in the middle of the year” and Bloomberg News reporting: “Russia has weathered Ukraine-related Western sanctions by boosting investment in domestic production and new supply routes”—and were announcements and reporting that caused Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to most factually observe from his post in America: “Our homeland is in danger again, as it was during the Great Patriotic War...The entire Western world has turned against us…But it is already clear today that plans to inflict a strategic defeat on our country have been thwarted…Russia, especially over the last year, has restructured the economy, strengthened its military power and intensified cooperation with most states”.
In viewing the very real danger posed to Russia by the socialist Western colonial powers, this report notes, it caused State Duma Deputy Oleg Morozov to assess this morning: “Without the presence of nuclear weapons, Russia would have already been attacked by the collective West”—an assessment that follows the United States test launching a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile it declared to be “a message to the world”, and yesterday it saw United States Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas Bussiere proclaiming about this ICBM test launch: “A test launch displays the heart of our deterrence mission on the world’s stage, assuring our nation and its allies that our weapons are capable and our airmen are ready and willing to defend peace across the globe at a moment’s notice”.
With only the most deranged mind able to envision that an ICBM able to kills millions is something that “defends peace”, this report continues, the Minuteman III test launch “message to the world” now appears to have traveled beyond our planet, as evidenced by the United States Air Force revealing yesterday it had shot down a “not a balloon” object the size of a small car over Alaska just hours after it launched its ICBM—a “not a balloon” shootdown confirmed by White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, who revealed: “The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet, and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight…Calling this an object is because that’s the best description we have right now”—and today it’s reported: “At present, US authorities have no idea what entity owns the device, or what its nature entailed”.
Most critical to notice about this “not a balloon” small car sized object shot down shortly after the United States test launched its “message to the world” planet killing ICBM, this report concludes, is that it’s a near exact match to the June-2021 shocking revelations made by United States Navy fighter pilots about them video taping and tracking mysterious “Tic Tac” small car sized unidentified flying objects—a shocking revelation followed a few months later in October-2021, which was when retired United States Air Force officers presented evidence of UFO’s tampering with American nuclear weapons, the most stunning of which was “The Malmstrom AFB UFO/Missile Incident”—evidence not reported by the leftist American media, but saw the British newspaper Sun publishing its article “Secret US Nuclear Missile Bases ‘Targeted By UFOs’ Revealed In New Map As Pentagon Told To ‘Come Clean’”—and in December-2021, articles began appearing in America like “Defense Spending Bill Contains ‘Most Significant’ UFO Legislation Since 1960s”. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.
February 11, 2023 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Unvaccinated “Have Blood On Their Hands” For Failing To Warn Vaccinated
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By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A thought-provoking new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first noting the announcement that President Putin will deliver his annual message to the Federal Assembly on 21 February, says this was joined by the Russian Central Bank announcing “Russia’s economy is set to grow again in the middle of the year” and Bloomberg News reporting: “Russia has weathered Ukraine-related Western sanctions by boosting investment in domestic production and new supply routes”—and were announcements and reporting that caused Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to most factually observe from his post in America: “Our homeland is in danger again, as it was during the Great Patriotic War...The entire Western world has turned against us…But it is already clear today that plans to inflict a strategic defeat on our country have been thwarted…Russia, especially over the last year, has restructured the economy, strengthened its military power and intensified cooperation with most states”.
In viewing the very real danger posed to Russia by the socialist Western colonial powers, this report notes, it caused State Duma Deputy Oleg Morozov to assess this morning: “Without the presence of nuclear weapons, Russia would have already been attacked by the collective West”—an assessment that follows the United States test launching a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile it declared to be “a message to the world”, and yesterday it saw United States Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas Bussiere proclaiming about this ICBM test launch: “A test launch displays the heart of our deterrence mission on the world’s stage, assuring our nation and its allies that our weapons are capable and our airmen are ready and willing to defend peace across the globe at a moment’s notice”.
With only the most deranged mind able to envision that an ICBM able to kills millions is something that “defends peace”, this report continues, the Minuteman III test launch “message to the world” now appears to have traveled beyond our planet, as evidenced by the United States Air Force revealing yesterday it had shot down a “not a balloon” object the size of a small car over Alaska just hours after it launched its ICBM—a “not a balloon” shootdown confirmed by White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, who revealed: “The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet, and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight…Calling this an object is because that’s the best description we have right now”—and today it’s reported: “At present, US authorities have no idea what entity owns the device, or what its nature entailed”.
