Crypto Surge Sparks Establishment Panic: Bans, Crackdowns, & Fatwas As Bitcoin "Undermines Governments, Destabilizes Economies"

The last few months have seen increasing notice being paid to Bitcoin (and the broader cryptocurrency space) by those that control the status quo.

At first it was simple "negative"-speak - "you"d be a fool to buy Bitcoin"-esque comments spewed forth from the truly ignorant or intentionally-ignorant (this group included bank CEOs, asset managers, payments systems, and remittance services) but to no avail, those fools saw the value of their bitcoins surge... Like the Winklevoss twins...

Then - as the price soared and the market cap of Bitcoin topped that of General Electric and Goldman sachs - the world"s central bankers began to take notice... but in their standard manner, played down any risks, explaining that any systemic fragility "was contained" since cryptocurrencies were not big enough (this group included various Fed presidents, Bank of Canada, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, and so on all echoing similar phrases)... even though Bitcoin is now the 6th largest currency in circulation...

But this week has seen a new group of establishmentarians jump on to the offensive against anti-decentralization, de-control, pro-freedom cryptocurrencies - urging bans, crackdowns, fatwas, taxation, creating their own cryptocurrencies, demanding citizens sell, and outright confiscation (this group includes governments world wide and their mainstream media mouthpieces)...

India

India"s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, has clarified that the government does not recognize bitcoin as legal tender. According to the Economic Times, when asked about the government"s plans to regulate the cryptocurrency, Jaitley told reporters, "recommendations are being worked at." He continued:

"The government"s position is clear, we don"t recognize this as legal currency as of now."

 

Concerned over bitcoin"s anonymity and its potential illicit uses, justices issued a notice to the central bank and other agencies asking them to answer a petition on the matter, reports indicated.

Turkey

Turkey has claimed Bitcoin is in fact “not compatible” with Islam due to its government being unable to control it.

In a statement from a meeting of the state Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), lawmakers said that Bitcoin’s “speculative” nature meant that buying and selling it was inappropriate for Muslims.

“Buying and selling virtual currencies is not compatible with religion at this time because of the fact that their valuation is open to speculation. They can be easily used in illegal activities like money laundering, and they are not under the state’s audit and surveillance,” Euronewstranslates the statement republished by local news outlet Enson Haber.

Diyanet added that the same principles of “unsuitability” in particular applied to Ethereum.

South Korea

Kim Dong-yeon, South Korea’s deputy prime minister and the minister of strategy and finance, revealed earlier this week that the government is investigating various methods to better regulate the local Bitcoin market and tax Bitcoin users accordingly.

While the South Korean government and its local financial authorities are actively discussing the possibility of enforcing a policy on Bitcoin taxation, at a press conference, Deputy Prime Minister Kim stated that the government does not intend to include any Bitcoin taxation policy in 2018’s amendment of the tax law.

Holland

A Dutch news paper urges its citizens to sell their bitcoins patriotically because cryptocurrencies can undermine government and destabilize the economy.

A bitcoin world can destabilize the real economy, a euro is also solidified trust.

First, the bitcoin undermines the government because a lot of transactions are about money laundering and tax avoidance. Another problem is that the profits of new bitcoins that come with it do not benefit the government (as with normal money creation), but are absorbed in heavily environmentally harmful computer power.

Central banks also have less influence on keeping the economy stable. In times of crisis, central banks can, through their influence on ordinary banks, ease credit conditions and encourage people to consume. The bank has no control over the bitcoin economy and an economic crisis can become deeper.

The investor has air in his hands when the bitcoin crashes, but also when the company turns out to produce baked air.

France

Putting money in an empty type of asset is “very, very worrying,” Robert Ophele, chairman of France’s market regulator. Bitcoin has no link to the real economy, Ophele says in a panel discussion at the Paris Europlace Financial Forum, warning that cryptocurrencies are a way to commit cybercrimes, allowing access to illicit goods and services.

If bitcoin was a currency, "it would be a bad one," Ophel exclaimed, as it poses major challenge for central banks and regulators.

UK

The Telegraph reported just around the time of the big drop, UK "ministers are launching a crackdown on the virtual currency Bitcoin amid growing concern it is being used to launder money and dodge tax."

Taking a page out of the Chinese playbook, the UK Treasury has announced plans to regulate the Bitcoin that will force traders in so-called crypto-currencies to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity. 

According to the Telegraph, while "until now, anybody buying and selling Bitcoins and other  digital currencies have been able to do so anonymously, making it attractive to criminals and tax avoiders. But the Treasury has now said it intends to begin regulating the virtual currency, which has a total value of £145 billion, to bring it in line with rules on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financial legislation."

 

 

John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said he expected to hold an inquiry into the need for better regulation of Bitcoin and other alternative currencies in the new year.

 

He said: "These new forms of exchange are expanding rapidly and we"ve got to make sure we don"t get left behind - that"s particularly important in terms of money-laundering, terrorism or pure theft.

 

"I"m not convinced that the regulatory authorities are keeping up to speed. I would be surprised if the committee doesn"t have an inquiry next year. "It would be timely to have a proper look at what this means. It may be that we want speed up our use of these kinds of thing in this country, but that makes it all the more important that we don"t have a regulatory lag."

The proposed changes come amid increasing fears that Bitcoin is being used by gangs to launder the proceeds of crime while also attracting currency speculators - with the value of the coin soaring in the past 12 months.

In other words, the same reason why the IRS is cracking down on Coinbase clients in the US is also why UK and European regulators are joining China in cracking down on capital flight.

United States

The US Senate Judiciary Committee is currently tackling bill S.1241 that aims to criminalize the intentional concealment of ownership or control of a financial account. The bill also would amend the definition of ‘financial account’ and ‘financial institution’ to include digital currencies and digital exchanges, respectively. According to ranking committee member Senator Dianne Feinstein, the proposed bill is needed to modernize existing AML laws.

The bill would amend the definition of ‘financial institution,’ in Section 53412(a) of title 31, United States Code, to include:

“An issuer, redeemer, or cashier of prepaid access devices, digital currency, or any digital exchanger or tumbler of digital currency.”

If passed, the bill would likely have far-reaching effects for users of digital currencies both in the US and abroad.

Earlier reports also indicate that the White House is actively monitoring cryptocurrencies which could only mean more attempts to regulate the world’s first successful decentralized monetary system. With the growing involvement of Wall Street and the ever escalating media attention, it is not surprising that governments are stepping up their attempts to regulate digital currency.

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

But as usual, any regulation-related-headline that the machines instantly sell, is bid back up, since it seems the algorithms have not figured out that there is no real way to "stop" Bitcoin... which is exactly why the world"s elite are so desparate.

