Tuesday, March 29, 2016

QE- Follow the Money Trail


30 March 2016 (inspired by a question posed by my new friend Bob)


A common myth surrounding Quantitative Easing (QE) was that the central banks physically printed cash and fed it to the banks to lend out. This is not quite how it worked in reality. 


First things first. What problem was QE trying to fix?

One of the fall-out problems of the Global Financial Crisis was the reduction in money supply as banks stopped lending money and people started to repay their loans or in the case of non-recourse loans in the USA simply walked away from their debts. The level of defaults led to much more stringent credit worthiness policies and led to a sharp decline in lending. 

The money supply equation M4 is calculated as the sum total of money plus credit. The credit part of the equation is created through  banks lending money through the fractional reserve banking multiplier which effectively has 10 times the punching power of money printed by the Government. 

The problem is when debt starts to be repaid it contracts the money supply at a 10 to 1 ratio as well. In essence the repayment of debt equates to money in the system being destroyed.

Less money supply = less demand for goods and services which leads to recessions and even possible deflation or economic collapse.

The traditional Keynesian theory is that Government should step in with tax cuts and/or more spending (which did happen - think of cycle ways, roading and other NZ Government funded programmes that kicked off in 2008 through to now) to fill the gap in consumer demand and keep an economy ticking along. 

Milton Friedman (an American Nobel prize winning economist) had proposed an alternative theory before he died in 2006 - helicopter money. The theory goes that instead of focussing on demand side economics as Keynes proposed a Central Bank should step in to increase the supply of money. More money supply equals more demand for goods and services. He suggested that the Great Depression was caused by an ordinary financial shock but that its seriousness and duration were directly attributable to a sustained decrease in the money supply.

The same logic can be applied to an alcoholic. To avoid a hangover prescribe more alcohol.

To avoid people over-complicating the method of increasing the money supply and clouding his simple idea he used the analogy of "dropping money out of a helicopter". 

Ben Bernanke was also a student of the cause and effect of the Great Depression. In his solution to the Global Financial Crisis he implemented a form of helicopter money called Quantitative Easing in addition to the usual cutting of interest rates. The solution implemented by the US Government was a fiscal stimulus along the Keynesian thinking where Government steps in to spend when consumers won't. And so the rest of the world followed this lead of a two pronged attack on the GFC with both monetary policy and fiscal policy being used to varying degrees. 


How was QE implemented?


QE as it was implemented was not really a process of printing cash and giving it to the population to spend. It was far more subtle than that. As corporate and personal debt was being repaid in quick fashion during the GFC the money supply was shrinking and liquidity was in short supply. Sir Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England) stated in October 2012 that a 
"damaged banking system means that today banks aren't creating enough money. We have to do it for them."
The central banks that implemented QE did it by purchasing financial assets in the market (usually Government bonds in England or, in the case of the US, Treasury Bills) and paying for these items by creating new central bank reserves (essentially bringing money into existence out of nothing).  Remember, the relationship between central banks and trading banks is a closed loop or better still think of it as a wagon wheel with the central bank as the hub and each spoke representing a trading bank. The QE method only works if the trading bank accepts the increased reserves issued by the central bank. Trading banks seized the offer of accepting the new central bank reserves as real money due to their nature of being zero-risk to the trading bank and the cash deposits representing real money to the account holders who sold their financial assets to the central bank.

Here's an example:
Bank of England purchases British Government Bonds in the marketplace for say £100,000,000. It pays for them by agreeing with the trading banks to increase the central bank reserves and agrees to pay these banks a small interest rate in return for holding more reserves than they would otherwise be required to hold. The trading banks are holding a risk-free asset that is interest bearing which enables them to offset the liability of the trading banks being the deposit monies held by the sellers of the British Government Bonds. 

If the £100,000,000 had simply stayed put in the trading banks these banks would have lent it out to borrowers and the credit creation cycle and money supply multiplier magic of fractional reserve banking would have worked. But it didn't stay in the bank. So where did it go?