Most critical to notice about this “not a balloon” small car sized object shot down shortly after the United States test launched its “message to the world” planet killing ICBM, this report concludes, is that it’s a near exact match to the June-2021 shocking revelations made by United States Navy fighter pilots about them video taping and tracking mysterious “Tic Tac” small car sized unidentified flying objects—a shocking revelation followed a few months later in October-2021, which was when retired United States Air Force officers presented evidence of UFO’s tampering with American nuclear weapons, the most stunning of which was “The Malmstrom AFB UFO/Missile Incident”—evidence not reported by the leftist American media, but saw the British newspaper Sun publishing its article “Secret US Nuclear Missile Bases ‘Targeted By UFOs’ Revealed In New Map As Pentagon Told To ‘Come Clean’”—and in December-2021, articles began appearing in America like “Defense Spending Bill Contains ‘Most Significant’ UFO Legislation Since 1960s”. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.
https://www.whatdoesitmean.com/ufk21.png
February 11, 2023 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Unvaccinated “Have Blood On Their Hands” For Failing To Warn Vaccinated
Western Tank Fantasy Collides With Putin’s AI Robot “War Toys”
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- Post #11,294
- Quote
- Feb 11, 2023 8:33pm Feb 11, 2023 8:33pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
Learner : What trading all about ? How to start
Profesional: Why you want to enter trading
Learner: Opportunity to earn big , great lifestyle, no limit to earnings
Profesional: Fine , but these should not be the reason . The points which you have enumerated are the end results or rather by products provided you are ready to walk the talk
Learner: What do you mean? I thought trading is very easy. Just open an account, fund it and start trading
Profesional: How would you trade?
Learner : In live markets I strongly feel some moves , so I will trade them , got a good group of friends , follow them. Additionally source info from media and various trading groups. I am worried I will have so many ideas but limited capital to execute and monetize all those ideas. I will loose out on opportunities
Profesional : You can try this , but history says this method leads to losses. My advice, learn properly, trade small and slowly increase your position sizing. Also never follow others. Because every one's thinking , risk acceptance and psyche are different. Evey day post market do your own analysis. Study markets , plan your trade , trade your plan
It will be a slow process and bit boring. But you will understand what trading means in a true sense. You will take ownership of your journey and success ultimately
Learner : It sounds boring , but I respect your experience. Will implement the way you suggested
Activate to view larger image,
Aviel Forex Learning Edge Corporation - PLEASE CLICK ON LINK BELOW. Thank You - Benny
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...0c4vB19NeqpTyo
Aviel Forex Learning Edge Corporation - Please CLICK ON to go to our Website - WWW.AVIELFOREXLEARNINGEDGE.COM
Profesional: Why you want to enter trading
Learner: Opportunity to earn big , great lifestyle, no limit to earnings
Profesional: Fine , but these should not be the reason . The points which you have enumerated are the end results or rather by products provided you are ready to walk the talk
Learner: What do you mean? I thought trading is very easy. Just open an account, fund it and start trading
Profesional: How would you trade?
Learner : In live markets I strongly feel some moves , so I will trade them , got a good group of friends , follow them. Additionally source info from media and various trading groups. I am worried I will have so many ideas but limited capital to execute and monetize all those ideas. I will loose out on opportunities
Profesional : You can try this , but history says this method leads to losses. My advice, learn properly, trade small and slowly increase your position sizing. Also never follow others. Because every one's thinking , risk acceptance and psyche are different. Evey day post market do your own analysis. Study markets , plan your trade , trade your plan
It will be a slow process and bit boring. But you will understand what trading means in a true sense. You will take ownership of your journey and success ultimately
Learner : It sounds boring , but I respect your experience. Will implement the way you suggested
Activate to view larger image,
Aviel Forex Learning Edge Corporation - PLEASE CLICK ON LINK BELOW. Thank You - Benny
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4...0c4vB19NeqpTyo
Aviel Forex Learning Edge Corporation - Please CLICK ON to go to our Website - WWW.AVIELFOREXLEARNINGEDGE.COM
- Post #11,295
- Quote
- Feb 12, 2023 8:47am Feb 12, 2023 8:47am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
- Post #11,296
- Quote
- Edited 12:52pm Feb 12, 2023 12:37pm | Edited 12:52pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
https://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index4176.htm
February 12, 2023
Biden Ignores “What’s Happening In Ukraine Won’t Stay In Ukraine” Holy War Warning
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A foreboding new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first notes top Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak proclaiming like a deranged madman yesterday: “Peace talks with Russia remain out of the question...Only a Ukrainian victory would end the war in Europe”, says in quick response, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow’s permanent representative to the United Nations, factually observed: “We don’t see any willingness on the part of the sponsors of Kiev to go to negotiations with Russia and do it seriously...Moscow knows for sure that Kiev is not calling the shots...Those who can force Kiev to conduct serious negotiations, they live in the United States, somewhere in Europe, and on one of the islands across the English Channel”.
