Category: Quantitative Easing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, January 06, 2021
Fed Taper Nervous Breakdown / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Michael_Pento
The next time the Fed reduces its bond purchase program the market reaction should be more like a nervous breakdown rather than just a tantrum.
First let’s review a bit of the historical histrionics surrounding the initial Taper Tantrum. Back in September 2012, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing program was running at the level of $85 billion per month. The asset purchase program consisted of both Mortgage-Backed Securities and Treasuries. Then, in December 2012, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke expanded his massive QE 3 scheme by making its duration unlimited. But by May 2013, the time had finally arrived to start discussing the tapering of its asset purchases. And in December of that year Tapering officially began; with QE ending by October 2014. Of course, the Fed would be back in the QE game six years later. But at the time, the overwhelming consensus thinking was that the 100-year economic storm had passed and we would never witness such extraordinary actions by our central bank ever again.
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Sunday, November 08, 2020
Get Ready for a Post-Election ‘Fed Wave’ of Inflation / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: MoneyMetals
As accusations of voting irregularities mount, President Donald Trump’s legal team is descending on Pennsylvania and Georgia as well as multiple battleground states that have been called by media outlets for Joe Biden.
It will be an uphill battle for Trump to get to 270 electoral votes. As of this writing on Thursday morning, the final outcome of the presidential election remains uncertain.
One thing that is now certain: Voters denied Democrats the “blue wave” many pollsters and pundits had been forecasting.
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Sunday, September 13, 2020
Biden or Trump Will Keep The Money Spigots Open / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Stephen_McBride
Trump or Biden: who will be our next president? That’s the most pressing question in America right now. And in less than nine weeks, we’ll get our answer.
As I type, Biden leads in most polls. But betting markets say it’s a coin flip. Polls tend to be wrong, and betting markets are usually right.
But I’m not writing you today to predict who’ll come out on top. Or guess at what might change depending on who wins. (I’ll leave that to the talking heads on TV.)
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Wednesday, September 09, 2020
QE4EVER! / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Virtually everything that cannot be easily printed is rocketing higher which includes GOLD! It's not hard to see why as a consequence of rampant money printing by governments across the world in the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic economic depression. For instance the UK alone looks set to print about £550 billion this year most of which will be monetized by the Bank of England so that the government can pay the wages of about 1/3rd of Britains workforce for a good 6 months with likely many more economic stimulus measures to follow over the next 6 months towards fighting the Pandemics dire economic consequences.
Whilst the United States has printed $2.2 trillion of stimulus dollars to date with at least another $1.3 trillion to come, that's $3.5 trillion which dwarfs the 2008 financial crisis bailout of $720 billion. Funneling stimulus checks on an epic scale into the back pockets of every working age citizen. Printing money has REAL consequences which is REAL inflation hence what we have been witnessing in markets across the spectrum, and whist I have yet to take a peak at the housing markets, I would not be surprised if the UK housing market at least will start to experience a money printing inflationary boom over the coming year, this despite the fact that people have less disposable income to buy housing, but more on that in a future article.
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Friday, July 17, 2020
The Bizarre Mathematics Of How Negative Interest Rates Create Stratospheric Profits / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Dan_Amerman
There is an increasingly good chance that the United States could end up following Europe and Japan, and that the Federal Reserve could use its vast powers of monetary creation to force a move to negative interest rates.
If that deeply unnatural event happens, it will invert and distort the very foundations of investment pricing, in ways that are little understood by most investors today.
It will also - for a time - create an unnatural source of profits that most investors have no idea about, because it has never happened before in the United States (and is still in the early stages in the United Kingdom).
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Saturday, May 23, 2020
Fed Action Accelerates Boom-Bust Cycle; Not A Virus Crisis / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Kelsey_Williams
The 21st century was ushered in by fears about Y2k and how it might impact computer programming that was already in place. Part of the concern centered on the financial markets.
The Federal Reserve announced that they were ready to support the stock market and provide backup for financial institutions that might encounter difficulties.
The big day arrived and, other than an occasional glitch that seemed to be unrelated to the heightened global fears, the birth of the new century was pretty much uneventful. Overall, the markets remained relatively quiet. However, trouble was still brewing.
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Thursday, May 07, 2020
Quantitative INFLATION - Fed QE4EVER / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
Once money printing starts it never ends! Instead what happens is any unwinding of central bank balance sheets tends to be temporary in advance of the next crisis which tends to send balance sheets through the roof. This has been my consistent message for the past 10 years since Quantitative INFLATION began in 2008! And so the corona crisis has seen the Fed once more flood the markets with liquidity buying up all sorts of assess left right and centre from junk bonds, to stocks of bankrupt corporations to of course government bonds, and when the buying is done the Fed will likely have DOUBLED it's balance sheet from $4.2 trillion a couple of months ago to approaching $9 trillion!