Follow the Money


The sellers of the Government Bonds were essentially institutional investors, pension funds etc who went looking for a yield better than the banks could offer. Remember that bank interest rates were falling at the time due to Central Banks lowering them to pump confidence into borrowers. As you will see shortly these two strategies work against one another. 

These investors knew that with increased money supply and lower interest rates there would be a run for yield. They ran for the share markets and bond markets. Here lies the answer as to why QE didn't work in pumping the money multiplier through bank lending - deposit holders withdrew their money at the same rate as the Central Bank were creating it and reinvested into the share markets. It made the share market soar. It even saw companies look to invest their surplus cash in buying back there own shares (what better investment is there than buying back your own shares). 

In reality only a small fraction of the QE money went into the general economy at large and even then it was only to the most credit-worthy or institutional customers. Some of these borrowers were also companies that bought back there own shares. The rest of the borrowing found its way into the property market. Again, speculative investments not productive investments. 

It would be interesting to know how Friedman would have viewed the bastardisation of his theory when put into practice. Friedman surely contemplated a tax cut regime or other direct stimulus that put the spending power in the hands of the public. 


Where are we at with QE now?



The European Central Bank voted earlier this month to increase it's ongoing 'expanded asset purchase programme' (lets just call it QE) from €60bn per month to a whopping 80bn per month.


Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen this morning (30 March 2016 NZ time) delivered her first speech since announcing that interest rates would remain unchanged earlier this month. In her speech to the Economic Club of New York she intimated that the planned path of rate hikes will likely be slower than initially projected last December. She has in the past stated that the Fed would not hesitate to utilise tools previously employed to combat the GFC - namely interest rate cuts (although they have nearly an empty tank for this currently) and of course more QE.

It will be interesting to see if the Fed apply pressure for the Government to utilise fiscal measures for the next round of helicopter money in terms of tax cuts. Given promises being made on the primary candidates election campaigns running at present I wouldn't hold my breath for assistance in this regard.

One thing is for certain, any hint of QE will see money flow to the speculative investments once again as evidenced by the impact of Yellen's speech - the share market immediately soared, US dollar devalued against other currencies and once again the mob rushed in to purchase risky assets chasing that slightly higher yield. 

When will we learn?

© 2016

Friday, March 4, 2016

Does China have a Golden Parachute

Does China have a Golden Parachute?A New Zealand perspective


4 March 2016

Remember when inflation was enemy number one in world economics?

Funny how now it is the one thing that every central bank on the planet craves for (and at any cost).

The difference today is debt. The world economies are so laden with debt that inflation is the friend they need in their sinking ship to stay afloat. Inflation means that every dollar borrowed today gets to be repaid with 90 cents in the future for an asset that is growing in value.  

Deflation on the other hand means that a dollar borrowed today results in a $1.10 repayable in the future for an asset that is declining rapidly in value.

Debt (both public debt and private debt) is a real worry when deflationary pressures are in play.

NZ Public Debt Exposure

The estimated NZ national debt currently (Mar 2016) stands at $119b with interest on this around 5% pa equates to $5.95b of interest pa. This published national debt is only part of the jigsaw unfortunately. 

The hidden part of our debt is our exposure to derivatives. 

Derivatives are a type of insurance policy taken to protect against fluctuations in exchange rates and interest rates. Again, in a normal world such insurances are just part and parcel of prudent financial management.  Derivatives are purchased and sold to provide certainty within an acceptable range for wild variations that might occur in currency and interest rates. The key to understanding the danger of derivatives is being aware of counter-party default risk on these products. It’s all very well paying an insurance company premiums in case your house burns down, but what happens if your insurance company burns to the ground in the same fire? 

This is risk that New Zealand Inc. faces in the event of an economic melt-down. We would be forced to honour payment of the derivatives we had issued and yet not be in a position to collect on the debts owed to us by those we purchased derivatives from. i.e. we take a hit on both sides (still have liabilities to pay but no corresponding asset to collect on).

Unfortunately we only get to know the extent of the NZ Government’s exposure to derivatives once a year when they publish the NZ financial statements. Even then they are very scant on detail as to what these derivatives are, strike prices and who the counter party is. As at 30 June last year the derivatives classed as assets on our balance sheet were valued at $3.015b and those classified as liabilities were $6.261b. In a hypothetical melt down (on 30 June 2015) our exposure to derivatives would be the combined effect of having to write off our assets $3b plus pay out our liabilities $6b giving a combined hit to NZ Inc. of $9b!