Instead of allowing Ukraine to enter into peace negotiations as it nears collapse, this report notes, the White House announced that Supreme Socialist Leader Joe Biden will travel to Poland this month in a bid to keep the conflict ongoing, with it being reported: “The visit, scheduled for Feb. 20-22, comes as polling in the United States and abroad suggests waning support for maintaining tens of billions of dollars worth of military and economic assistance for Ukraine in the protracted war”—and in the just-published article “US Leads The Rest Of The World With $196 Billion Given To Ukraine Amid War With Russia”, sees it revealing: “According to the Ukrainian government, the U.S. leads all countries with $196 billion in total military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24, 2022 through Nov. 20, 2022…Germany has sent the second-most funds, with $172 billion sent in that span...In that same span, the rest of the world has contributed less than $75 billion of total aid, with most of that sum coming from the United Kingdom ($28.2 billion), Poland ($24.3 billion), and Estonia ($5.48 billion)”.
While Socialist Leader Biden continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars, this report continues, the American people have been struck by the worst job cut crisis since The Great Recession—a job cut crisis joined by the CDC reporting American suicides are nearing a record high—and instead of addressing any of the catastrophes pummeling his own peoples, it now sees Socialist Leader Biden preparing to ask the US Congress for the biggest defense budget in American history.
Not understood by the under socialist siege American peoples, this report details, is that the course their nation is on was created by American imperial planner and Cold War architect George Kennan, who, after World War II, outlined the foreign policy road map for the United States in the top secret document “Report By The Policy Planning Staff”—and since it was created in 1948, the United States has followed this document’s main precept: “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment…Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security…To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction”.
In order to maintain its “position of disparity” while abandoning “the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction”, this report notes, the United States and its socialist Western colonial allies have embarked on a course of total war against Russia, which is the largest country in Asia—in furtherance of total war against Russia, this past week US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Dr Celeste Wallander declared: “The United States would have no objections to Ukrainian forces striking targets inside Crimea with American-supplied weapons”—a declaration joined by the leftist Washington Post revealing: “The US Department of Defense is trying to convince lawmakers to fund two top-secret programs in Ukraine...If the Pentagon gets its way, the operations involving US Special Forces could resume in 2024”—and in response to this revelation, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to Washington warned: “At this stage, we are talking about an investigation by journalists, which relies on unnamed sources in the administration…There is no official information on this regard yet...At the same time, discussions on the pages of one of the leading American media about the possible sending of Special Forces to Ukraine are very remarkable...Such publications once again testify that here in Washington there is an obsession with an unrealizable dream to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and readiness to face indescribable risks in this pursuit...If the US leadership decides to resume activities of the Special Operations Forces on the Ukrainian territory, it will represent undisguised participation of their regular army in the current conflict”.
As it pertains to direct United States involvement in warfare against Russia, this report continues, this past week it was revealed that Socialist Leader Biden ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream undersea pipelines built by Russia—after examining a Ukrainian drone used to strike deep into Russian territory, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) revealed: “Without access to the drawings and blueprints of American engineers who modified the old Soviet Tu-141 with a new on-board navigation system, this would not have happened...In fact, it is now a hybrid of Soviet know-how and engineering from the American corporation Raytheon Technologies”—and also this past week, former US Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter factually noted: “Now we know that every target, every target that HIMARS hits is chosen by the United States, which means there is a chain of command of personnel wearing the uniform of the United States involved in this, and here's the thing…HIMARS is being used to attack hospitals , schools, civilian buildings, which means that American personnel are targeting Russian targets that constitute a war crime”.
In support of the United States waging war against Russia, this report notes, American leftist journalist Eric Schlosser just released his warmongering propaganda screed “The Greatest Nuclear Threat We Face Is A Russian Victory”—a leftist warmongering propaganda screed joined by the analytical defense article “‘Low Yield Blast Over Germany’: US Is Increasing The Possibility Of Nuclear Retaliation By Russia”, wherein it warns: “Western nations’ decision to continue and escalate the war in Ukraine by providing major weapon platforms viz HIMARS Rocket system and now tanks will almost certainly push Russia in the corner, leaving no option but to retaliate...Retaliation could almost certainly be in the form of low yield/low air burst Tactical Nuclear Weapon over Germany”—and in the just published Ron Paul Institute article “Setting the Record Straight; Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine” that exhaustively and factually documents everything Russia did to prevent a conflict, but when President Putin faced a Ukraine committing mass genocide by bombing innocent Russian peoples, this article states: “What the data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people...This has all been documented and has not been challenged...So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?”, and most honestly concludes:
The war is not a struggle for Ukrainian liberation or democracy.
