WTF Chart Of The Week

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Back in early October, I noted that repo fails had jumped above $250 billion (combined “to receive” and “to deliver”) for three weeks straight. That wasn’t an auspicious result, as sustained collateral problems like that don’t correlate to happy things. It all began the week of September 5, in what seemed like a minor one-day nuisance over the 4-week bill yield.

October was something of lull in repo and other things, too. Nothing ever goes in a straight line, of course, so it wasn’t surprising to find by mid-November a resumption of concerns based so much in repo. The week of Thanksgiving, fails totaled again more than $400 billion, similar in scale to that week of September 5. Then they spiked by 50% more to $600 billion the week after.

FRBNY records $523 billion in repo fails now for the first week of December. That’s three straight more than $400 billion, two in a row better than half a trillion.

The 8-week average is even just shy of $350 billion. You can get rich being a collateral owner under these terms, raising the question where are they all?

While these are good charts, important charts, neither is our Chart of the Week. What we are looking for in this context of really another burgeoning “dollar shortage” episode is, as always, escalation.

I’m going to go out on a limb and claim there is something seriously wrong in repo.

 

All jokes aside, I know it sounds like a broken record but the dimension that matters is not intermittent collateral problems so much as the greater intensity to them and in a condensing timeframe. Escalation is a description you really don’t want to fit the circumstances.

Just as raging wildfires have a horrific tendency to jump fire-lines and even whole valleys given enough energy, funding issues can jump markets. The global “dollar” market is not a monolithic whole and never has been. It may be (very likely is) more fragmented today than at any point in the past owing to persistent balance sheet capacity problems (therefore the breakdown of covered interest parity that used to keep various funding markets working together in what sure seemed like a seamless whole). It would be a clear point of magnification, then, to find serious problems in one part of the eurodollar system spilling over into another one.

Leading us to our Chart of the Week:

The 3-month €/$ cross currency basis swap has plunged this week, a descent that really started the week after Thanksgiving. It has reached a level today last seen during the 2011 crisis. And this latest detour clearly marks its inflection where else but the week of September 5. In other words, you rarely find an exact match like the one we have here repo to €/$ swaps.

This particular instrument isn’t alone among XCurrBasisSwaps, either, it is merely the tenor and counterpart currency that right now is at the most extreme.

Because these are two very different funding mechanisms, repo and FX (Footnote dollars), there can be little doubt what is really at issue – “dollar” shortage as a matter of supply and therefore balance sheet capacity.

That’s the one common element linking collateral flow with the severe unwillingness (broken covered interest parity) to make a killing lending FX dollars to euro counterparties.

 

This doesn’t mean there is a crash right ahead. It does, however, suggest coming difficulties in various markets and more than that the global economy.

You can blame regulations all you want, as the mainstream has already rushed to do, being forced by such a huge move in €/$ cross to at least report on it, but there is no way this comes out as anything other than an escalating warning.

As a reminder, what negative premiums on XCurrBasisSwaps mean:

The cross currency basis swap is somewhat unique in that by fixing exchange values at both the outset and back end, it reveals purely financial perceptions in its values and changing values about the differences in interest payments. For example, in the 1990’s the basis swap for Japanese banks (again, not companies) was structurally negative, meaning that they had to pay a premium to swap into dollar funding because of negative perceptions of creditworthiness. This is the legacy of the downside of the “global dollar short”, as Japanese banks had accumulated large dollar asset positions (long US$ assets, short US$ funding) leaving them susceptible to such vagaries in dollar funding, whether repo or basis swaps or anything else someone on Wall Street or in London might dream up that wasn’t gold or actual cash…

 

The negative yen basis swap acts like leverage where even yields on the interim “investment” are negative. Any speculator or bank with spare “dollars” could lend them in a yen basis swap meaning an exchange into yen. Because you end up with yen you are forced into some really bad investment choices such as slightly negative 5-year government bonds, but that is just part of the cost of keeping risk on your yen side low. Instead, the real money is made in the basis swap itself since it now trades so highly negative. The very fact of that basis swap spread means a huge premium on spare dollars; which is another way of saying there is a “dollar” shortage.

 

Because of the shortage and its premium, you can swap into yen and invest in negative yielding JGB’s in size and still make out handsomely. There has been, in fact, a rush of foreign “money” into Japan to take advantage of this dollar shortage; the fact that there has been such enthusiasm and it still has not alleviated the imbalance proves scale and intractability.

UBS Is Using Ethereum Technology To Soften The Impact Of MiFid II

After devising blockchain-based systems to help facilitate equity and bond trading (remember Goldman’s cryptocoin?) as well as derivatives clearing, some of the leading banks in the blockchain space are banding together to build a system that they hope will help banks streamline another essential function: Compliance.

According to CoinDesk, UBS is leading an Ethereum-based project designed to make it easier for banks to reconcile a wide range of data about their counterparties. Barclays, Credit Suisse, KBC, SIX and Thomson Reuters have also signed on to the project. The project is meant to soften the impact of MiFid II, a set of new European banking regulations that will go live shortly after New Year’s.

Traditionally, regulated firms use what are called "legal entity identifiers" that are stored in a global data system to execute transactions on behalf of clients, even if those clients themselves don"t have one of the codes. But as part of a sweeping regulatory change called the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II, scheduled to go live in the EU on Jan. 3, 2018, all eligible legal entities will be required to have and use these codes.

 

Instead of mandating that each of these institutions perform these checks independently, though, the banks built Madrec to mutualize much of the effort in a potentially industry-wide reconciliation process hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Peter Stephens, the head of UBS’s blockchain research and development efforts, explained how the system was designed, and to what end. Surprisingly, out of the many blockchain or distributed ledger projects that UBS is involved with (R3, Hyperledger etc.), Stephens said he expects the compliance project to be the first to go live.

Built over a six-month period, the platform evolved into a smart contract-powered network designed to integrate with identifiers endorsed by The Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC) and others. The reconciliation of the LEI reference data includes industry classification and information from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

 

Instead of each company checking the information independently, and reconciling the results periodically, the blockchain smart contracts will ensure accuracy in almost real-time.

 

To do this, the anonymized reference data is hashed to the Ethereum blockchain, while the source data itself remains within the institution. The smart contracts then reconcile the data, letting users quickly identify anomalies and reconcile them.

 

Since every eligible entity will be held to those same standards, Stephens argues that helping one another ensure the accuracy of their work will only positively impact their respective bottom lines, leaving room for competition elsewhere.

UBS is hardly the only major European bank that’s investing heavily in blockchain technology. In a presentation obtained by CoinDesk, Christian Nolting, also the bank’s global head of wealth, and Marcus Muller, global head of the CIO office, explained digital currencies and blockchain to their fellow bankers.

In the presentation, the bankers asserted that the  “opportunities associated with blockchain technologies are huge,” and could be fully put into practice within the next few years.

And in what"s possibly one of most grandiose predictions about blockchain"s impact on the global economy, the bankers predicted that roughly 10% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) would be tracked or otherwise "regulated" by a blockchain by 2027.

Read the presentation in its entirety below:

 

Cio Insights Reflections - Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains - Emea - Client Ready by zerohedge on Scribd

 

Eat Gold

Submitted by BullionStar.com

A popular phrase in segments of the mainstream financial media is that “You Can’t Eat Gold”. We don’t know who first uttered this comment, but it was more than likely a talking-head or Wall Street analyst on CNBC or Bloomberg.

The disparaging claim seems to be based on concluding that in a financial or monetary crisis, if you own gold, that “You Can’t Eat It”. And so, according to the logic of whoever came up with the phrase, this would make gold useless during a financial crisis.