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Monday, April 20, 2020
Federal Reserve Funds 165% Of Record Pandemic Deficit Spending Through Monetary Creation / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Dan_Amerman
Two extraordinary and unprecedented actions are being taken in the attempt to contain the economic damage from the national shutdown, and thereby attempt to prevent a depression. Each are on a scale we have never seen before, and each are almost certain to be very long lasting.
Even if the actions are "successful" - a depression is prevented and a severe recession is shortened - these radical actions occurring over a matter of months and years are not only likely to dominate our investments, savings and retirements throughout the rest of the 2020s, but they are likely to still be changing our lives decades from now, long after the COVID-19 pandemic has been forgotten by most.
Between the economic damage to the nation, the lost earnings and careers for individuals, and the costs of the containment of that damage, the shutdowns being used to "flatten the curve" are likely to be the single most expensive event in U.S. history. How the expenses of attempted containment are funded - will change everything, and the effects will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Central Banklers Playing Taps For The Middle Class / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Michael_Pento
It is not at all a mystery as to the cause of the wealth gap that exists between the very rich and the poor. Central bankers are the primary cause of this chasm that is eroding the foundation of the global middle class. The world’s poor are falling deeper into penury and at a faster pace, while the world's richest are accelerating further ahead. To this point, the 500 wealthiest billionaires on Earth added $1.2 trillion to their fortunes in 2019, boosting their collective net worth by 25%, to $5.9 trillion.
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Wednesday, January 08, 2020
The Fed Has Quietly Started QE4 / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: John_Mauldin
In September of last year, something still unexplained happened in the “repo” short-term financing market. Liquidity dried up, interest rates spiked, and the Fed stepped in to save the day.
Story over? No. The Fed has had to keep saving the day, every day, since then.
Tuesday, January 07, 2020
Stock Market Trend Forecast 2020 - QE4Ever! Video / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Nadeem_Walayat
My consistent message since QE money printing began a few weeks prior to the birth of this stocks bull market in March 2009, my message has been that once QE money printing starts then it NEVER ENDS! So LEVERAGE once self to the perma money printing INFLATION MEGA-TREND. Invest in assets that are LEVERAGED TO INFLATION.
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Saturday, December 21, 2019
Farewell Paul Volcker Hello Monetary Madness / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Michael_Pento
God bless Paul Volcker. He was truly a one of a kind central banker and we probably won't see another one like him ever again. It took his extreme bravery to crush the inflation caused by the monetary recklessness of Arthur Burns and the fiscal profligacy of Presidents Johnson & Nixon. Raising interest rates to 20% by March 1980 was wildly unpopular at the time. But in the end, it was what the nation needed and paved the way for a long period of economic stability and prosperity.Back in 1971 the world fully had developed a new monetary "technology". Governments learned that money need no longer be representative of prior efforts, or energy expended, or previous production, or have any real value whatsoever. It can be just created by a monetary magic wand; and done so without any baneful economic consequences.
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Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Central Planners: Out of Room and Running Out of Time / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Michael_Pento
One would have to place their trust in unicorns, sasquatch, leprechauns, and the tooth fairy to believe the current economic construct is sustainable. You also need to be woefully ignorant of history. In fact, there has never been a nation that engaged in massive debt monetization and did not eventually face hyperinflation, depression, and mass chaos. There is simply no such thing as magic, and you can’t build an economy on the foundation of debt, asset bubbles, and unlimited fiat money printing.
Perhaps the reason why the market hasn’t imploded yet is that the developed world has coordinated this so-called “strategy” of unbridled central bank lunacy to engage in permanent ZIRP and QE. Therefore, a currency crisis has been averted so far. However, now that these money printers have gone all-in, the next recession or freeze-up in credit markets cannot be averted by a dovish turnaround in monetary policies, as governments already have the gas pedal to the monetary and fiscal floor. The globe now has $255 trillion in debt, and the U.S alone is adding one trillion to that pile each year. The Fed is back in QE, along with the ECB and BOJ. And, no central bank in the developed world has room any longer to cut rates enough to boost consumption.
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Saturday, November 02, 2019
Fed’s Own Forecasts Again Dead Wrong as QE4 Accelerates / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: MoneyMetals
Precious metals markets enter November’s trading with bulls eying a potential year-end rally.
Gold and silver prices did manage to post gains on Wednesday and Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced a quarter point rate cut. But the Fed followed up its move with language suggesting interest rate policy is now on pause.
News Anchor #1: The Federal Reserve cut the benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point. It's now at 1.5% to 1.75%. The rate cuts come on a global slowdown; they say. Also muted inflation. Now the Fed does signal in this statement a pause for future rate cuts. The Federal Reserve statement changes the words from “act as appropriate” to “assess.”