Several industry commentators have issued their opinions on the various proposed laws. Tone Vays claimed that he expects a confrontation between the Bitcoin team, including the holders and users, and the US government.

“It’s bad... I think it’s gonna end in a very confrontational way between Bitcoin - even Bitcoin holders and users - and the US Government.”

Morgan Stanley Turns Apocalyptic On Credit: "A Cycle Turn Is Closer Than Many Believe"

While many have repeatedly warned over the past year that the record gains in credit are simply too good to stay - especially in Europe where yields and spreads have collapsed largely thanks to the ECB"s relentless purchases of corporate debt, with the central bank announcing on Monday it held a record €127.7bn in bonds under its CSPP program - few are as bearish on credit as Morgan Stanley, which today issued ots 2018 US Credit Outlook which is, in a word, "dire."

In the report titled "When the Levee Breaks" strategist Adam Richmond list the three biggest headwinds for credit as follows: "Fed policy should become a material headwind, markets seem very late cycle, and valuations look extremely rich" and details each below:

An unprecedented central bank unwind... We think there is way too much complacency regarding what is a notable and growing shift in central bank policy globally. Remember, monetary policy has been massive in this cycle, and extremely supportive for credit markets. The Fed is now tightening in an untested way, through the balance sheet, while also pushing rates near restrictive territory. Markets expect a seamless unwind. We do not.

 

...with markets late cycle, and very dependent on ultra-easy liquidity... It is not a coincidence that fundamental problems are becoming more apparent in one sector after the next, as the Fed withdraws liquidity. In fact, we see late-cycle risks popping up all over the place, and as is often the case near a top, these risks are mistakenly (we think) being rationalized as purely "idiosyncratic" problems. Defaults should remain low in 2018, but that is expected. Credit markets anticipate defaults one year ahead of time, and we think a cycle turn is closer than many believe.

 

...and valuations very rich: Spreads are near all-time tights, adjusting for the quality deterioration in the indices over time. Yes, the technicals have been strong, but that may change as the Fed"s balance sheet shrinks faster. We note, a recession is not necessary to see negative excess returns, especially in the second half of a cycle, and particularly late in a Fed tightening cycle. Credit markets have not experienced three straight years of positive excess returns in over 20 years.

Looking at the technicals, Morgan Stanley echoes what we said last month when he showed the collapse in spreads to 2007 levels, and warns that "credit spreads are very rich nearly any way we slice the data. Spreads adjusted for leverage are back to 2007 levels in high yield, and 1997 levels in IG."

Exhibit 20 shows our fair value model for IG, HY and loans. In short, we estimate that IG, HY and loan spreads are 41bp, 197bp, and 111bp rich to fair value, respectively, using long-term default, downgrade, and risk-premium assumptions. And as we show in Exhibit 21 below, if we adjust for the deterioration in quality of the IG index over time, we find spreads are only 9bp wide of the all-time tights.

One of the main reasons for Richmond"s bearishness, is the "complacency" about the Fed"s tightening, which of course is applicable to all asset classes. He explains:

More than anything else, we firmly believe that central banks have been THE driver of credit in this cycle, stimulating markets like never before. Now they are attempting to tighten in a completely untested way, and yet credit is pricing in a seamless unwind. At the least, we expect a bumpier 2018, with a tougher setup anyway we slice it. Growth will decelerate, while the Fed continues tightening into a low-inflation environment, driving a completely flat yield curve (per our rates forecasts). Additionally, the year is beginning with booming confidence, as hopes for tax cuts rise, thus the bar to positively surprise is high, while "Goldilocks" is firmly in the price across most risk assets.

 

We would not rule out the scenario in which financial conditions could tighten materially next year as the Fed withdraws stimulus in this unprecedented way, especially if growth expectations decline at the same time, pushing us from late cycle to end of cycle (though not our economists’ base case). And for those expecting the Fed to come to the rescue any time volatility picks up, remember that, with the balance sheet now effectively set on "auto-pilot," reversing course, in our view, is a last resort.

 

Taking a step back, per our forecasts, the Fed will hike 3 times in 2018. While gradual on the surface, this rate-hike cycle needs to be put in context. In other words, as we show in Exhibit 3 this time around, the Fed began hiking much later in an expansion, when GDP growth was weaker and corporate leverage higher vs. the start of past rate-hike cycles. In fact, given the drop in the neutral real Fed funds rate over time, monetary policy is already not that far from restrictive territory

 

 

As a result, we believe markets can withstand less tightening than a low absolute level of rates might suggest (exhibit 4). And remember, this is a unique rate-hike cycle. One, tightening began not when the Fed first hiked rates in December 2015, but when they began tapering in early 2014. In this regard, the Fed has arguably already tightened policy by a similar amount as in past cycles (Exhibit 5), a point when credit spreads tend to widen on average (Exhibit 6). Two, along the same lines, the Fed is continuing to tighten, not just by hiking rates, but also through reverse QE.

 

 

In fact, we believe investors are focused primarily on the "gradual" pace of rate hikes, treating the balance sheet as an afterthought. But the numbers are large. For example, the Fed will shrink its balance sheet by ~$400bn in 2018 alone. In our view, credit investors underestimated the tailwind from QE in this bull market. Similarly, they may now be underestimating the headwind from reverse QE. And while global central banks will still be adding liquidity next year, even they will be doing so at a slower pace, with the ECB cutting their purchases in half in 2018 and likely ending QE altogether around September of next year, while the BOJ hikes their long-term rate target in 3Q18.

 

 

We see "quantitative tightening" as a clear catalyst for weaker technicals – i.e., fixed income demand needs to rise to absorb the additional supply or prices have to adjust somewhere (supply/demand 101). Why not expect the opposite of what happened when the Fed was expanding its balance sheet in this cycle (one-way flows into US credit), as the Fed begins its unwind, at least at the margin?

Assessing rate risk, MS says that while the Fed may in fact be successful at threading the needle, an outcome that is likely already priced into markets. However, the bank warns that "at the least we can be certain that as the balance sheet shrinks more rapidly, so will the "liquidity buffer" in markets, which should magnify any negative catalyst that pops up along the way."

Another major risk factor for Morgan Stanley is that the US economy is now very late in the cycle, to wit:

Markets are very late cycle, in our view, and if anything these risks have risen compared to this time last year. That we are in a late-cycle environment is a consensus view, but "late cycle" can mean different things to different people. To be more specific, we think there is a good chance that markets peak for the cycle in 1H18 and price in rising defaults in a bigger way throughout the year. But even if our timing continues to be too early, remember, late-cycle environments are often not great for credit returns regardless, with equities often outperforming. (Note, as we discuss further below, we believe the very late-cycle signal where credit/equities diverge is already happening, focusing on CCC-rated HY credit.) A recession is not necessary for credit spreads to widen late in a cycle. In fact, credit markets have not had three straight years of positive excess returns since 1996.