In addition to the misleading and irrelevant nature of the comment, which we will discuss below, the claim that “you can’t eat gold” is actually factually wrong. And that is because you can eat gold. And also drink it.

Eating and Drinking Gold

While gold can be eaten, it cannot be digested. But it is non-toxic to the human body. And it does not react chemically in the human body. That is why gold can and does appear safely in a number of foods and drinks, not surprisingly foods and drinks which are predominantly at the luxury end of the market.

Some readers will have heard of Goldschläger, a Swiss/Italian liquor which has flakes gold suspended within it. On a similar note, a Swiss gin called ‘Studer Swiss Gold Gin’ also contains flakes of gold. Staying within Switzerland, you can also buy edible gold products including “Swiss chocolate truffles with gold flakes”. Not to be outdone by the Swiss, the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) offers a ‘Palace Cappucino” which is sprinkled with gold flakes.

In Selfridges department store in London, you can buy a “billionaires soft serve” ice cream cone topped with both sprinklings of gold leaf and a gold leaf covered flake. While in New York, in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a high-end restaurant offers a "Golden Opulence Sundae” topped with gold leaf, for US$ 1000 a glass. Back in England, a specialist cheese producer in Leicestershire created Britain"s most expensive cheese - "Clawson Stilton Gold", a stilton cheese interwoven with edible gold leaf and shot-through with gold liqueur. These uses of gold in food and beverages illustrate that gold is a sought after and prestigious substance, but also that gold is real, that gold is tangible and that gold is of value.

Wall Street"s Selective Focus

The logic of the “you can’t eat gold” comment, as well as being wrong, is also flawed. Because by extension, you can’t eat any of Wall Street"s favorite investment assets. Imagine chewing on financial securities or fiat currencies. But whoever coined the phrase “you can’t eat gold” conveniently failed to mention this on CNBC. We would challenge anyone, especially CNBC and MSNBC, to eat share certificates or bond certificates or the electronic equivalent thereof.

Nor can you eat the electronic coins of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum’s Ether or Litecoin. Real assets such as art, antiques, real estate, agricultural land, or vintage cars are also off the menu. A possible exception is that can drink an expensive investment wine collection, but would you really want to do this, as then you would be consuming your principal investment?

Wall Street analysts fail to mention that you can"t eat stocks and ETFs

Gold"s Many and Varied Benefits

But beyond the fact that you can in fact eat gold, and that Wall Street never points out the non-edibility of stocks and bonds, there are many beneficial reasons to buy and own investment grade physical gold of which we recently pointed out in 28 reasons to buy and own physical gold. What we are talking about is real physical gold in the form of gold bars and gold coins. This is true both during times of financial crisis, and also over the long-term as a form of investment and savings.

Gold is without doubt the ultimate safe haven asset. In times of financial crisis and turmoil, investors and savers flock to gold as a wealth preservation strategy. The reason for investing in gold during times of crisis is based on the fact that investors instinctively know that the gold price behaves differently to the prices of other assets, particularly during crises. This is because the gold price moves independently of economic and business cycles.

In times of war and social upheaval, physical gold"s benefits also come to the fore. Since gold has a high value to weight ratio, significant personal wealth can discreetly be carried in the form of gold across borders and frontiers and within areas of conflict.

Since gold is a universal money supported by a highly liquid global market, it will always be accepted everywhere at the going gold price. Gold can easily be sold. Gold can easily be traded or even bartered with, especially in non-functioning economies where the local paper currency has collapsed or has become worthless. The fact that gold coins are regularly issued to elite military personnel in areas of conflict attests to gold"s critical benefits in times of monetary crisis and localized economic collapse.

Gold as Store of Value

But gold is not just of use during financial crises. It is also an essential asset to own over the long-term as a strategic form of saving and investment. Physical gold retains its purchasing power over long periods of time. This is in contrast to fiat currencies issued by the world"s central banks, which generally lose most of their purchasing power over time. In other words, gold is a great hedge against inflation, as the gold price adjusts upwards to offset inflation. The gold price even adjusts to inflation expectations, hence it is sometimes called an inflation barometer and is watched like a hawk by central bankers because the gold price signals future inflation.

Physical gold is also an asset without counterparty risk. This is because when you own physical gold in the form of gold bars or gold coins, there are no counterparties. In other words, the physical gold that you own outright is no one else"s liability. Nor are there any governments or central banks involved in issuing gold, or in trying to increase and debase its supply. Gold also lacks default risk, because it cannot default.

Physical gold is also inherently valuable because it is a scarce precious metal that is difficult and costly to mine and refine. Gold"s price will never go to zero because it has a finite and significant production cost. Physical gold is difficult to counterfeit, impossible to create artificially, and cannot be debased.

These are just some of the reasons for buying and owning physical gold. Please see BullionStar"s recent article "28 Reasons to Buy Physical Gold" for a  list of reasons why you should consider buying physical gold.

Gold in Zimbabwe & Venezuela & South Korea

In the real world, owning physical gold can be of critical importance in scenarios where trust in a nation"s money supply has evaporated, such as is currently the case in Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

Gold can also be of critical importance when entire nations suffer economic shocks.  A case in point is the interesting experience of South Korea during the Asian financial crisis that swept the region in the late 1990s. This crisis left the South Korean economy severely impaired, with it’s currency, the Won, collapsing against the US dollar.

In addition to a bailout by the International Monetary Fund, the South Korean government also launched a patriotic campaign in early 1998 to actually collect physical gold from the South Korean citizens which was then sold on the international market to raise much-needed foreign currency. This collective campaign was pursued precisely because the South Korean government understood that gold is a high-quality liquid asset that has substantial value.

National Mobilization of Gold

By mid-March 1998, the South Korean citizenry had donated more than 220 tonnes of gold, worth over US$2 billion, in the form of investment gold coins and bars, and other gold in the form of rings, jewelry, and gold medals. More than 3 million households were said to have contributed. This collective mobilization of gold to overcome a nation"s economic adversity and raise financing is a great illustration of how gold comes to the fore in a time of crisis, due to its store of value, safe haven, and high liquidity characteristics.

In conclusion, knowing the many compelling reasons to buy and hold gold, and how gold can sometimes be a lifeline in a time of crisis, the claim that "you can"t eat gold" is exposed for what it is, misguided and disingenuous, and shows either ignorance on the part of the people who use it, or more likely, a deliberate intention to mislead and deceive.

This article originally appeared under the same title on the BullionStar.com website.

ECB Proposes End To Deposit Protection

Submitted by GoldCore

It is the "opinion of the European Central Bank" that the deposit protection scheme is no longer necessary:

"covered deposits and claims under investor compensation schemes should be replaced by limited discretionary exemptions to be granted by the competent authority in order to retain a degree of flexibility."

To translate the legalese jargon of the ECB bureaucrats this could mean that the current €100,000 (£85,000) deposit level currently protected in the event of a bail-in may soon be no more. But worry not fellow savers, as the ECB is fully aware of the uproar this may cause so they have been kind enough to propose that:

"...during a transitional period, depositors should have access to an appropriate amount of their covered deposits to cover the cost of living within five working days of a request."

So that"s a relief, you"ll only need to wait five days for some "competent authority" to deem what is an "appropriate amount" of your own money for you to have access to in order eat, pay bills and get to work.

The above has been taken from an ECB paper published on 8 November 2017 entitled "on revisions to the Union crisis management framework".

It"s 58 pages long, the majority of which are proposed amendments to the Union crisis management framework and the current text of the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD).

It"s pretty boring reading but there are some key snippets which should be raising a few alarms. It is evidence that once again a central bank can keep manipulating situations well beyond the likes of monetary policy. It is also a lesson for savers to diversify their assets in order to reduce their exposure to counterparty risks.