That’s hogwash.
It is a war that is aimed at “weakening” Russia and eventually removing Putin from power.
Those are the overriding goals.
What that means is that Ukrainian soldiers are not dying for their country, they are dying for an elitist dream to expand NATO, crush Russia, encircle China, and extend US hegemony for another century.
Ukraine is merely the battlefield on which the Great Power struggle is being fought.
While the leftist American media establishments keep the people of the United States distracted with tales of “mysterious objects” shot down by fighter jets, this report concludes, this most certainly doesn’t apply to the Russian people, as best evidenced by famed Russian host Vladimir Solovyov on his Channel One television program, who yesterday exhibited the rising and fast becoming uncontrollable rage of all Russian peoples seeking immediate retaliation against the socialist Western colonial powers—and this past December, it saw famed television host Solovyov directly issuing a warning on behalf of Russia and its peoples that Socialist Leader Biden has ignored:
We live in the latter days. What's happening in Ukraine won't stay in Ukraine.
A holy war is underway.
We're fighting for the right of mankind to live in its original state, as designed by the Creator.
Those fools who are trying to fight, they aren't fighting against us, they're at war with God.
In case of their victory, their end is certain.
When I say that either we win, or the whole world will be reduced to ashes, this also has another meeting. How can humanity that fights against God continue to exist?
Look at Zelensky's face. Look at Biden's face, an absolutely deceitful, nasty, scary no-good person.
He isn't like Trump. Why was Trump out of favor? Because he is totally traditional, at least in some ways. Trump's traditional character provoked hatred.
If you think about what's happening. It's Satanism. They're purely demonic, you can't put it any other way.
When people are trying to tell me whether nuclear weapons can be used or not, I will respond to that briefly and clearly, 'do you remember this part of Biblical history about Sodom and Gomorrah'?
According to the Bible, God destroyed the two thriving cities due to the evil and wickedness of their populations.
[Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
February 12, 2023 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content is licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Unvaccinated “Have Blood On Their Hands” For Failing To Warn Vaccinated
Western Tank Fantasy Collides With Putin’s AI Robot “War Toys”
Return To Main Page
February 12, 2023
Biden Ignores “What’s Happening In Ukraine Won’t Stay In Ukraine” Holy War Warning
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
A foreboding new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first notes top Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak proclaiming like a deranged madman yesterday: “Peace talks with Russia remain out of the question...Only a Ukrainian victory would end the war in Europe”, says in quick response, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow’s permanent representative to the United Nations, factually observed: “We don’t see any willingness on the part of the sponsors of Kiev to go to negotiations with Russia and do it seriously...Moscow knows for sure that Kiev is not calling the shots...Those who can force Kiev to conduct serious negotiations, they live in the United States, somewhere in Europe, and on one of the islands across the English Channel”.
Instead of allowing Ukraine to enter into peace negotiations as it nears collapse, this report notes, the White House announced that Supreme Socialist Leader Joe Biden will travel to Poland this month in a bid to keep the conflict ongoing, with it being reported: “The visit, scheduled for Feb. 20-22, comes as polling in the United States and abroad suggests waning support for maintaining tens of billions of dollars worth of military and economic assistance for Ukraine in the protracted war”—and in the just-published article “US Leads The Rest Of The World With $196 Billion Given To Ukraine Amid War With Russia”, sees it revealing: “According to the Ukrainian government, the U.S. leads all countries with $196 billion in total military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24, 2022 through Nov. 20, 2022…Germany has sent the second-most funds, with $172 billion sent in that span...In that same span, the rest of the world has contributed less than $75 billion of total aid, with most of that sum coming from the United Kingdom ($28.2 billion), Poland ($24.3 billion), and Estonia ($5.48 billion)”.
While Socialist Leader Biden continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars, this report continues, the American people have been struck by the worst job cut crisis since The Great Recession—a job cut crisis joined by the CDC reporting American suicides are nearing a record high—and instead of addressing any of the catastrophes pummeling his own peoples, it now sees Socialist Leader Biden preparing to ask the US Congress for the biggest defense budget in American history.
Not understood by the under socialist siege American peoples, this report details, is that the course their nation is on was created by American imperial planner and Cold War architect George Kennan, who, after World War II, outlined the foreign policy road map for the United States in the top secret document “Report By The Policy Planning Staff”—and since it was created in 1948, the United States has followed this document’s main precept: “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment…Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security…To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction”.