Here Richmond takes offense with the argument that weak growth for much of this cycle has prevented "excesses" from building, and hence an already long cycle can last even longer. As he says "we disagree and see excesses all over the place, driven in part by years of ultra-low rates." He notes the following specific details:

• Credit markets have grown by 116% in this cycle, and leverage is at unprecedented levels for a non-recessionary environment.


• Low quality BBB issuance was 44% of total IG supply in 2017, a record as far back as we have data, and B rated or below loan issuance is now two thirds of total loan supply.


• LBOs levered over 6x are now a higher percentage of new LBO loans than in 2007. Covenant quality is considerably weaker than pre-crisis, while the debt cushion beneath the average loan is much lower.


• Investors have reached for yield in fixed income in this cycle in a massive way. Foreign flows have flooded into the asset class, arguably treating US credit as a rates product, while liquidity needs have risen, with mutual fund/ETF ownership of credit now over 19% vs. 11% pre-crisis.


• Excesses are apparent even outside of corporate credit, with underwriting quality deteriorating in auto lending in this cycle, while non-mortgage consumer debt is at a high, and CRE prices are ~25% above prior-cycle peaks.


• Stock-buyback activity has been substantial in this cycle, credit valuations have rarely been richer, and consumer confidence has not been this high since 2000.

Summarizing, and "cutting through the details" Morgan Stanley says that it has high conviction in the following two points:

1. Excesses have to be out there, given what central banks have done in this cycle – i.e., rates near or below zero for nearly a decade and round after round of QE globally, and


2. the excesses are always difficult to spot as markets are rising, and then become obvious after the turn (how did I miss that?). We think this time is no different. To be clear, excesses are not everywhere. For example, credit quality did not deteriorate in places like housing and US financials in this cycle. However, this simply tells us that the problems of the last cycle will not be the same as the problems of the next.

As a result, 2018 is when the critical mass of excesses finally spills over, or, to reuse the title, "the levee finally breaks":

While the excesses may be out there, that has arguably been the case for a while. The difference, we think, is that more cracks are now forming under the surface, which in our view, means a turn is closer than the consensus believes. For example, outside of corporate credit, we have seen signs of weakness and tighter credit conditions in places like commercial real estate. Consumer delinquencies are rising across products (i.e., autos, credit cards, and student loans). And in corporate credit, one sector after the next is exhibiting "idiosyncratic" problems (e.g., Retail, Telecom, and Healthcare to name a few). All of this is consistent with a late-cycle environment where the yield curve is flattening, correlations in markets are dropping, the economy is at (or arguably through) full employment, the Fed is well advanced in its tightening cycle (we think), and equity multiples are expanding.

To Richmond, these dynamics are "late-cycle 101. Problems pop up early on in the areas that experienced the most severe deterioration in fundamentals in the bull market. Investors initially treat those issues as "idiosyncratic." The problems then spread when credit conditions tighten more broadly. And along these lines, we think it is not a coincidence that weaker-quality high yield credits are underperforming, as the Fed is hiking faster and quantitative tightening is now being set in motion."

If that wasn"t enough, Morgan Stanley highlights two further risks: one having to do with the incremental impact of tax cuts, should they pass...

And as a side note, tax cuts would not extend the cycle in our view – they risk doing the opposite. Very simply, credit markets will benefit from anything that keeps the cycle going – modest growth and a patient Fed. Tax cuts that come when the unemployment rate is 4.1%, which drives an overheating labor market, forcing a more aggressive Fed, if anything could cut off the cycle sooner.

... and the inevitable rise in default intensity:

We think there is a high likelihood that defaults will start rising again late next year and into 2019. Without going into the details here, in our view, CCC HY bonds are already "sniffing out" these budding default risks with their recent weakness. This should continue as tighter central bank policy exposes the fundamental challenges in the asset class (the problems are easier to hide when markets are flooded with liquidity). And the fundamental issues are broad-based. Not only is leverage high across sectors, but we also estimate that almost 30% of the HY market is either in secular decline or has clear operational challenges (Exhibit 16), with declining revenue growth over the past five years. Thinking about it more quantitatively, as we show in the default section below, based on the lag between when the cycle indicators we track have turned historically and when defaults have subsequently spiked, as well as the status of those metrics today, 2019 could be a year of materially higher defaults.

Wrapping up the above, Morgan Stanley"s conclusion is the following:

Adding everything up, we see three key challenges in 2018: 1) Credit markets have been hugely reliant on central banks in this cycle, and now the Fed is withdrawing liquidity in an unprecedented way. We think markets are underestimating the risks of a mistake. 2) This liquidity withdrawal is happening while late-cycle risks (we think) are popping up all over the place. 3) Investors are buying credit at valuations that almost guarantee poor long-term returns, with the assumption that they will be able to time when to get out before the turn.

... or stated even simpler, "get out now."

World"s Longest Bull Market (55 Years) In Australian House Prices Is Over, According To UBS

This morning, CoreLogic released its monthly report on Australian house prices – the world’s longest running bull market. Finally, measures to tighten credit standards and dissuade overseas buyers (especially Chinese in Sydney and Melbourne) are beginning to bite and price rises ground to a halt last month. From the report...

Since moving through a peak rate of growth in November 2016, capital gains across Australia’s housing market have been losing momentum, with national dwelling values unchanged over the month of October. For October, conditions were flat across both the combined capital cities and the combined regional areas of Australia, however over the past twelve months growth in the capital cities (+7.0%) has outperformed the regional areas (+4.9%).

 

CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said, “The slowdown in the pace of capital gains can be attributed primarily to tighter credit policies which have fundamentally changed the landscape for borrowers.” 

 

“Lenders have tightened their servicing tests and reduced their appetite for riskier loans, including those on higher loan to valuation ratios or higher loan to income multiples.  Additionally, interest only borrowers and investors are facing premiums on their mortgage rates which are likely to act as a disincentive, especially for investors who are generally facing low rental yields on investment properties. 

 

“In fact, the peak rate of growth in dwelling values lines up closely with the peak growth rate for investment lending in late 2016.   We saw the housing market respond in a similar fashion through 2015, and the first half of 2016 as investors faced tighter credit conditions following the announcement from APRA that lenders couldn’t surpass a 10% speed limit on investment lending.”

The top line in CoreLogic’s summary table below shows that Sydney prices seem to be leading national prices lower.

Following the release of the data, Bloomberg reports that UBS is calling an end to the boom in Australian housing...