Bail-ins, who are they for?

According to the May 2016 Financial Stability Review, the EU bail-in tool is "welcome" as it:

 

 

...contributes to reducing the burden on taxpayers when resolving large, systemic financial institutions and mitigates some of the moral hazard incentives associated with too-big-to-fail institutions.

As we have discussed in the past, we"re confused by the apparent separation between "taxpayer" and those who have put their hard-earned cash into the bank. After all, are they not taxpayers? This doesn"t matter, believes Matthew C.Klein in the FT who recently arguedthat "Bail-ins are theoretically preferable because they preserve market discipline without causing undue harm to innocent people."

 

Ultimately bail-ins are so central banks can keep their merry game of easy money and irresponsibility going. They have been sanctioned because rather than fix and learn from the mess of the bailouts nearly a decade ago, they have just decided to find an even bigger band-aid to patch up the system.

 

 

"Bailouts, by contrast, are unfair and inefficient. Governments tend to do them, however, out of misplaced concern about “preserving the system”. This stokes (justified) resentment that elites care about protecting their friends more than they care about helping regular people." - Matthew C. Klein

But what about the regular people who have placed their money in the bank, believing they"re safe from another financial crisis? Are they not "innocent" and deserving of protection?

When Klein wrote his latest on bail-ins, it was just over a week before the release of this latest ECB paper. With fairness to Klein at the time of his writing depositors with less than €100,000 in the bank were protected under the terms of the ECB covered deposit rules.

This still seemed absurd to us who thought it questionable that anyone"s money in the bank could suddenly be sanctioned for use to prop up an ailing institution. We have regularly pointed out that just because there is currently a protected level at which deposits will not be pilfered, this could change at any minute.

The latest proposed amendments suggest this is about to happen.

 

Why change the bail-in rules?

The ECB"s 58-page amendment proposal is tough going but it is about halfway through when you come across the suggestion that "covered deposits" no longer need to be protected. This is determined because the ECB is concerned about a run on the failing bank:

 

 

If the failure of a bank appears to be imminent, a substantial number of covered depositors might still withdraw their funds immediately in order to ensure uninterrupted access or because they have no faith in the guarantee scheme.

This could be particularly damning for big banks and cause a further crisis of confidence in the system:

 

 

Such a scenario is particularly likely for large banks, where the sheer amount of covered deposits might erode confidence in the capacity of the deposit guarantee scheme. In such a scenario, if the scope of the moratorium power does not include covered deposits, the moratorium might alert covered depositors of the strong possibility that the institution has a failing or likely to fail assessment.

Therefore, argue the ECB the current moratorium that protects deposits could be "counterproductive". (For the banks, obviously, not for the people whose money it really is:

 

 

The moratorium would therefore be counterproductive, causing a bank run instead of preventing it. Such an outcome could be detrimental to the bank’s orderly resolution, which could ultimately cause severe harm to creditors and significantly strain the deposit guarantee scheme. In addition, such an exemption could lead to a worse treatment for depositor funded banks, as the exemption needs to be factored in when determining the seriousness of the liquidity situation of the bank. Finally, any potential technical impediments may require further assessment.

The ECB instead proposes that "certain safeguards" be put in place to allow restricted access to deposits...for no more than five working days. But let"s see how long that lasts for.

 

 

Therefore, an exception for covered depositors from the application of the moratorium would cast serious doubts on the overall usefulness of the tool. Instead of mandating a general exemption, the BRRD should instead include certain safeguards to protect the rights of depositors, such as clear communication on when access will be regained and a restriction of the suspension to a maximum of five working days by avoiding a cumulative use by the competent authority and the resolution authority.

Even after a year of studying and reading bail-ins I am still horrified that something like this is deemed to be preferable and fairer to other solutions, namely fixing the banking system. The bureaucrats running the EU and ECB are still blind to the pain such proposals can cause and have caused.

Look to Italy for damage prevention

At the beginning of the month, we explained how the banking meltdown in Veneto Italy destroyed 200,000 savers and 40,000 businesses.

In that same article, we outlined how exposed Italians were to the banking system. Over €31 billion of sub-retail bonds have been sold to everyday savers, investors, and pensioners. It is these bonds that will be sucked into the sinkhole each time a bank goes under.

A 2015 IMF study found that the majority of Italy’s 15 largest banks a bank rescue would ‘imply bail-in of retail investors of subordinated debt’. Only two-thirds of potential bail-ins would affect senior bond-holders, i.e. those who are most likely to be institutional investors rather than pensioners with limited funds.

Why is this the case? As we have previously explained:

 

 

Bondholders are seen as creditors. The same type of creditor that EU rules state must take responsibility for a bank’s financial failure, rather than the taxpayer. This is a bail-in scenario.

 

In a bail-in scenario the type of junior bonds held by the retail investors in the street is the first to take the hit. When the world’s oldest bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena collapsed ordinary people (who also happen to be taxpayers) owned €5 billion ($5.5 billion) of subordinated debt. It vanished.

Despite the biggest bail-in in history occurring within the EU, few people have paid attention and protested against such measures. A bail-in is not unique to Italy, it is possible for all those living and banking within the EU.

Yet, so far there have been no protests. We"re not talking about protesting on the streets, we"re talking about protesting where it hurts - with your money.

As we have seen from the EU"s response to Brexit and Catalonia, officials could not give two hoots about the grievances of its citizens. So when it comes to banking there is little point in expressing disgust in the same way. Instead, investors must take stock and assess the best way for them to protect their savings from the tyranny of central bank policy.

To refresh your memory, the ECB is proposing that in the event of a bail-in it will give you an allowance from your own savings. An allowance it will control:

"...during a transitional period, depositors should have access to an appropriate amount of their covered deposits to cover the cost of living within five working days of a request."

Savers should be looking for means in which they can keep their money within instant reach and their reach only. At this point physical, allocated and segregated gold and silver comes to mind. This gives you outright legal ownership. There are no counterparties who can claim it is legally theirs (unlike with cash in the bank) or legislation that rules they get first dibs on it. Gold and silver are the financial insurance against bail-ins, political mismanagement, and overreaching government bodies. As each year goes by it becomes more pertinent than ever to protect yourself from such risks.

 

The Greatest Fear Today: The Lack Of Fear

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Market crashes often happen not when everyone is worried about them, but when no one is worried about them.

Complacency and overconfidence are good leading indicators of an overvalued market set for a correction or worse. Prominent magazine covers are notorious for declaring a boundless bull market right at the top just before a crash or correction.

October 19 saw the thirtieth anniversary of the greatest one-day percentage stock market crash in U.S. history - a 22% fall on October 19, 1987. In today’s Dow points, a 22% decline would equal a one-day drop of over 5,000 points!

I remember October 19, 1987 well. I was chief credit officer of a major government bond dealer. We didn’t have the internet back then, but we did have trading screens with live quotes. I couldn’t believe what I was watching at first, but by 2:00 in the afternoon we were all glued to our screens.

It was like being a passenger on a plane that was crashing, but you had no way out of the plane. Our firm was fine (bonds rallied as stocks crashed), but we were concerned about counterparties going bankrupt and not being able to pay us on our winning bets in bonds.

What’s troubling is that a lot of commentators said that the kind of crash that took place in 1987 couldn’t happen today and that markets were much safer. It’s true that circuit breakers and market closures could temporarily halt a slide better than we did in 1987. But those devices buy time, they don’t solve the underlying fear and panic that causes market crashes.

In any case, when I hear market pros say “It can’t happen again” it sounds to me like another market crash is just around the corner.

The problem with a market meltdown in today’s even more deeply interconnected markets, is that once it strikes, it’s difficult to contain. It can spread rapidly. Likewise, there’s no guarantee that a stock market meltdown will be contained to stocks.