In order to maintain its “position of disparity” while abandoning “the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction”, this report notes, the United States and its socialist Western colonial allies have embarked on a course of total war against Russia, which is the largest country in Asia—in furtherance of total war against Russia, this past week US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Dr Celeste Wallander declared: “The United States would have no objections to Ukrainian forces striking targets inside Crimea with American-supplied weapons”—a declaration joined by the leftist Washington Post revealing: “The US Department of Defense is trying to convince lawmakers to fund two top-secret programs in Ukraine...If the Pentagon gets its way, the operations involving US Special Forces could resume in 2024”—and in response to this revelation, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to Washington warned: “At this stage, we are talking about an investigation by journalists, which relies on unnamed sources in the administration…There is no official information on this regard yet...At the same time, discussions on the pages of one of the leading American media about the possible sending of Special Forces to Ukraine are very remarkable...Such publications once again testify that here in Washington there is an obsession with an unrealizable dream to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and readiness to face indescribable risks in this pursuit...If the US leadership decides to resume activities of the Special Operations Forces on the Ukrainian territory, it will represent undisguised participation of their regular army in the current conflict”.
As it pertains to direct United States involvement in warfare against Russia, this report continues, this past week it was revealed that Socialist Leader Biden ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream undersea pipelines built by Russia—after examining a Ukrainian drone used to strike deep into Russian territory, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) revealed: “Without access to the drawings and blueprints of American engineers who modified the old Soviet Tu-141 with a new on-board navigation system, this would not have happened...In fact, it is now a hybrid of Soviet know-how and engineering from the American corporation Raytheon Technologies”—and also this past week, former US Marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter factually noted: “Now we know that every target, every target that HIMARS hits is chosen by the United States, which means there is a chain of command of personnel wearing the uniform of the United States involved in this, and here's the thing…HIMARS is being used to attack hospitals , schools, civilian buildings, which means that American personnel are targeting Russian targets that constitute a war crime”.
In support of the United States waging war against Russia, this report notes, American leftist journalist Eric Schlosser just released his warmongering propaganda screed “The Greatest Nuclear Threat We Face Is A Russian Victory”—a leftist warmongering propaganda screed joined by the analytical defense article “‘Low Yield Blast Over Germany’: US Is Increasing The Possibility Of Nuclear Retaliation By Russia”, wherein it warns: “Western nations’ decision to continue and escalate the war in Ukraine by providing major weapon platforms viz HIMARS Rocket system and now tanks will almost certainly push Russia in the corner, leaving no option but to retaliate...Retaliation could almost certainly be in the form of low yield/low air burst Tactical Nuclear Weapon over Germany”—and in the just published Ron Paul Institute article “Setting the Record Straight; Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine” that exhaustively and factually documents everything Russia did to prevent a conflict, but when President Putin faced a Ukraine committing mass genocide by bombing innocent Russian peoples, this article states: “What the data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people...This has all been documented and has not been challenged...So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?”, and most honestly concludes:
The war is not a struggle for Ukrainian liberation or democracy.
That’s hogwash.
It is a war that is aimed at “weakening” Russia and eventually removing Putin from power.
Those are the overriding goals.
What that means is that Ukrainian soldiers are not dying for their country, they are dying for an elitist dream to expand NATO, crush Russia, encircle China, and extend US hegemony for another century.
Ukraine is merely the battlefield on which the Great Power struggle is being fought.
While the leftist American media establishments keep the people of the United States distracted with tales of “mysterious objects” shot down by fighter jets, this report concludes, this most certainly doesn’t apply to the Russian people, as best evidenced by famed Russian host Vladimir Solovyov on his Channel One television program, who yesterday exhibited the rising and fast becoming uncontrollable rage of all Russian peoples seeking immediate retaliation against the socialist Western colonial powers—and this past December, it saw famed television host Solovyov directly issuing a warning on behalf of Russia and its peoples that Socialist Leader Biden has ignored:
We live in the latter days. What's happening in Ukraine won't stay in Ukraine.
A holy war is underway.
We're fighting for the right of mankind to live in its original state, as designed by the Creator.
Those fools who are trying to fight, they aren't fighting against us, they're at war with God.
In case of their victory, their end is certain.
When I say that either we win, or the whole world will be reduced to ashes, this also has another meeting. How can humanity that fights against God continue to exist?
Look at Zelensky's face. Look at Biden's face, an absolutely deceitful, nasty, scary no-good person.
He isn't like Trump. Why was Trump out of favor? Because he is totally traditional, at least in some ways. Trump's traditional character provoked hatred.
If you think about what's happening. It's Satanism. They're purely demonic, you can't put it any other way.
When people are trying to tell me whether nuclear weapons can be used or not, I will respond to that briefly and clearly, 'do you remember this part of Biblical history about Sodom and Gomorrah'?
According to the Bible, God destroyed the two thriving cities due to the evil and wickedness of their populations.
[Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]
https://www.whatdoesitmean.com/nwr21.png
February 12, 2023 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content is licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human being’s right to know the truth. Due to our mission’s conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]
[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]
Unvaccinated “Have Blood On Their Hands” For Failing To Warn Vaccinated
Western Tank Fantasy Collides With Putin’s AI Robot “War Toys”
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- Post #11,297
- Quote
- Feb 12, 2023 8:50pm Feb 12, 2023 8:50pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
- Post #11,298
- Quote
- Feb 12, 2023 8:56pm Feb 12, 2023 8:56pm
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/th...arce-resources
"These Are The Manipulations That Will Be Common Now That The World Is Transitioning To Squeezing Scarce Resources Out Of A Globalized Economy"
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b.../picture-5.jpg
by Tyler Durden
Sunday, Feb 12, 2023 - 08:40 PM
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
Kishida’s cabinet formally adopted a policy to extend the life of its nuclear plants beyond the self-imposed sixty-year limit. Japan’s engineers had originally put a cap in place for all sorts of safety-related reasons. But times change, risks change, societies too.
With the Ukraine war reshaping the global energy map, Japanese memories of energy shortages in the run up to WWII apparently outweigh more recent scars from Fukushima.
And besides, when you count sixty years in the life of a nuclear power plant, you probably shouldn’t count the time it was turned off for maintenance. Right? It’s odd that the engineers who counted sixty in the first place overlooked that. But whatever. If you strip out the years these nuclear reactors were on vacation, you can extend their sixty-year life to seventy. Presto. New capacity.
Japan also announced $152bln in green transformation bonds to build new nukes, renewables, etc. Kishida’s government announced that $1.14trln in public/private investment will be needed over the coming decade.
But Japan was not alone, of course. Macron is trying to extend the life of France’s work force past the age of sixty-two. Apparently, when the policy was first implemented, French engineers failed to take into consideration maintenance and vacation time. Were you to add this downtime back in, the productive life of a French worker would extend to something north of a century.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=YFIFU7EO
But unlike Japan’s nuclear reactors, French workers can strike and vote, so Macron sought only an extra two years. Hundreds of thousands are now striking, which if properly counted would push out the work life of a French worker another ten years.
And these are the sorts of manipulations that will be more common now that the world is transitioning from decades of financial over-engineering to a world of squeezing scarce resources out of a globalized economy that was over-optimized for peak profitability.
"These Are The Manipulations That Will Be Common Now That The World Is Transitioning To Squeezing Scarce Resources Out Of A Globalized Economy"
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b.../picture-5.jpg
by Tyler Durden
Sunday, Feb 12, 2023 - 08:40 PM
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
Kishida’s cabinet formally adopted a policy to extend the life of its nuclear plants beyond the self-imposed sixty-year limit. Japan’s engineers had originally put a cap in place for all sorts of safety-related reasons. But times change, risks change, societies too.
With the Ukraine war reshaping the global energy map, Japanese memories of energy shortages in the run up to WWII apparently outweigh more recent scars from Fukushima.
And besides, when you count sixty years in the life of a nuclear power plant, you probably shouldn’t count the time it was turned off for maintenance. Right? It’s odd that the engineers who counted sixty in the first place overlooked that. But whatever. If you strip out the years these nuclear reactors were on vacation, you can extend their sixty-year life to seventy. Presto. New capacity.
Japan also announced $152bln in green transformation bonds to build new nukes, renewables, etc. Kishida’s government announced that $1.14trln in public/private investment will be needed over the coming decade.
But Japan was not alone, of course. Macron is trying to extend the life of France’s work force past the age of sixty-two. Apparently, when the policy was first implemented, French engineers failed to take into consideration maintenance and vacation time. Were you to add this downtime back in, the productive life of a French worker would extend to something north of a century.
https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=YFIFU7EO
But unlike Japan’s nuclear reactors, French workers can strike and vote, so Macron sought only an extra two years. Hundreds of thousands are now striking, which if properly counted would push out the work life of a French worker another ten years.
And these are the sorts of manipulations that will be more common now that the world is transitioning from decades of financial over-engineering to a world of squeezing scarce resources out of a globalized economy that was over-optimized for peak profitability.
- Post #11,299
- Quote
- Edited 2:33am Feb 13, 2023 2:18am | Edited 2:33am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
https://seekingalpha.com/article/457...t-we-are-doing
I Called February's Big Reversal, Here's Why And What We're Doing
Feb. 13, 2023 12:14 AM
Summary
I Called February's Big Reversal, Here's Why And What We're Doing
Feb. 13, 2023 12:14 AM
Summary
- The S&P 500 is just too expensive at this level.