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Saturday, October 26, 2019
The Fed’s “Not QE” Is Morphing into “QE4ever” / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: MoneyMetals
Another week, another new and expanded repo market intervention by the Federal Reserve. On Thursday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York intervened twice with fresh liquidity injections. Fed officials raised their offerings for overnight repos up from $75 billion to a staggering $120 billion.
This comes on top of the $60 billion per month in Treasury bill purchases that will extend well into next year and possibly beyond. Over the past month alone, the Fed's balance sheet has soared by $200 billion.
You might think numbers like these should be quite alarming to investors and to anyone who holds U.S. dollars. But the strange thing about these Fed interventions is that hardly anyone seems alarmed. There’s no sense of rising risk being priced into the stock market. And the mainstream media is barely even mentioning these massive transfers of paper wealth.
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Friday, October 18, 2019
Federal Reserve’s New QE Transfers Wealth to Its Owner Banks / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: MoneyMetals
Metals investors are positioning themselves for rapidly developing political and geopolitical events, as well as a rapidly expanding Federal Reserve balance sheet.
What started out as a limited intervention to provide temporary liquidity to overnight lending markets has morphed into a massive $60-billion-per-month Treasury-buying campaign. By some measures, it’s even bigger than the last Quantitative Easing program.
The Fed has yet to fully explain why this is all necessary given the lack of an immediate crisis in the real economy. Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell took great pains to insist that their expanded repo market operations are “not QE” – only to announce a massive new Treasury bill buying program on Friday.
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Wednesday, October 16, 2019
This Is Not a Money Printing Press / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Peter_Schiff
Rene Magritte's 1929 painting "The Treachery of Images," depicts a tobacco pipe with a caption that reads "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," (French for "This is not a pipe"). Everyone who has taken a course in modern art knows that Magritte's exercise in contradiction was meant to draw a distinction between a real thing and a representation of that thing. Perhaps we should send Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell a beret and an easel as he is attempting a similarly surrealistic take on monetary policy.
Early last week, the Chairman announced a new, as yet unnamed, Fed program through which the bank will now buy regular amounts of short-term U.S. government debt. Seeking to counter the rumblings that a new form of quantitative easing would be seen as an admission that the economy may be in trouble, Chairman Powell asserted during the annual meeting of NABE on October 8, "This is not QE. In no sense is this QE". In other words, "Ceci n'est pas QE."
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Monday, August 12, 2019
Global Central Banks Move To Keep The Party Rolling Onward / Stock-Markets / Quantitative Easing
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The recent news that the US Fed, China and many of the global central banks are continuing to make efforts to lower rates and spark further consumer spending and economic activity is reminiscent of the late 2010~2013 global economic recovery efforts. This was a time when the economy was much slower than current levels and when central banks were doing everything possible to attempt to raise consumer and business activity related to capital.
The world’s governments and banks operate on a very simple premise – transactions and economic activity must continue to operate within a fairly standard range of consistency in order for tax revenues and transactional fees to drive profits/income. If extended periods of economic contraction persist, the capacity to function within standard operating parameters diminishes very quickly for these institutions. A -5% to -10% contraction in asset values, transactional business, tax revenues and/or consumer activity over an extended period of time could result in a catastrophic set of events taking place.
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Tuesday, July 30, 2019
US Fed Infinite QE Forever at Zero Bound / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Jim_Willie_CB
The widespread profound and recognized global recession, complete with numerous icon corporate failures, will lead the US Federal Reserve to return to unlimited Quantitative Easing with a Zero Percent chaser. The Jackass calls it a return to Infinite QE Forever at the Zero Bound. Not only is the double step of return to QE with a sequence of interest rate cuts urgently necessary, but the financial markets are demanding it. In fact, they are holding the USFed hostage, as the venerable august body is backed into a policy corner. This time seems different. For ten years, the USFed has relied upon coordinated policy with the Euro Central Bank, having used all the most extreme measures, yet has a systemic failure on its hands. Witness extreme monetary policy failure. The systemic failure is both financial and economic. The bond purchase program wrecked the bond market by driving away legitimate investors, while the ultra-low interest rates wrecked the economy by distorting asset allocation.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
We Are in for Decades of Ultra-Loose Monetary Policy / Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing
By: Jared_Dillian
President Trump recently nominated Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She is the United States director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which I had never heard of until her nomination.
Shelton is a Republican and believes in the adoption of a gold standard. She currently believes in lowering interest rates, after spending the Obama years criticizing the Fed for lowering interest rates.
You may wonder how a person can be in favor of a gold standard and also for lowering interest rates at the same time.
I am wondering that, too.