Panic can quickly spread to bonds, emerging markets, and currencies in a general liquidity crisis as happened in 2008.

Why should investors be so concerned right now?

For almost a year, one of the most profitable trading strategies has been to sell volatility. That’s about to change…

Since the election of Donald Trump stocks have been a one-way bet. They almost always go up, and have hit record highs day after day. The strategy of selling volatility has been so profitable that promoters tout it to investors as a source of “steady, low-risk income.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, sellers of volatility have made steady profits the past year. But the strategy is extremely risky and you could lose all of your profits in a single bad day.

Think of this strategy as betting your life’s savings on red at a roulette table. If the wheel comes up red, you double your money. But if you keep playing eventually the wheel will come up black and you’ll lose everything.

That’s what it’s like to sell volatility. It feels good for a while, but eventually a black swan appears like the black number on the roulette wheel, and the sellers get wiped out. I focus on the shocks and unexpected events that others don’t see.

The chart below shows a 20-year history of volatility spikes. You can observe long periods of relatively low volatility such as 2004 to 2007, and 2013 to mid-2015, but these are inevitably followed by volatility super-spikes.

During these super-spikes the sellers of volatility are crushed, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy because they can’t cover their bets.

The period from mid-2015 to late 2016 saw some brief volatility spikes associated with the Chinese devaluation (August and December 2015), Brexit (June 23, 2016) and the election of Donald Trump (Nov. 8, 2016). But, none of these spikes reached the super-spike levels of 2008 – 2012.

In short, we have been on a volatility holiday. Volatility is historically low and has remained so for an unusually long period of time. The sellers of volatility have been collecting “steady income,” yet this is really just a winning streak at the volatility casino.

I expect the wheel of fortune to turn and for luck to run out for the sellers.

Here are the key volatility drivers we should be most concerned about:

The North Korean nuclear crisis is simply not going away. In fact, it seems to be getting worse. Intelligence indicates that North Korea successfully tested a hydrogen bomb in September. This is a major development.

An atomic weapon has to hit the target to destroy it. A hydrogen bomb just has to come close. This means than North Korea can pose an existential threat to U.S. cities even if its missile guidance systems are not quite perfected. Close is good enough.

A hydrogen bomb also gives North Korea the ability to unleash an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). In this scenario, the hydrogen bomb does not even strike the earth; it is detonated near the edge of space. The resulting electromagnetic wave from the release of energy could knock out the entire U.S. power grid.

Trump will not allow that to happen, and you can expect a U.S. attack, maybe early next year.

Another ticking time bomb for a volatility spike is Washington, DC dysfunction, and the potential for a government shutdown in December…

Analysts who warn about government shutdowns are often viewed as the boy who cried wolf. We’ve had a few government shutdowns in recent years, most recently in 2013, and two in the 1990s.

These were considered true government shutdowns in the sense that Congress did not authorize spending for any agency, and all “non-essential” government employees were put on furlough. (Critical functions such as military, TSA, postal service and air traffic control continue regardless of any shutdown).

These shutdowns don’t last long. They are usually for one political party or the other to make its point about spending priorities, and are soon compromised in the form of higher spending and a return to business as usual.

Government shutdowns because of lack of spending authority are different from government shutdowns due to lack of borrowing authority and the Treasury’s inability to pay its bills, or hitting the so-called “debt ceiling.”

We had a debt ceiling shutdown in 2011. Those are far more dangerous to markets because they call into question the Treasury’s ability to pay the national debt. We’ve had two near shutdowns this year; one in March, and again at the end of September. Both times Congress passed a last minute “continuing resolution” or CR that keeps government funding at current levels and keeps the doors open until a final budget can be worked out.

The current CR expires on December 8.

This time the odds are high that the government actually will shut down. Why should investors be any more concerned about this shutdown than the one in 2013 or the near misses earlier this year?

There are several causes for concern.

The first is that there is less room for compromise. The White House wants funding for the Wall with Mexico. Many Republican members of Congress want to defund Planned Parenthood. The Democrats will not vote for the Wall or to defund Planned Parenthood, but do want more funding for Obamacare.

There is no middle ground on any of these issues so the chance of a long shutdown is quite high.

The second reason is that this shutdown comes at a time when the U.S. in facing an increased risk of war with North Korea, and Congress has many other tasks on its plate including tax reform, confirmation of a new Fed Chairman, the “Dreamers” legislation, and more. Political dysfunction in Washington can easily spill over into markets.

This time the wolf may be real.

In short, the catalysts for a volatility spike are all in place. We could even get a record super-spike in volatility if several of these catalysts converge.

The “risk on / risk off” dynamic that has dominated most markets since 2013 is coming to an end. From now on it may just be “risk off” without much relief. The illusion of low volatility, ample liquidity, and ever rising stock prices is over.

It has been nine years since the last financial panic so a new one tomorrow should come as no surprise.

The safe havens will be the euro, cash, gold and low-debt emerging markets such as Russia. The areas to avoid are U.S. stocks, China, South Korea and heavily indebted emerging markets.

It may not look like it now, but it could be a volatile and bumpy ride ahead.

Another One Of The World"s Largest ICOs Is Collapsing

Last month, we reported that the world’s largest ICO was imploding after just three months as its developers admitted they wouldn’t be able to deliver the tokens purchased during a $230 million July “presale” by the end of the year, as they had promised, causing an understandable furor among its investors.

Now, in the latest sign that the $3 billion ICO market is imploding, Bloomberg report’s that the value of formerly high flying Bancor, the world’s fifth-largest ICO by funds raised, has plunged by more than 50% since the company’s June ICO as investors have become disillusioned with its obscure product.

Bancor attracted big name venture capitalists like Tim Draper this year when it published a white paper proposing to create a kind of decentralized digital currency exchange that would allow holders of the Bancor tokens to exchange them for other digital currencies listed on their market-making platform - a functionality, its creators insisted, that would one day render digital currency exchanges obsolete.

But while it’s founders delivered a compelling pitch, beneath the surface was a product that was, at best, needless complex, and at worst, downright nonsensical.

Of course, the obliqueness of Bancor"s plan showcases a common trope in the ICO market whereby companies say they’re “improving” on the “user experience” of a product that most users are already satisfied with - except instead of creating a more streamlined solution, they propose to make it needlessly more complex by involving “decentralized” systems and monetizable tokens.

The result is a soup of hypertechnical gibberish, and a use-case that, tellingly, only the people building the product seem to understand. For many investors, that should trigger nightmarish flashbacks to synthetic CDOs (which are themselves experiencing something of a renaissance led by Citigroup) and other arcane credit derivatives that helped crash the economy and market in 2008.

Cornell professor Emin Gun Sirer, in a takedown of Bancor published shortly after the ICO, validated this view, arguing that Bancor’s formula is less efficient than simply making the market manually, Sirer says. And they say the technology could also be vulnerable to front running, where people make money off of the visibility of others’ transactions.

Here’s Bancor’s explanation of its functionality from its white paper:

Abstract: The Bancor Protocol enables the creation of networks of smart contract-based “Smart Token.” Smart Token hold balances of one or more other tokens--“Connectors”--and have a builtin autonomous conversion mechanism that allows any party to instantly purchase or sell the Smart Toke for one of its Connectors, directly through the Smart Toke contract, at a price calculated by a formula which balances buy and sell volumes.