- It will be brought to heal by rising rates and lower earnings.
- A long-short strategy along with hedging the indexes and maintaining a cash management discipline creates the right configuration for trading success.
- This idea was discussed in more depth with members of my private investing community, Dual Mind Research. Learn More »
https://static.seekingalpha.com/cdn/...o=getty-c-w750
CowlickCreative/E+ via Getty Images
In my last piece, I called the current sell-off for February 1st.
I am starting to think I should just add two weeks to whatever turn in the market I am modeling for. Why am I so confident that a retreat is about to happen?
Why:
a) last year the market taught us a hard lesson, Price/Earnings Ratios can't grow to the sky.
b) Profits matter as much as revenue growth
c) stock price should be valued higher with profit growth, not hype.
d) The historic P/E ratio is from 15 to 16 times, at January's peak the S&P 500 PE ratio was well higher.
e) part of the rally in stocks was the retreat in interest rates, which was brought on by the mistaken notion that the Fed is going to pivot. So the Fed Presidents get to work to try to reverse Powell's interview where he appears to be sanguine, which only strengthens his re-introduction of disinflation to his description of our economy. They restate that interest rates still have a ways to go, and they are likely to remain elevated and restrictive for years. On Friday, February 3 market participants were treated to startlingly positive economic news - Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 517,000 in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.4 percent meeting a +50-year record low unemployment percentage.
This time "Good News was Bad News", lending credence to "Higher for Longer". This means higher interest rates for way longer.
This sets up for a "Key Reversal" and retreat on Thursday
I was surprised that the selling continued into Friday morning. I assumed that the dip-buyers would be coming in this morning to buy yesterday's lower prices. Instead, the dip buyers bought at the close, and the S&P close up 8 to 4090. That said, I think this reversal portends further selling to the end of February.
Last week we had the largest clearing of hedging in years as hedge funds and institutions closed out the most compared to mid-2022. In a massive repositioning to more risk-on tech names and junk stocks of January's massive stock rally. Money managers have cut $300 billion of bearish bets, robbing the market of pent-up demand just as the Federal Reserve warns its inflation-fighting battle is far from over.
All good things must come to an end and so it goes for January's Rally. This sharp reduction of hedging is getting the VIX starting to revivify as a reflection of market fear. Since it is only inevitable that hedge funds start hedging via short positions.
This chart was created on February 9
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...kXpUxP6uFk.png
tradingview
The above chart of the S&P 500 where the market will move lower. We see a double-top, and the uptrend has been broken. The S&P 500 is going down.
It all depends on interest rates as the 10-Y is inching up above the trading range it has been in for weeks. Friday the 10-Year was above 3.75%, above where it's been Also, the CPI reveal on Tuesday is the catalyst right now. As I mentioned above the rising share prices of tech names are only rising because of the interest rates were benign.
We have learned that the market eventually pays attention to shares that have inflated valuations. The higher the S&P climbs the more reactive to bad news and exhibit ennui on good news. The CPI (Consumer Price Index) could ignite even higher interest rates on a blip up in inflation or a retreat depending on whether it should further disinflation.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...Dbv2rGOe7s.png
tradingview
The new horizontal green line marks where I could see support coming in. Dip buyers will be hard-wired to dip a toe back into the Tech and Junk names.
The hopeless dream of a Fed pivot was pushing the stock market higher in January, led by its riskiest assets. The market hasn't earned this kind of happiness, or at least Wall Street's definition of happiness. At 18.3 times expected profits, (4090/223 Friday's close divided by the estimated '23 earnings) the S&P 500 is nearing levels unmoored from reality.
The market has sustained valuations above 18 times only twice in the past 30 years-in the tech bubble and during the peak of the pandemic rally. I'm thinking that the S&P will retreat enough to be in the 15 to 16 times range. Can the Index rise this year? Of course, as inflation continues to recede the Fed will finally stop raising. The S&P can go up in anticipation of the economy reigniting and profits rising. That's why I believe that we will be consolidating, I hate to repeat I covered this in my last article. Just let me add that we could get another jump like we had last month, but then gravity will take it back down. As the year goes on the range will narrow until a new direction will emerge. Odds are we will be back to a new bull market by 2024.
What we've been doing at the Dual Mind Community to take advantage of this market turn.
In my last piece in late January, I laid out the reason for our Long/Short approach to the market this year. Should we have embraced this strategy last year when the market was crashing? Yeah, well we started this approach last year when just hedging wasn't enough to stem the losses of one of the worst years for stocks in decades.