The housing boom that has seen Australian home prices more than double since the turn of the century is “officially over,” after data showed prices now flatlining, UBS Group AG said.

 

National house prices were unchanged in October from September, while annual growth has slowed to 7 percent from more than 10 percent as recently as July, CoreLogic data released Wednesday showed. “There is now a persistent and sharp slowdown unfolding,” UBS economists led by George Tharenou said in a report.

 

“This suggests a tightening of financial conditions is unfolding, which we expect to weigh on consumption growth via a fading household-wealth effect.”

 

An end to Australia’s property boom will be welcome news for first-time buyers, who have struggled to break into the market after surging prices propelled Sydney past London and New York to be the second-most expensive housing market. Less impressed may be property investors, already squeezed by regulatory lending curbs that drove up mortgage rates.

 

The cooling housing market may encourage the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates at a record low. A rate hike would be undesirable as it would put further downward pressure on dwelling prices, said Diana Mousina, senior economist at AMP Capital Investors.

The regulatory crackdown on the insanely loose practice of lending on high loan to valuation ratios is well overdue. This was permitting speculators to use unrealized gains on one property as a down payment on another property, then another property as prices roses, and so on. See our post from last month “Australia Mortgage Market Is Now A $1.7 Trillion ‘House Of Cards.’”

As we noted at the times, over a decade ago, the U.S. residential housing market was revealed to be perhaps the biggest ponzi scheme ever created as easy financing enabled people to buy/build countless investment properties, that they were in no way adequately capitalized to own, with no money down all based on the premise that the house could be "flipped" before the first mortgage payment even came due.  It was a classic ponzi that worked great for a while but inevitably turned south when home prices suddenly soured and their was no cash equity backing the trillions of dollars in outstanding mortgage debt. But, if a new report from LF Economics is even directionally accurate, then the bubble currently percolating in Australia could take the residential housing ponzi game to a whole new level courtesy of a "creative" little product called "cross-collateralized residential mortgages."

The Australian mortgage market has “ballooned” due to banks issuing new loans against unrealised capital gains of existing investment properties, creating a $1.7 trillion “house of cards”, a new report warns.

 

The report, “The Big Rort”, by LF Economics founder Lindsay David, argues Australian banks’ use of “combined loan to value ratio” — less common in other countries — makes it easy for investors to accumulate “multiple properties in a relatively short period of time despite high house prices relative to income”.

 

“The use of unrealised capital gain (equity) of one property to secure financing to purchase another property in Australia is extreme,” the report says.

 

“This approach allows lenders to report the cross-collateral security of one property which is then used as collateral against the total loan size to purchase another property. This approach substitutes as a cash deposit.

 

“This has exacerbated risks in the housing market as little to no cash deposits are used.”

Yes, you read that correctly...Australian housing speculators can literally use unrealized gains in investment properties as a "cash substitute" for down payments on other investment properties.  Of course, we"re not experts at "the mathematics," but if you constantly take every dollar worth of equity you accrue and pledge it as collateral toward a new purchase then doesn"t that mean the entire system is built on debt and no actual equity at all?

Earlier this month, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released a new working paper,  “Interest rates and house prices in the United States and around the world”.

This identified Australia’s 55-year housing bull market – 50 years from 1961-2010 then 2013-2017 without a downswing in between – as the longest in world. The US housing bull market from 1992-2006 was a mere 15 years. This was the BIS methodology.

Another way to appreciate the persistence of house prices is to contrast the length of their upswings and downswings. We define an upswing (downswing) as a period of house price increases (decreases) sustained in an individual country for three years or more. Based on this definition, periods of upswing accounted for nearly 80% of the advanced economy sample. The up swings lasted on average 13 years; with the longest one, in Australia, still continuing after half a century.

Here are the results in tabular form – Australia is third from bottom...

Since 2000, the BIS found that Australia has seen the second largest increase in real house prices, only exceeded by New Zealand – where the new government has just banned foreign buyers from the market.

 

Our gut feeling is that today’s data signals the beginning of a “Minsky Moment” for the Australian housing market.

Are Cryptocurrencies Inflationary?

Posted with permission and written by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse 

 

 

There’s a debate raging over what, exactly, bitcoin and the thousand or so other cryptocurrencies actually are. Some heavy-hitters are weighing in with strong, if not always coherent opinions:

 

Jamie Dimon calls bitcoin a ‘fraud’

 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon did not mince words when asked about the popularity of virtual currency bitcoin.

Dimon said at an investment conference that the digital currency was a “fraud” and that his firm would fire anyone at the bank that traded it “in a second.” Dimon said he supported blockchain technology for tracking payments but that trading bitcoin itself was against the bank’s rules. He added that bitcoin was “stupid” and “far too dangerous.”

————————

Peter Schiff: Even at $4,000 bitcoin is still a bubble

 

One of the best-known among the bears, investor Peter Schiff, is now making his case in even stronger terms for why bitcoin has advanced ever farther into bubble territory.

Schiff, who predicted the 2008 mortgage crisis, famously referred to bitcoin as digital fool’s gold and compared the cryptocurrency to the infamous bubble in Beanie Babies.

Moreover, the recent run-up in bitcoin hasn’t softened Schiff’s view: If anything, it’s reinforced his sense of impending doom.

Schiff told CoinDesk:

“There’s certainly a lot of bullishness about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that’s the case with bubbles in general. The psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it’s going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you’re right. But it’s not going up because it’s going to work. It’s going up because of speculation.”

“What it comes down to is that bitcoin ain’t money.”

“Libertarian-minded crypto fans saw this was a way to liberate people from the government,” he said, concluding:

“I think it will have the opposite effect. People are going to lose money. This could really backfire, giving libertarian ideals a bad name by making fiat look good. The downside can be really spectacular.”

————————

Hedge fund manager James Altucher: Cryptocurrencies Could Be Worth $200 Trillion One Day

 

I’m not exaggerating when I say cryptocurrencies are the biggest innovation since the internet. We’re on the ground floor of an enormous trend that’s going to change the world.

Cryptocurrencies are currencies with no government in the middle. No bank in the middle. No organizations in the middle keeping track of all your payments, or taking advantage of your spending so they can invade your privacy, and on and on.

Cryptocurrencies solve trillions of dollars’ worth of problems, which is why they will be worth trillions of dollars one day.

Consider the potential:

There is currently $200 trillion in cash, money and precious metals used as currencies in the world. Meanwhile, there’s only $200 billion in cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are eventually replacing traditional currencies.

So that $200 billion will eventually rise to the level of currencies. And probably sooner than we can imagine.

Ask yourself, why does the world need multiple currencies? There’s actually no real reason. The only reason we have a U.S. dollar and also a Canadian dollar is that in 1770 the people in Canada decided not to join the U.S. So an artificial border created two currencies. It’s all dictated by artificial borders.