 

Bancor believes that Smart Token can address the challenge of liquidity  faced by conventional tokens, cryptocurrencies, and community currencies on three levels. First, and most fundamentally, by being autonomously convertible for their Connectors, and with an unconstrained supply that grows in response to purchases, each individual Smart Token has built-in liquidity that does not depend on counterparties or exchanges. Second, Bancor has developed specialized Smart Token that enable inter-convertibility between any two other Smart Token or, with an added step, between any Smart Token and any conventional Ethereum network token. Third, Bancor’s ultimate vision is that users will create their own tokens and community currencies in the form of Smart Tokens™ that hold a common Connector, enabling any Smart Token™ in the network to be converted into any other. Bancor’s own Smart Token, BNT, is the common Connector in the first such network, which we call the Bancor Network.

And here"s Bloomberg"s translation.

Bancor protocol enables anyone to create a new type of digital coin called a Smart Token, which can hold and trade other tokens. This allows the Smart Token contract to serve as its own market maker, automatically providing so-called price discovery, and liquidity to other coins. So effectively, Bancor has created an exchange that will automatically price and trade any cryptocurrency that wants to list with it, as well as a token. The company says it will always have enough liquidity to make the market because the currencies have to build a reserve in Bancor tokens.

Initially, the notion that Bancor - which is named after the universal curency proposed by John Maynard Keynes - can “guarantee liquidity” for ICO tokens that have been shunned by major digital currency exchanges sounds like a vaguely useful market nich. And one could argue that there might be a niche. Today, the FT reported that GDAX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, said it wouldn’t list most ICOs because of doubts about their viability. But as one trader explains, when exchanges refuse to list a token, there"s generally a good reason.

Kyle Samani, managing partner at Austin, Texas-based hedge fund Multicoin Capital, said the functionality Bancor provides isn’t needed. Tokens that can’t list on exchanges may simply not be good enough, he said.

"For assets that actually have value, there will be a market," Samani said. "For assets that people don’t want to buy... why should there be some pity-based programmatic market maker to provide liquidity? My inner capitalist is just dumbfounded by the concept of Bancor."

Even the venture capitalists don’t get it.

"I’m a big fan of what they’re building and think they are the most qualified team around to do it," Brock Pierce, co-founder of Blockchain Capital, an investor in Bancor’s tokens, said in an email. "Not everyone understands it."

In defending Bancor, one adviser had the temerity to argue that consumers don’t understand how exchanges work, and that Bancor’s concept is somehow more straightforward, which is an obviously absurd thing to say.

But even if Bancor tokens did have a clearly defined use-case, it wouldn’t make a difference if the company couldn’t implement it, or if nobody used their product ( the network effect is obviously crucial for these tokens to thrive). Right now, Bancor tokens are - to borrow a conspicuously apt analogy from Cornell Professor Gun Sirer - “like a child’s swimming pool placed in an ocean.” Essentially a less liquid, more volatile version of Ether. Bancor was built on top of the Ethereum protocol, and Gun Sirer said buyers needed ethereum to purchase Bancor during the crowdsale - a claim Bancor disputed.

However, while Gun Sirer’s criticisms appear thoughtful, his perspective is automatically rendered suspect by the fact that he’s an adviser to Tezos, an ICO that raised more than $230 - the largest haul so far - but has been plagued by missed deadlines and internal strife, as we noted above.

Bancor, which penned a thorough - but glib - rebuttal to Gun Sirer’s comments, claims its product is already in demand. To wit, thirty tokens are already using, or planning to use, its platform, it says. But given the performance of the tokens, vanishingly few people are trading on it.

Still, Draper, the project"s most visible backer says it’s only a matter of time before the tech blossoms and the value of Bancor tokens soars.

Backed by billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper, Bancor is the fifth-largest ICO by amount raised by startups, which totals more than $3 billion this year. "All of these projects are in development," Draper said in an email. "Wait two years, and I believe we will all be blown away by what these people can do for the world.”

But let us stop you right there.

As many of our long-time readers are probably aware, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs talking about how their (in this case, nonexistent) tech will ‘change the world’ is a red flag that a given venture might be headed for the rocks.

And most crucially, large digital-currency traders agree that the functionality isn’t needed. At best, Bancor is what some in the digital currency and blockchain communities would call “a solution in search of a problem.”

* * *

When Bancor raised an astonishing $153 million during its coin offering in June, it instantly transformed its creators into millionaires.

And after a brief but tantalizing run of gains, it appears Bancor’s investors will now be left holding the bag. The only question now, it seems, is how long before it goes to zero.
 

The Crash Of '87 Remembered: "It Was Clear The Acapulco Cliff-Dive Was On For Monday"

“The markets in a panic are like a country during a coup, and seen in retrospect that is how they were that day,” wrote a young Salomon bond salesmena named Michael Lewis, of the chaos he witnessed. “One small group of people with its old, established way of looking at the world is hustled from its seat of power.”

As Bloomberg details, most of the people willing to share their memories count themselves as winners who seized the moment as an opportunity not only to make money, but also to insert themselves in the new financial order - Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Their story, and the story of Black Monday, is the birth story of modern financial markets - a wild ride of shock, angst, and, for some, glory.

In the weeks before Black Monday, a few investors spotted patterns that gave them pause.

The most confident were Paul Tudor Jones and Peter Borish, young partners at a small hedge fund in Lower Manhattan. In a prescient Sept. 24 note to investors, Jones even signed off with “caveat emptor” - buyer beware.

PETER BORISH, head of research at Tudor Investment Corp. and Paul Tudor Jones’s No. 2:

We were tracking exponential moves in the equity market. The main one was the equity move in the 1920s, and the market in 1987 looked almost identical. The week before Black Monday, the technical and fundamentals aligned, and so we thought Monday would be the day.

ALLAN ROGERS, head of government bond trading at Bankers Trust Co.:

In the first half of 1987, the bond and stock markets diverged for seven months. Bonds went straight down, equities straight up. These sorts of divergences always get my attention. In August and September, I persuaded management to cover all of our hedged short positions in sovereign fixed income, and we built up a long position in notes and bonds.

MICHAEL LEWIS, bond salesman at Salomon Brothers:

A week or two before Black Monday, Salomon announced job cuts. They chopped a few departments, including the municipal and money-market groups. It felt ill-considered and rushed. Nobody completely understood why.

ROGERS:

Nippon Tel, the Japanese telephone company, was going to do an IPO in mid-August. I thought that would pull money from other segments of the equity market. In early October there was another IPO, which I think was a very large British company. These IPOs were a big deal to me, because the main thing I pay attention to is changes in global money flow.

BORISH:

Many people thought that Japan would crash before the U.S., because Japan was more extended on fundamentals; they would be long U.S. and short Japan. We looked at the 1920s, and it was Britain, the older bull market, that went first. So we said, “No, the old goes first, because people have more hope on the new.” By the way, Japan didn’t go until 1989.

STANLEY DRUCKENMILLER, founder of Duquesne Capital Management, who was also running several funds for Jack Dreyfus’s mutual fund company:

On Friday I placed a bet that U.S. stocks would rally, on the thinking that the week’s 9 percent decline in the Dow had been overdone. Over the weekend, after studying trading charts and talking to Jack, I knew I was wrong.

While Druckenmiller considered his options that weekend, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury James Baker III told his German counterparts: “Either inflate the mark or we’ll devalue the dollar.”

PAUL TUDOR JONES, founder of Tudor Investment Corp.:

When Baker threatened a devaluation of the dollar over the weekend, it was apparent the Acapulco cliff dive was on for Monday.

JIM LEITNER, Bankers Trust FX trader:

During the day, the noise level in the trading room got quite ferocious. The chairman of the bank, who at one point had been a trader, walked onto the trading floor and stood behind my chair, which was a first.