I try to be as real as I can be, looking back we should have gone with much larger hedges on the indexes and more short positions on individual stocks. As we all know hindsight is 20-20. We have continued to select individual stocks to generate alpha on the downside. We also have been trimming positions to build cash, according to the Cash Management Discipline. Personally, this meant reducing my "Tech Titan" stocks like Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), as well as Intuit (INTU), and ServiceNow (NOW).
It hurt to cut shares from these positions but part of CMD is to harvest profits incrementally. Now, I wait for these positions to retreat and I will reload at prices lower than where I sold them. Let's talk about new positions that I added since in my last article I was talking about the single stock shorts via Put options. I took advantage of a momentary dive in the price of Eli Lily (LLY), and I got shares as low as $319 to $327. If the sell-off that is developing LLY retreats back to this level I will add to it. Right now LLY bounced to $345, I will likely hold this position for as much as 12 months. I think LLY is going back to its old highs at least. I also have been rebuilding my position in Biohaven (BHVN) the price action is great. I added Caterpillar (CAT) on the long side, as well as Schlumberger (SLB), Transocean (RIG), and ShockWave Medical (SWAV).
I also added several more shorts via Put options: Expedia (EXPE), Affirm (AFRM), and PayPal (PYPL). All these names reported problematic earnings reports so if the overall market comes down further they should lose more than the overall market. I also have plenty of other longs but I have been holding them for months so I don't feel the need to list them. I am only saying this so that you don't think I am super bearish. I'm not, I refer back to my previous article and the beginning of this one. I just think the rally has gone way too far, and once it falls enough I will add back shares to older positions on the long side and start new ones.
I was relating my moves to the short side. The title of this article is "What We are doing". In our community, we generally take positions together, but that doesn't mean I am always the leader. In fact, some of the members have gone short against Tesla (TSLA). I am going to follow them into this position if I get an opportunity to find an entry point. We chat, discuss, and sometimes debate, no one has to follow the strategy. If I can't convince members, then I need to rethink a premise or opportunity. Ok, that is it, If the S&P 500 rallies on Monday I might add to my shorts, and trim more longs.
If you enjoy my weekly stock analysis articles, You will be happy to learn that I offer a subscription service Dual Mind Research. Serop Elmayan, a brilliant young man who brings a quantitative approach to surface high probability fast-money trades, and I are partners in this service so you get the benefit of two unique investing approaches.
My narrative style and his engineering approach will give you a unique value indeed. The first 2 weeks are free so check it out today for our latest ideas.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...3053703163.png
This article was written by
https://static.seekingalpha.com/imag...medium_pic.png
David H. Lerner
28.38K Followers
Author of Dual Mind Research
Proven quantitative & qualitative strategies generating consistent returns
I have been writing about stocks for about a decade. I take a multi-disciplined approach but I am not doctrinaire. I come from a technology background having a software consulting business for a number of decades and also took part in business development for tech media startups. I employ technical analysis when it's called for. I believe that market psychology plays a huge role.
My favorite explanation for charting is that charts are essentially a psychograph of sentiment about a stock. Market participants rely on narratives to explain a stock's appeal. If you can identify a narrative or trend as it is forming that can pay outsized rewards. I have an eclectic style and it might take you a few articles to "get" me. We now offer a subscription service: Dual Minds Research. I am partnering with Serop Elmayan, a quantitatively oriented trader that takes an engineer's approach to setting up trades. The chat room opens at 5 am.
I have already been up since 4 am scouring the news feeds, commodities, and futures to suss out how the day will start, I provide live minute-by-minute updates on the standard indicators and a few that we surface on our own. The chat officially closes at 430 pm, but I will often check at around 8 pm to post updates. Our Community utilizes the Cash Management Discipline, a simple trading style that we use as a discipline to counter the wild volatility we have to deal with today. Trading ideas will be surfaced almost daily. Serop will only provide trades that he has determined to have a high probability of success. Check us out.
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Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of SWAV either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Additional disclosure: The activities described in this article are regarding my trades and the activity of the Dual Mind Research Community. Don't take any of this content as a recommendation of what you should do. If you decide to make a trade or investment please do your own research, and make sure you understand the risks. The use of options can cause the loss of your entire investment in that option. If you don't understand options please avail yourself of your brokerage education regarding Options and all other forms of trading and investing. If your brokerage doesn't have a set of educational webinars and you are more of a beginner, consider moving to a different online broker.
- Post #11,300
- Quote
- Feb 13, 2023 2:36am Feb 13, 2023 2:36am
- | Commercial Member | Joined Dec 2014 | 11,735 Posts
5 Minute Chart of US30 (Dow 30) DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average)
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=YM&p=m5
https://finviz.com/elite.ashx?utm_so...eractive-chart
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=YM&p=m5
https://finviz.com/elite.ashx?utm_so...eractive-chart