In the past, an ounce of gold would be accepted almost anywhere in the world. In that sense, unbacked modern fiat currencies are a step backwards.

But in cryptocurrency world, there are what I call “Use Borders.” Every currency is defined by its use. For instance, Ethereum is like Bitcoin but it makes “smart contracts” easier. Contract Law is a multi-trillion dollar industry so this has a huge use case. Filecoin makes storage easier. It’s a $100 billion industry. And on.

Studying the “use” cases, and the effectiveness of the coin to solve those use cases can help us make investment decisions confidently.

This is the great promise of cryptocurrencies and why they will change the world. It’s just getting started.

Don’t try to make sense of the above. Instead, let’s just assume that the cryptocurrency universe will continue to expand for a while and narrow the discussion down to a single question: Are cryptocurrencies inflationary? That is, will their spread lead to higher or lower prices for the average person, and greater or lesser financial instability for the markets, and what does this mean for today’s fiat currencies?

 

One common opinion is that cryptocurrencies can’t be inflationary because their owners have to pay for them in fiat currencies. So one bitcoin bought means one dollar, yen, or euro sold, with the net effect on prices being zero.

 

This makes intuitive sense at first glance, but only holds for the moment of purchase. Consider what happened after someone in, say, 2014 exchanged dollars for bitcoins. The dollars held most of their value, which means the total amount of dollar purchasing power in the world remained constant. But those bitcoins went up by several thousand percent, dramatically increasing the purchasing power – and thus the potential inflationary impact – of the bitcoin complex.

 

A real world example is Julian Assange:

 

Julian Assange Says Wikileaks Has Made a 50,000% Return on Bitcoin. Here’s What That Means

 

Wikileaks has seen an amazing return on investments in bitcoin, founder Julian Assange says, and he is “thanking” the U.S. government for forcing the controversial organization to get into bitcoin in the first place.

In a Tweet on Saturday, Assange said the group’s investment in the cryptocurrency has seen a return greater than 50,000% since 2010. Wikileaks began investing in bitcoin back then because global payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal were under pressure by the U.S. government to block the ability of the group to take payments.

In fact, Bitcoin has seen a more-than 9 million percent return over the dates Assange references. In certain periods in 2010, bitcoin was trading for mere pennies. According to coindesk.com, one unit of bitcoin is now worth a record high of roughly $5,700. Anyone buying bitcoin through much of 2011 and 2012, when one unit was sometimes trading below $1 and was often under $10, would indeed see a return on investment of more than 50,000%, assuming they never sold.

The difference between Wikileak’s purchasing power pre and post-bitcoin is immense. If Assange decides to spend his windfall on goods and services he’d have, at the margin, an inflationary impact on the stuff he buys.

 

So the answer to the question of cryptocurrencies’ impact on price levels depends on how their values change. If they rise after people buy them, then they’re inflationary. If they rise a lot, they’re potentially very inflationary.

 

In this sense, it might be helpful to view cryptocurrencies as assets like houses or stocks rather than as money. When they rise relative to fiat currencies they increase the purchasing power of their owners, generate a “wealth effect” in which owners feel richer and more comfortable with splurging, and in that way push up prices. Based on the following chart, a lot of early adopters are feeling a whole lot richer these days.

 

 

Which then leads to what might be the major cryptocurrency theme of the coming year: Why would governments allow such an inflationary supernova to explode right in front of them when they presumably have the power to stop it? Here’s one possible — and of course disturbing — answer:

 

Will cryptocurrencies trash cash? ‘Fedcoin’ could do it

 

Economist Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research asks the obvious question: Why would central banks—which derive their power as the centralized gatekeepers of fiat currency creation, check clearing and payment processing—embrace a movement that’s primary motivation has been to usurp this power in a decentralized way?

Part of that, according to St. Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard, is recognition that the technology has achieved critical mass. Thus, there’s a fear of being left behind as the very foundations of banking and monetary policy—intermediation, funds transfers, transactions—rapidly change, not unlike the way the creation of mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps changed housing finance in the mid-2000s.

There’s another, more self-serving purpose: Central banks could use their own cryptos to put the squeeze on paper currency. Why? To facilitate the use of negative interest rate policy, which has been deployed in Europe and Japan in recent years in half-baked forms. Currently, in Switzerland, short-term interest rates are at -0.75%.

When another recession hits, especially if one comes soon, a dive to even deeper rates of negative interest would be hampered by the hoarding of cash since banks would charge for deposits (vs. absorbing the cost of negative rates themselves, as they’re doing now). This is known by the economics cognoscenti as the “zero lower bound” in that interest rates cannot go much below negative before the traditional functions of deposits, loans and fractional money creation break down. Mattress stuffing ensues en masse.

The Fed is clearly thinking about it. In testimony to Congress last year, Fed chairman Janet Yellen admitted policymakers “expect to have less scope for interest-rate cuts than we have had historically,” adding she would not completely rule out the use of negative interest rates.

The BIS­—the central bank of central banks—in its latest quarterly review posited that a crypto backed by the Fed “has the potential to relieve the zero lower bound constraint on monetary policy.” Any distinction between regular dollars and this new “Fedcoin” could be removed by establishing a fixed one-to-one valuation. Any competition

from the likes of bitcoin could be squashed by regulation; not unlike how the private ownership of gold was outlawed in the 1930s when it threatened the Fed’s ability to ease credit conditions.

At the risk of being repetitious, pretty much all of the above looks good for gold and great for silver.

 

 

Questions or comments about this article? Leave your thoughts HERE.

 

 

 

 

Are Cryptocurrencies Inflationary?

Posted with permission and written by John Rubino, Dollar Collapse

 

British Banks Forecast Biggest Consumer Credit Collapse In 10 Years

As if Theresa May did not face enough challenges, the latest survey from The Bank of England (BoE) suggests the British consumer is about to face the biggest credit crunch since the great financial crisis.

After repeated warnings from BoE about the surging pace of lending to households, British lenders are planning the biggest cutback in consumer loans in nearly 10 years (BoE"s quarterly net balance of lenders" expectations for the availability of unsecured lending over the next three months fell to -28.6 from -16.2.)

Earlier this year the BoE warned lenders may be dicing with a "spiral of complacency", with car loans a particular area of worry, and now, as The New York Times reports, this latest survey signals the steepest contraction since the fourth quarter of 2008, when the economy was in the depths of its worst post-war recession.

Thursday"s survey figures showed Britain"s consumer economy is running out of steam, said Joanna Davies, economist at Fathom Consulting, the only forecaster in recent Reuters polls to predict a recession.