LEWIS:

I remember walking from the 41st floor down to the 40th floor. The 41st floor was this cathedral of bonds, and then you walked down to 40 and were in this cramped, low-ceiled, dark place that was the equity department, with a lot of guys who were named Vinny and Tommy and Donny. They’d been around forever, and they had Brylcreem in their hair and big guts and they smoked too much and they were lovable. And they were all going through this visceral animal experience. People were screaming and going absolutely crazy in ways I’d never seen before. It was the first time in my career at Salomon Brothers where I was actually interested in standing beside the equity department and watching these people do their job.

JONES:

There was red everywhere, and all I could think about was how cornered the portfolio insurers were.

HOWARD MARKS, head of the high?yield bond department at Trust Company of the West:

Portfolio insurance convinced people that they could somehow own more stocks without increased risk, which is fanciful. And like all silver bullets, it didn’t work.

HARLEY BASSMAN, mortgage trader at Merrill Lynch & Co.:

As a mortgage trader, I was watching stocks in what seemed like an out-of-body experience—and yes, I was thinking 1929.

JONES:

The friends and counterparties I was speaking with were gripped with complete fear.

BLAIR HULL, managing partner of Hull Trading Co., a Chicago-based market-making firm specializing in options:

The 1987 crash is the only time I’ve ever seen the market makers scared to death.

CHANOS:

I canceled my meetings and went to a friend’s office. The few times I tried to enter orders, I couldn’t get through. The structure of the market was dependent on these technologies that were voluntary. I was trying to cover my shorts and a buyer is what they were looking for, but people were not picking up the phones. So basically I sat on my hands, which turned out to be the right thing to do.

I check into my hotel, and there’s all kinds of security. I asked what was going on: Alan Greenspan and Margaret Thatcher were both checked in as guests. I get to my room and I’m trying to call New York, but I can’t get through. I had to go to another friend’s office, because the Fed chief and his staff had basically subverted the hotel switchboard.

BORISH:

We were concerned about a lot of the counterparties and their liquidity, so the best place to be was in fixed-income futures, because if worse came to worst, we could always take delivery of the bonds.

SHIELDS:

Greenspan lands in Dallas, and the story is that when he got off the plane he asked where the market ended up. The response was “Five oh eight” and Greenspan replied: “Oh, good, it had a nice rally.” He thought it was 5.08. He had only been in office since August, so I think he was a bit of a deer in the headlights.

ROGERS:

I was so scared that I got $10,000 out of the bank, took it home, and stored it in the rafters. When I moved out, I forgot that I’d stashed the money. I think it’s still there.

JONES:

I was feeling guilty about our success. I thought we were going into the Great Depression.

BORISH:

I had 1929 on my mind. Paul and I were concerned about our friends and people who were struggling that day.

*  *  *

And here is Paul Tudor Jones" infamous live interview as the dust settled...

So what was learned from the Crash of ’87? Not much in my opinion.

As John S Lyons summed up perfectly, for starters, the laws of human nature have yet to be repealed. Additionally, high frequency trading is today’s version of program trading. Only now, instead of transmitting an order through a stock broker, who sends it to a floor broker, who give it to a trader, who takes it to a specialist at the post where the stock in question is trading, high frequency computer generated orders are automatically entered at the behest of complex algorithms and are executed and reported back in milliseconds. Witness the May of 2010 “flash crash” where the market lost about 1000 points and then mostly recovered all within 15 minutes.

In summary, risk cannot be removed from the stock market. The Crash of ’87 affected everyone. Crashes will occur again. Wear a seat belt!

*  *  *

Could never happen again...

 

"Game Changer"

Authored by Paul Brodsky via Macro-Allocation.com,

Investors understand that asset markets are experiencing dynamic change (think ETFs), but have not yet broadly recognized that the fundamental nature of wealth itself is changing too. Before the decline of active asset management runs its course there will be an imperative to focus on active currency management. Wealth maintenance and creation demands a clear understanding of this transformation. 

Debt Tokens 

The majority of us are not as rich as we think. Our wealth is held in debt tokens or assets denominated in them with increasingly dubious prospects. Some accounting identities are in order.

Classically, an asset is something with intrinsic value that transcends time and money. It has some value no matter how or when one measures it. Only two people – a potential buyer and seller – need to value something for it to be an asset.

A currency, meanwhile, is a unit of account that provides users with a means of measuring and exchanging value. In a hypothetical barter economy, production itself is would be currency. Currencies representing saved wealth are necessary because we need to value goods, services and assets relative to each other.

Modern currencies are widely misunderstood. They are actually the product of bank system double-entry accounting – ultimately un-reserved, 100 percent faith-based obligations of centralized entities (governments, central banks or currency boards) to manufacture enough actual base money in the future (i.e., inflate) to settle all claims for money that was already created by private banks through the lending process. It is important to note that credit and credit-currencies are claims on money, not claims on assets. Depending upon how one counts, there is either 3 times (M2), 5 times (bank assets), 12 times (total credit market debt), or 25 times (total unfunded liabilities) the amount of claims on US dollars than the amount of actual US dollars in existence (base money). There are no plans to remedy this overwhelming leverage. In fact, this month the Fed is beginning to increase currency leverage again by reducing the size of its own balance sheet, which will effectively re-leverage banks by reducing bank reserves.

This state of monetary affairs is a big deal for financial asset investors. As it stands today, investors could not hypothetically exchange all assets (or liabilities) for base money, or even for credit currencies (M2), at or near current prices. To do so, banking systems would have to first create new liabilities, which in turn would dilute and diminish the purchasing power value of currencies in which assets are denominated.

To be good money, a currency must also be a store of value, meaning it also has to be an asset or be backed by an asset. In the current regime, there are no assets with quantifiable value directly associated with fiat currencies…other than the ability to tax.

The ability to tax is indeed an asset of governments, but one with greatly diminished value. In the US, fiscal year 2016 tax revenues were $3.3 trillion.1 Meanwhile, baseline government spending was about $3.4 trillion, including $1.06 trillion for Medicare and Medicaid; $910 billion for Social Security; $600 billion for non-defense discretionary spending to fund federal departments and agencies; $585 billion for the Defense Department; and $240 billion for interest on federal debt.2 These expenditures are rising faster than tax revenues and do not include truly discretionary government spending. (It seems legislators only have true discretion over how they deficit-spend.) 

While the incalculable value of assets of the United States government (including its strong military and hegemonic control over shipping lanes and bilateral trade) may exceed its currency obligations, such assets cannot be transferred to creditors (i.e., dollar holders) to satisfy obligations. Thus, from both stock (leverage) and flow (budget deficit) perspectives, the US dollar is a very poor credit in real terms. Indeed, other fiat currencies may be worse and all of them are effectively unreserved debt tokens.

The quantity of systemic liabilities – including debt-based credit and credit-currencies – has come to vastly exceed the forward real value of unencumbered assets (adjusted for necessary currency devaluation). It is not possible to net all assets against all liabilities without dramatically reducing the real purchasing power value (PPV) of assets. What does this imply for assets denominated in credit-currencies? Today’s wealth has been borrowed to such an extent that it cannot be broadly recognized in the currencies in which assets are currently denominated. Looking forward, we think the most influential input into wealth creation will be getting the underlying currency right.

If today’s currencies are, in realty, unreserved debt tokens, and assets are denominated and measured in them, then how does one value assets in real terms? Here’s three-step logic we think makes sense:

1. Take the nominal value of an asset priced in a certain currency

2. Adjust the nominal value by the implicit leverage embedded in that currency

3. Present Value the future nominal cash flows of the asset against future currency dilution

Applying this metric makes clear that assets – equity, debt, plant, equipment, labor, goodwill, whatever – priced in certain currencies may hold significantly more or less value today than similar assets priced in other currencies with similar nominal asset valuation metrics (i.e., P/Es, Price to Book, Cap Rates, etc.).

Not surprisingly, assets have taken on many of the qualities of currencies, which makes sense given that both are effectively unfunded obligations. Neither assets nor currencies can have intrinsic value. Currencies may only be valued against other currencies and assets may only be valued against other assets. Is it any wonder that financial asset markets have become places to “save” and that low-cost passive investment vehicles like ETFs are becoming the vehicles of choice? It was inevitable that today’s government-sponsored, bank-executed monetary system would eventually be disintermediated, and the shift to “saving” through passive investing in asset markets is a step in that process.

Value Exchange

What happens when value begins to be exchanged directly on the internet itself, rather than through centralized portals that sit atop it like toll booths? Block chain technology is effectively an open source triple-entry accounting system that includes all participants in the value transfer process. The combination of the technology, its applications, and its accessibility are genuinely transformative.

What will happen to the value of highly-leveraged credit-currencies relative to less leveraged or zero leveraged stores of value that arise from this transformation? What will happen to Foreign Exchange (FX) cross rates in a peer-to-peer world where nothing is foreign? What about the real value of assets?

Looking forward, a growing portion of value, regardless of what form it takes, will be exchanged peer-to-peer, and any value leftover will be stored in whichever form counterparties agree – fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies, commodity-backed currencies, maybe even direct claims for commodities, goods, services or equity.

Value Exchange (VX) rates could look something like the hypothetical table below:

Table 1: Hypothetical Value Exchange Rate (VX) Table - 2027

We should expect value to flow directly between producers and consumers of that production, rather than through public and private sector intermediaries charging them rent. Rentiers and sovereign authorities will formally embrace this brave new world – not out of a sense of altruism, but because the technology is already here and human incentives cannot be denied.
 

Paul Brodsky: "Sorry, It Had To Be Said"

Submitted by Paul Brodsky from Macro Allocation

Being Here

     “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.”

      - Chauncey Gardner (Chance, the Gardner)

This piece takes a roundhouse swing at politics, real and imagined, and discusses critical economic issues that politicians should actually apply a little intelligence to, but are not. Capitalism will ultimately set things right, but it will have to overcome the political dimension’s best efforts to ignore real issues.

The Real Deal

An important character trait for wealth creation today seems to be incuriosity – find out what’s working, hop on board, enjoy the ride and don’t ask questions. Growth and value metrics seem to matter less than they used to, and so investors have turned their gaze to macroeconomics and, gulp, politics.

We think investment-related political discussions that handicap the likelihood of new pro-growth fiscal, tax, trade and regulatory policies in the US are off-base and have taken on too much importance. They do not promise sustainable support for the US economy or markets given a few twenty-first century realities:

• Full value: the scale of financial markets has already become quite big relative to output.


• Financial asset price appreciation now reflects a) short-term balance sheet management and b) price deflationary innovation, rather than growth in the sustainable capital stock.


• There is no longer such a thing as a domestic economy, even if economic initiatives help shift domestic investment and consumption. Global goods and service prices, and trade responses from well-organized foreign economies, tend to quickly offset domestic stimulus programs.

Late cycle economic initiatives, such as those discussed by Mr. Trump, are ultimately derivative of waning animal spirits. They can be distorted for a time by credit policies and legislation, but they cannot be kept permanently in disequilibrium. Human incentives, along with innovation, productivity and balance sheet digestion, tend to overwhelm the best efforts of policy makers trying to extend trends. After a generation of pulling credit and revenues forward, culminating in rock-bottom borrowing costs; lower taxes, (deficit-funded) government investment and reduced regulatory oversight would be only marginally stimulative.

The combination of ubiquitous leverage, aging Western wealth holders, and deflationary globalization and innovation (including non-sovereign distributed ledgers that allow value to be transferred directly among willing counterparties anywhere across the world), pose the biggest threats to traditional domestic output and inflation models still embraced by global economic policymakers and most investors.

This sets up an epic global economic battle if Americans choose to keep US nation-state sovereignty, which of course they will. It is serious stuff that will require serious leadership and diplomatic skills from the President of the United States, which, as the global hegemon, has the most to lose.

Fake Politics

It should not surprise anyone that Western societies are becoming restless. Trump, Brexit, Charlottesville and, arguably, even radical Islamic terrorism are bi-products of global economic distortions largely created by the unwillingness of the Western political dimension to let the global factors of production naturally settle global prices and wages. (Sorry, it had to be said.)

Donald Trump is a sideshow. His ascension, or someone like him, was inevitable. He may have official authority to behave like the leader of the free world (even if he is unable to do so), but so far he has only shown that virtually anyone can become president. Indeed, one might say Mr. Trump represents a triumph of democracy. Behold the robustness of America: the most powerful nation on Earth is unafraid to elect a cross between P.T. Barnum and Chauncey Gardner!

This is not to say a US president cannot raise and emphasize truly meaningful economic goals and mobilize countries around the world to help achieve them; but it is to say that this President seems to not know or be interested in what those goals might be.

As discussed, the biggest challenges facing the US economy and US labor stem from a distorted global price and wage scale. Mr. Trump’s domestic fiscal, regulatory, tax and immigration goals seek only to raise US output and wages. This cannot be achieved without the participation of global commerce. There is no such thing anymore as a US business that makes US products sold only in the US without being influenced by global prices, wages and exchange rates. The romantic, patriotic “made in the USA” theme does not comport with the reality that the US also seeks to keep the dollar the world’s reserve currency and that maintaining America’s power requires the US to control the world’s shipping lanes. Mr. Trump and his base cannot have one without the other. (Do we really have to articulate this?)

Mr. Trump’s “Being There” presidency is reflecting an inconvenient truth back on a society that has, until maybe now, successfully deluded itself into believing government is functionally the glue holding society together. Though he does not mean to, Mr. Trump is single-handedly demonstrating to groups ranging from idealistic Washington elites to social media zombies to southern white supremacists that Madisonian government has become a dignified cover for the financial, commercial and national security interests that control it. We suspect those interests would rather the reach of their power be less visible.

For the more pragmatic among us, Mr. Trump’s bravado and apparent emotional instability have created the need for a public work-around. He remains tentatively safe to wealth holders because he hired Goldman Sachs to manage financial affairs, and acceptable to globalists because he is deferring foreign policy to the NSC (i.e., “the generals”). Mr. Trump may continue to speak in nationalistic terms, tweet IEDs, and confound media used to personalizing policy; but it seems highly unlikely he will be able to make high yielding unilateral policy decisions. He will likely settle into a pattern of lobbing increasingly ignored tape bombs and hosting elegant state dinners, as an insane king might. Or else, he will be out.

Just as the virtuous Carter followed the vice-ridden Nixon and the strapping Clinton followed the crusty Bush 41, the vulgar Trump predictably followed the cool Obama. Donald Trump is a man-in-full (of himself), and so we would not be surprised if the next president is an empty suit. (We are unsure how literal that can be.) Given our view of the extraordinary structural changes about to impact US and global economies and societies, the most attractive feature for the next presidential could be a really intelligent person who says “I don’t know” fifty times every stump speech. We are ready to vote for a thirty five year-old woman who can code, if only because the president of the US must be at least 35.

The differences separating political platforms are beginning to matter less than they used to. The billions spent in election cycles and beyond accomplishes little except redistributing liquidity from sentimental or idealistic savers from both parties to media company executives and their shareholders. None of it reduces the leverage on the balance sheets of global governments, households and businesses, or starts a conversation about how to reconcile rising asset prices and falling wages in a digital global economy.

Manifestations

At the risk of oversimplifying, the tension between globalization and nationalism has the greatest influence on economic, social and political affairs today. We were reminded of this last week watching Donald Trump channel the misplaced angst and anger of hate groups, mostly displaced and disaffected white men who have been caught directly in the crossfire of efficient global resource distribution.