"We"re quite concerned about the consumer squeeze," Davies said, citing falling wages in inflation adjusted terms and historically low household savings.

"If you add tightening credit conditions onto that, it doesn"t bode well."

Pouring more cold water on Britain"s recoveryt hopes, after seven years of persisting with a forecast of rebounding productivity, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has thrown in the towel.

“As the period of historically weak productivity growth lengthens, it seems less plausible to assume that potential and actual productivity growth will recover over the medium term to the extent assumed in our most recent forecasts,” the watchdog said.

“Over the past five years, growth in output per hour has averaged 0.2 per cent. This looks set to be a better guide to productivity growth in 2017 than our March forecast.”

That paints a gloomy picture for future economic growth, pay rises and the government’s finances.

The report notes that “some commentators have argued that advanced economies have entered an era of permanently subdued productivity growth for structural reasons”.

How To Survive And Thrive In A "Zlatan Ibrahimovic" Market

Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,

 

REPORTER: “Who will win the World Cup playoff?”

ZLATAN: “Only God knows who will go through.”

REPORTER: “It’s hard to ask him.”

ZLATAN: “You’re talking to him.” 

REPORTER: “What did you get your wife for her birthday?”

ZLATAN: “Nothing. She already has Zlatan.” 

ZLATAN: “I can’t help but laugh at how perfect I am.”

In case you don’t pay attention to soccer, here are three things to know about Zlatan Ibrahimovic:

1. He’s an excellent player.


2. His ego, as you can see, is large.


3. He doesn’t appear to have much in common with Yale University’s Robert Shiller.

I’ll start with the third point and the insightful Shiller, in particular. (I’ll get back to “Ibra” in just a moment.) Shiller wrote an article last week warning of the potential hazards of equity investment. As he often does, he shared a chart showing his cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio. He reminded us that the CAPE ratio is “somewhat effective at predicting real returns over a ten-year period.” But this particular article had little to do with ten-year forecasts. Here’s the conclusion (with my emphasis):

In short, the US stock market today looks a lot like it did at the peaks before most of the country’s 13 previous bear markets. This is not to say that a bear market is guaranteed: such episodes are difficult to anticipate, and the next one may still be a long way off...

But my analysis should serve as a warning against complacency. Investors who allow faulty impressions of history to lead them to assume too much stock-market risk today may be inviting considerable losses.

He likens today’s market to 1929, 2000, 2007 and other scary market peaks of the past, while pointing to characteristics he considers typical of market peaks. A high CAPE ratio stands at the top of his list, although he also mentions strong earnings and low volatility. Effectively, he says those three indicators should cause us to worry that a bear market could be right around the corner. And he makes useful observations about the CAPE ratio typically being high, earnings growth also somewhat high, and volatility low (although only slightly below average) just before bear markets begin.

With all due respect, though, I think Shiller’s pivot from long-term returns to a short-term outlook was incomplete. Sure, strong earnings and low volatility aren’t necessarily bullish - I get that - but I find it hard to call them bearish, either. My bigger objection, though, is with the CAPE ratio being part of a market-timing argument. (I applaud the “no guarantee” disclaimer, but still.) As a researcher and asset manager, I’ve never found valuation ratios useful for short-term horizons, nor have I found other researchers having much success using them as short-term indicators. From that experience, I would have recommended one more disclaimer for Shiller’s article - that valuation ratios stink for market timing. And I think my disclaimer is more than just a nitpick, for three reasons that I’ll explain with increasing “Ibra-ness.”

“A World Cup without me is nothing to watch, so it is not worthwhile to wait for the World Cup.”

—Ibrahimovic after Sweden failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals

First, certain other indicators actually have helped foretell major market turning points. Nearly all of the past 13 bear markets, for example, were explained partly by some combination of sharply rising inflation, high interest rates, poor credit conditions or economic depression. I state that with conviction, but you can judge it yourself by reading our article “Riding the ‘Slide’: Is This What the Next Bear Market Looks Like.” Our research suggests that the most common bear-market conditions are mostly absent today. It uses Shiller’s data, by the way, although it covers bear-market conditions he didn’t consider in his article. Without being as bombastic as Ibra but being self-serving nonetheless, I recommend reading our research alongside Shiller’s for a more complete picture than either article offers on its own. (And while you’re at it, I highly recommend Eric Parnell’s latest for a third perspective.)

“I didn’t injure you on purpose and you know that. If you accuse me again I’ll break both your legs, and that time it will be on purpose.”

—Ibrahimovic responding to an accusation from Rafael van der Vaart

Second, the market’s current valuation is like Ibra’s ego - both are inflated. But if you’re Rafael van der Vaart or Pep Guardiola or Lucas Moura and hoping for Ibra to change, you’ll probably be disappointed. He’s not likely to become modest tomorrow just because he’s egotistical today, as if one state triggers the other. And the market won’t become a bear tomorrow just because it’s an expensive bull today. When Ibra’s skills finally erode, though, that’ll be a different story. That’ll be a change in the conditions that feed his ego, just as market forecasters should be concerned with the conditions that feed bulls and bears. In other words, market conditions (such as those mentioned in the preceding paragraph) seem more likely to predict the next bear than indicators calculated from market prices (such as the CAPE ratio).

“First I went left, he did too. Then I went right and he did too. Then I went left again and he went to buy a hot dog.”

—Ibrahimovic on how he dribbled around Liverpool defender Stephane Henchoz

Third, the market can be just as tricky as Ibra is with a ball at his feet, which is why you should choose your defenses carefully. In the big picture, your team (portfolio) should have an appropriate balance between attacking and defending elements. When you’re in the moment, though, I would suggest reading short-term outlooks with a degree of skepticism. If you’re prone to biting on feints and head fakes (overtrading), relying on the CAPE ratio for market timing might make it easier for your opponent to dribble around you. And where would that leave you? Apparently, you’d be found somewhere near the hot dog stand.

Conclusions

Like Robert Shiller, we would advise equity investors to have modest expectations for long-term returns (as we advised here). We also advocate diversifying across major asset classes to reduce the damage that could occur in a bear market. But having realistic expectations and diversifying won’t protect against the greatest risk many investors face - the risk of overtrading. Investors tend to sell risky assets at lower prices than they later repurchase them, suggesting that it’s important to build safeguards against overtrading. At a minimum, bullish and bearish indicators should be weighed carefully. By studying which indicators are most likely to predict bulls and bears, investors can build defenses against rash decisions. And that should be especially helpful today, as investors confront an unusually inflated and tricky mark... no, make that a Zlatan Ibrahimovic market.

Author’s note: Shiller’s article caught my attention because he wrote about 13 bear markets shortly after we, too, published an article about 13 bear markets. To identify bear markets, we used Shiller’s data, which he graciously includes on his website. But our 13 bears aren’t exactly the same as his 13 bears, because we defined them differently. If anyone would like to know the differences, just ask and I’ll discuss them in the comments when I have some free time. Also, I took the Ibrahimovic quotes from various websites, such as here, here and here.

Two Key Indicators Show The S&P 500 Becoming The New "Cash"

Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,

Pension plan administrators do it. Their actuaries and consultants do it. Professional endowment and foundation investors do it. Financial advisors do it. Private investors may or may not do it, but they probably should.

Do what?

All of these folks already are or should be asking themselves the following question: What’s a reasonable expectation for the long-term return on a broad-market equity investment?

Professionals usually answer the question using complex models, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we’ll keep it simple here. Simple often beats the snot out of a long white paper, and two recent developments beg for simple.

First, on Thursday the Fed released its flow-of-funds data, which includes an estimate for the household sector’s overall asset allocation. Data show allocations to corporate equities reaching 25.1% of total household (and nonprofit) assets, a level only before seen between Q4 1998 and Q3 2000. Here’s the full history:

Now, you may say 25% is just a number, and we would agree, but only to a point. We don’t think the household sector’s current allocations tell us anything about the market’s near-term direction. In fact, we don’t detect any of the most common precursors to major market turning points, as discussed here.

But we do think household equity allocations offer clues to long-term returns. Consider the next chart, which compares the allocation data to the corresponding S&P 500 returns over subsequent periods of six, eight and ten years:

You’ll decide for yourself, of course, how to interpret the chart, but we’ll entertain three possibilities.

First, you might rely on a few instances in which S&P 500 returns reached almost 4% after the equity allocation was 25% or more. Compared to today’s miniscule bond yields, 4% looks respectable. If stocks do, indeed, return 4% over the next six to ten years, that could be higher than the return on any other major asset class, which probably explains how stocks got so expensive in the first place.

Second, you might mentally project the scatter plot’s downward trend out to the current equity allocation. Doing that, returns appear to spread evenly around today’s cash rate of about 1%. So, whereas optimistically you might expect a return of 4% or thereabouts, more realistically a negative return is almost as likely.

Third, you might look at the data and say, “So what? We should really use a traditional indicator - one that compares prices to earnings - not an asset allocation measure.”

Which brings us to another recent development that might alter future returns—the S&P 500 busting through 2500. To account for that latest market milestone, the next chart updates one of our favorite S&P 500 indicators, the price–to–peak earnings multiple or P/PE. (Unlike a standard price-to-earnings multiple that places the past year’s earnings in the denominator, P/PE uses the highest four-quarter earnings to date, mitigating distortions that occur when earnings fall in recessions.)

At a price–to–peak earnings multiple of 23.6, we’re currently at about the same valuation as in December 1997. Once again, you might find an optimistic interpretation - that is, the long bull market that finally ended in 2000 suggests there could still be room to bubble up from here. But the implications for long-term returns aren’t nearly as optimistic, as shown in our final chart:

If you stare at the chart long enough, you might see a less bearish picture than in the first scatter plot above. (Stare even longer and you might see the King of France.) But the difference isn’t especially large. On either chart, the downward slope points to a meager long-term return. In fact, if we use only the scatter plots above to make our estimate, while also accounting for the Fed’s predicted interest rate path, the S&P 500 appears to offer a similar return to cash.

Conclusions

To be clear, we’re encouraging long-term bulls to reconsider their assumptions, but we’re not advising them to dismantle carefully diversified portfolios (meaning those that are spread sensibly among multiple asset classes). We would be more likely to recommend a major portfolio shift if the usual bear-market catalysts - sharply rising inflation, high interest rates and poor credit conditions - were present.

More to the point, it seems a good time for investors to check their expectations and risk levels. Investors should develop reasonable expectations informed by data such as those in the scatter plots above. And they shouldn’t take more risk than they’ll be able to tolerate as the next bear market plays out. As always, only a small percentage of investors will accurately time the next market cycle, and we shouldn’t bet too heavily on being among those fortunate few

Riding The ‘Slide’: Is This What the Next Bear Market Looks Like?

Submitted by ffwiley.com

Even as the Fed’s decision makers are beginning to worry less about recession and more about bubbly stock prices, we’re not yet moved by their attempts to curb the market’s enthusiasm. After all, the fed funds rate sits barely above 1%, which not too long ago qualified as a five-decade low. And other indicators, besides interest rates, aren’t exactly predicting the next bear, either. Inflation is subdued, credit spreads are tight, banks are mostly lending freely and the economy is growing, albeit slowly. It just doesn’t feel as though we’re close to a major market peak.

All that being said, we’re not so much about feelings as we are about delving into history (nerds that we are) and seeing if there’s anything we can learn. Let’s look at the last 90 years to see if any bear markets began under similar conditions to those today.

We’ll consider thirteen bears, as listed in the table below. (Our list may be different to yours, mainly because we use Robert Shiller’s monthly average S&P 500 prices, instead of daily prices, but also because we reset the cycle whenever the market falls 20% from a peak or rises 20% from a trough.)

Next we narrow the list by excluding bears that began during recessions, because we don’t think the economy is recessing as I write this (or recessing imminently—see here.) That removes the first three bears—those that began in 1929, 1930 and 1932. Every other bear began as the economy was expanding, which explains why market peaks are so difficult to predict.

We also exclude the bear that crossed the 20% threshold in June 1940 and can’t be separated from geopolitics. Hopefully, modern geopolitical risks won’t explode as they did then, but we can always return to the “WWII bear” if WWIII breaks out (presuming we’re alive and blogging).

After the exclusions, nine bears remain. We examine each one to determine how many were predicted by rising inflation, one of the strongest bear-market indicators. Rising inflation erodes purchasing power, invites monetary restraint and unsettles both lenders and investors. Judging by the next chart, it helped trigger at least seven of the nine bears:

The chart shows seven bears emerging from an inflation “shock” of 3% or more (referring to an increase from twelve months before a market peak to when stocks reached the bear market threshold of –20%). In each of those cases, it seems pointless to attempt to draw parallels to today. Inflation is currently below 2% and down almost a percent from January. Without an inflation shock in sight, we shouldn’t rely on the seven “inflation bears” to predict the future.

That leaves two bears we haven’t yet considered. In one of the two—the bear that began in August 2000—inflation contributed to the market’s reversal, but monetary policy and credit conditions were more telling. Policy rates rose, credit spreads widened and bank lending standards tightened—all before the market peak. Market conditions at that time were quite different to those today, as shown in the table below (which also includes the October 2007 peak for added context):

In other words, twelve of the original thirteen bears emerged from some combination of recession, inflation, world war, monetary tightening, and troubles in credit markets. In each case, market conditions were uglier than they appear now. The twelve bears tell us to be optimistic—they’ll continue to hibernate until conditions worsen. But we’ve yet to consider the 1962 bear, which finally supplies a potential match for today.