One need only observe life to understand the game-changing economic impact of globalization:

• the opening of Chinese and Soviet-bloc economies in the 1990s;


• trade treaties that created jobs and drove wages higher in developing economies and displaced jobs and drove real wages lower in developed economies;


• innovation and technologies that reduced price inefficiencies and displaced workers;


• ubiquitous real-time direct connectivity across the world;


• an anachronistic, policy-driven global economic system, comprised and coordinated by sovereign politicians, trade representatives and central bankers, that talk domestic but act global.

The disconnection and underlying hypocrisy are obvious to anyone trying to understand increasing social unrest around the world. National and global economies meant to follow a mostly capitalist outline contrived and administered by policymakers, rather than one following free-market incentives, can last only until late-cycle policies become ineffectual and superfluous.

This is occurring now. Consider that wealth is no longer created from production, but rather from financial pricing models and credit creation, credit that must increase at a parabolic pace and can never be extinguished without substantial output contraction and rising unemployment. It cannot last indefinitely.

Central bank purchases and government investment have been fabricating output growth and asset gains. Central banks now hold about $19 trillion in assets on their balance sheets, up from almost zero in 2008, and are now 20 percent owners of global assets. There is also about $20 trillion in US federal debt, up from $9 trillion in 2008. (See debt growth trajectories in Graph 1, below.)

Stocks, bonds and real estate collateralize each other while output growth makes it possible to service debt. It is not a stretch to assume that output and asset prices would have fallen without government and central bank subsidies, and that they will fall in the future if/when global central banks withdraw support.

Print Money, Get Rich!

Hey passive investors, you’re not that smart…unless your calculus has been to front-run the insecurities of elected and appointed officials who would reliably be unable to sit on their hands while economies and markets correct, rather than bending economic and asset space/time continua to perpetuate positive trends (and their careers).

The reality is that real (inflation-adjusted) returns for long-term holders of financial assets cannot be calculated yet. Deflating nominal returns using coincident goods and service inflation measures (e.g. CPI, PCE) compares apples to oranges – asset price changes vs. consumer price changes. It works if you want to know if you could have cashed in your assets and bought a basket of goods and services, but not if you want to know if you will be able to cash them in and then save risk-free in the future (i.e., create wealth).

The problem is that there are too few dollars for each claim on dollars (credit). The credit that collateralizes equity cannot be repaid and, if output declines, cannot be serviced without more credit. Equity and credit prices will fall (deflate) in tandem as debt service and repayment declines, unless more dollars are created and floated to asset holders. This is the process of inflation, and the pace of this, not consumer inflation, is what should be used to deflate nominal asset returns.

The current imbalance separating credit (claims on money) from money itself suggests a doubling, tripling or even quadrupling of the money supply in float (yes, 100, 200 or 300 percent monetary inflation directed towards financial markets). This implies nominal asset prices could rise, but not nearly as much as the purchasing power value of the currency they are denominated in would fall.

We doubt all the new money could be distributed to the investor class and then reinvested back into financial markets, and so we think it is highly likely that nominal equity and debt prices will fall markedly in the future, though we cannot know from what level.

If you have suspected that it has been too easy to get rich by simply being here and investing passively in popular markets, you are right in our humble opinion. To realize gains, most investors will have to cash out their assets and then exchange that cash for money that will not be diluted. It is a mathematical impossibility because: 1) the money does not exist, and 2) by definition, most investors cannot time the market. We doubt any of this will be discussed or debated on the campaign stump…or at Jackson Hole.

The Real Story Behind Goldman's Q2 Trading Loss: How A $100M Gas Bet Went Awry

Goldman Sachs FICC-trading income was an unexpectedly ugly blemish on what was already a poor Q2 earnings report. And while the FDIC-backed hedge fund initially blamed the decline on lower trading revenues, lack of volatility and depressed client activity...

... there was more to the story. The Wall Street Journal has uncovered what really happened: A $100 million bet on regional natural-gas prices gone awry after production problems at a local pipeline sent prices soaring, decimating Goldman’s short position.

“Goldman wagered that gas prices in the Marcellus Shale in Ohio and Pennsylvania would rise with the construction of new pipelines to carry gas out of the region, said people familiar with the matter. Instead, prices there fell sharply in May and June as a key pipeline ran into problems.”

More specifically…

“Goldman’s key miscalculation last quarter was betting that natural-gas prices in the Marcellus Shale would rise relative to the national benchmark price in Louisiana known as the Henry Hub, the people familiar with the matter said.”

The quarter was the worst ever for the bank’s commodities unit, which, as WSJ notes, has been one of the firm’s most consistent profit centers, and a training ground for many of its top executives, including Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein. The trading loss “extended a broader slump at a company once known as Wall Street’s savviest gambler.”

Goldman shares fell 2.6% on the day of the report, which analysts largely attributed to the miss in trading revenues, despite a stronger-than-expected bottom-line profit.

The investment bank has held on to its commodities-trading business even as most other American banks exited following the financial crisis. It is currently the seventh-largest market maker for natural gas in North America, larger than some energy giants like Exxon Mobil. According to WSJ, trading oil, metals and other physical commodities is increasingly dominated by smaller firms like Glencore PLC and Gunvor Group Ltd. that don’t face as much government regulation.

“The loss highlights the trade-offs Goldman made in sticking with the risky commodities-trading business, even as other large banks retreated following the financial crisis. Goldman is the seventh-biggest marketer of natural gas in North America, up from 13th in 2011, according to Natural Gas Intelligence—bigger than U.S. energy giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. It has been the only U.S. bank in the top 20 since 2013, when J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. left the business.”

WSJ explains that Goldman’s position would"ve produced a profit if a pipeline being built to carry natural gas out of the Midwest had been completed on time. Instead, it faced multiple delays after a series of fluid spills and the accidental bulldozing of a historic Ohio home.

“Essentially, it was a bet on the timely completion of pipelines under construction to ferry a glut of gas out of the region.

But one of those pipelines ran into trouble this spring: the 713-mile Rover, which would transport gas from the Marcellus to the Midwest and beyond.

Its developer, Energy Transfer Partners, in February bulldozed a historic Ohio home without notifying regulators, and scrambled to finish clearing trees before the roosting season for a protected bat species. In May, federal regulators barred Energy Transfer from drilling on some segments of the route after a series of fluid spills.

The first leg of the pipeline, which had been set to come online in July, isn’t expected until at least September. Energy Transfer said it has “been working efficiently and nonstop to remediate” problems and expects to have the entire pipeline operational in January.”

In all likelihood, part of Goldman’s short position was accumulated to offset the risk-management needs of the bank’s clients, WSJ reported. Goldman’s counterparties, the drillers operating in the Marcellus shale, reported strong gains in their derivatives books.

“Goldman was in part likely catering to gas producers in the region that wanted to lock in steadier revenue through swaps and other contracts. Many Marcellus drillers reported big gains in the value of their derivatives portfolios in the second quarter—meaning their trading partners lost money in that period, at least on paper.”

Of course, the bank’s executives would have you believe the loss was solely the result of Goldman fulfilling its duty to help its clients manage risk, and that the bank’s trades didn’t violate the Volcker Rule (a ban on proprietary trading that was part of Dodd-Frank). As WSJ notes, whether or not a trade violates the Volcker rule depends on who initiated it, how long the bank held the position, and myriad other factors.

But with President Trump in the White House and with future Fed Chairman Gary Cohn"s only nemesis getting the boot earlier today, soon Goldman will be empowered to take much more trading risks with the explicit blessings of 1600 Pennsylvania.