The lead-up to the 1962 bear looks eerily similar to 2017. Commentators called it the Kennedy Slide. Before the Slide, the market hadn’t fallen 20% on a month-average basis since 1946. And the bull gathered speed after JFK won the presidency. Sound familiar? Here’s a chart comparing the S&P 500 (SPY) in the three years after Kennedy’s election to the first ten months after Donald Trump’s election (there’s a joke somewhere in the respective trajectories, but we would like to keep our G rating):

Conclusions

The Kennedy Slide offers a reasonable guide to how a future bear could develop if key indicators remain benign. Consider that the Slide defied four fundamentals you wouldn’t normally associate with falling stock prices:

• Inflation was subdued, peaking at 1.3%.


• Monetary policy was close to neutral, with the discount rate at 3%.


• Growth was strong, reaching 7.4% in Q1 1962 and 4.4% in Q2, after Q4/Q4 growth of 6.4% in 1961.


• Credit spreads were testing 18-month lows of just above 1% (for the Moody’s Baa Corporate versus the 10-year Treasury).

Surely those cozy fundamentals explain the market’s rocket-fast recovery. Stocks reached a new all-time high in September 1963, just 21 months after the prior high. That’s the shortest period on record from one all-time high through a bear market to the next all-time high—faster even than the recovery from the 1987 crash.

And what might 1962 tell us about the future?

Well, as of now, inflation, monetary policy, growth and credit are only marginally less cozy than they were then. If that continues, we would bet on a rapid recovery from a Trump Slide, should one occur. But it’s important for inflation, monetary policy, growth and credit to remain nonthreatening. Any of those fundamentals could change rapidly, and they tend to correlate. (We expect monetary policy to be a particular risk within a couple of years, as discussed here.) Should the four fundamentals deteriorate, we would ignore the 1962 bear and turn to other bears for clues about what happens next. Considering the unprecedented period of monetary stimulus, we would then expect an ill-tempered bear, one that might resemble the bears that began in 1930, 2000 and 2007.

When we pass the next market peak, in other words, four key fundamentals should tell us whether we’ll “ride the slide” or experience something much worse.

Wall Street Journal Lashes Out At "Our Political Central Bankers"

While the concept of "independence" among the unelected central bank cognoscenti is as cute as the tooth fairy or santa claus, it is nevertheless defended by those on high as sacrosanct to our very democracy. That is until The Wall Street Journal"s editorial board finally had enough of Fed officials joining the "resistance" against financial reform...

Via WSJ,

Janet Yellen didn’t run for President, but you wouldn’t know it from her policy démarche Friday at the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole retreat. The Fed Chair unleashed a defense of post-crisis financial regulation that shows how political the world’s central bankers have become.

“Already, for some, memories of this experience may be fading—memories of just how costly the financial crisis was and of why certain steps were taken in response,” Ms. Yellen said.

She added that regulatory changes “should be modest” and retain the superstructure built under Dodd-Frank.

Ms. Yellen’s comments followed a blunter recent warning from Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, who told the Financial Times that “one can understand the political dynamics of this thing, but one cannot understand why grown, intelligent people” would “reach the conclusion that” you should “get rid of all the things you have put in place in the last 10 years.” Thank you, Senator Warren, er, Fischer.

***

This is extraordinary. Fed officials are launching a political campaign to retain their vast discretionary control over the American financial system. The brazenness of the effort shows how far afield central bankers have roamed from their traditional remit of monetary policy, which Ms. Yellen barely mentioned. You’d think she’d focus on that duty given that the Fed faces a watershed as soon as next month as it decides whether to begin rolling back the $4.5 trillion balance sheet it has amassed since the 2008 financial panic.

The size and scope of that balance sheet is itself a political intrusion because the Fed’s bond purchases are a form of credit allocation. The purchase of mortgage securities favors housing, while the Fed’s focus on long-duration bonds has been a deliberate attempt to push investors into riskier assets.

These decisions haven’t done much for the real economy, which has grown at a historically slow pace since the recession ended in June 2009. But the Fed has succeeded in lifting some asset prices, and no one knows what will happen to those prices once the Fed begins unwinding its portfolio. Perhaps it will all unfold without a hitch, but some very smart people aren’t as sanguine.

As for the stability of the financial system, Ms. Yellen and Mr. Fischer are at pains to assure us that, due to their efforts, all is well. “Banks are safer,” she says, thanks to capital and liquidity mandates and the wisdom of financial regulators. Oh, and “credit is available on good terms.”

But Ms. Yellen wasn’t nearly as optimistic about lending in the later Obama years. She often fretted that tight credit conditions were limiting growth, and the facts bear out that concern. Bank lending in the current expansion has trailed that of seven previous recoveries, and lending for small business has been especially slow. None of this is cause for Fed triumphalism.

Banks are safer, but they should be after eight years of modest expansion. The real test of financial stability comes in times of economic stress, when interest rates rise or investors get nervous and rush to safer assets. The system has already had one liquidity panic, in October 2014, when the yield on U.S. Treasurys moved some 40-basis points in a day.

You have to ignore history to believe that regulators are suddenly so wise that they know the current regulatory regime will prevent the next crisis. The Fed misjudged the economy in the mid-2000s and kept feeding easy credit that produced the housing bubble. Fed officials Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner then underestimated the financial risks in early 2008 when the stresses were already apparent.

That’s one reason to support a financial regime with high levels of capital to defend against potential losses but with less regulatory micro-managing. This is the trade-off that House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling has proposed, which contrasts with the lower capital and lower regulatory barriers that the Trump Administration seems to prefer.

This is the debate we should be having, but the Fed wants Americans to believe that Dodd-Frank is gospel and the only alternative is to return to pre-crisis policies. The irony is that Ms. Yellen is thus associating the Fed with the post-crisis status quo that has been splendid for Goldman Sachs and giant banks that have gained market share and can afford higher regulatory costs.

Ms. Yellen did concede that “there may be benefits to simplifying aspects of the Volcker rule” that limits propriety trading, which is the least she can do since the rule as written is more than 950 pages of text and explanation. But until she runs for public office, she and the Fed ought to stick to executing regulatory policy rather than trying to dictate it.

Ms. Yellen’s term as Fed chair expires early next year, and her Jackson Hole foray is a signal to President Trump about what he can expect if he reappoints her.

The Fed needs a leader who won’t bend to political pressure. But it also needs a leader who understands the limits of the Fed’s political role.