These derivatives also make/lose us money each year depending on the movements in exchange rates and/or interest rates. In 2015 the Government collected $66b in taxation revenues (this includes GST, income tax, corporate tax, excise tax, duties…everything). In the same year the Government made gains on financial instruments totalling $6.2b. It is these gains and smaller than budgeted losses from non-financial instruments that gave the NZ books its surplus of $5.771b last year. It was not from collecting more revenue or spending less than budgeted… it was from winning bets on interest rate and exchange rate fluctuations which the Government showed a paper profit on.

If any particular derivative goes into freefall the cost to exit the derivative increases exponentially. So in reality NZ’s exposure under these instruments of financial destruction is far greater than the $9b shown above. $9b is only our exposure in sound, stable times.

Global Deflation

The world is suffering from deflationary pressures (blamed on a slowdown in China’s growth). When any particular country suffers from deflation the quick-fire response is to steal growth from your trading partners by devaluing your own currency which has the effect of exporting your deflation and importing inflation.

In 2015 China responded to slowing domestic growth by de-pegging the Yuan from the US dollar and devaluing the Yuan in gradual steps. This was really the first step towards a global currency war.

The Euro is facing tremendous pressure  from weakness in a number of its member economies namely Greece, Portgual, Italy, Spain etc.  In reality the only way forward for these countries is to eventually default on their debts, exit the Euro, devalue their currencies and hope to import some inflation into their economies.  The problem is that Germany would be the last man standing and be left with an ever growing deflationary pressure on their economy. So, Germany has no option but to apply massive pressure for all member countries to remain in the Euro. If one goes then potentially they all go.

Teunis Brosens, senior economist at ING suggests the time has come for the ECB to resort to direct injection Quantitative Easing (the infamous helicopter money) to put cash directly in the hands of individual consumers to get them to spend money in the economy. As I write this the ECB have a QE programme equating to 60 billion Euro per month being created. This QE money is used to purchase assets, driving down bond yields and lifting share market prices. 

Similarly the EU needs solidarity from its members to remain viable. A British exit would potentially lead to a run on countries wishing to exit the EU to protect their own export trade while imposing import tariffs to protect their own national industries.

NZ Dairy Sector Exposure

Commodity markets globally are extremely unstable. Oil in particular has been in free-fall mode but also the mining commodities like iron ore and copper.  Dairy prices have fallen dramatically such that if these low prices continue for too much longer as many as 10% of today’s dairy farmers in NZ will probably not be farming in 12 months’ time.

A prolonged downturn in the dairy industry will lead to a reduction in demand for new plant and machinery, reduction in demand for new cars, boats, holiday homes etc. Remember that dairy farmers are huge spenders within the NZ economy and as such the trickle down impact will be far greater than any other sector of the economy – Stockfeed, supplements, farm merchandising, irrigation, cropping contractors, stock agents, fuel companies, engineering companies, milk factories…etc.


One Potential Scenario for NZ


A prolonged downturn in the dairy dairy sector slowdown would eventually see a trickle-down effect to the Auckland economy within a 12-24 month period, which will lead to people trying to quit their expensive homes in favour of relocating to cheaper accommodation. This in turn triggers an immediate downturn in house prices and a rush to get out while there is still value in the house. More sellers than buyers drives values lower much quicker than a rising market. At that point we will see large numbers of people with negative equity in their homes. Banks will start demanding increased security to prop up existing loans, guarantees will be called upon…

The NZ banks having already taken a bath on the dairy sector will start taking hits on the residential sector and from that point things start to unravel rather quickly.

Here is a potential scenario of how this unravelling might occur:

The Reserve Bank responds to the crisis by cutting rates to zero, but there is still no demand for people to borrow money. The banks eager to recoup losses and to meet the increasing demands for higher interest from their offshore lenders will be forced to increase lending margins significantly. The Reserve Bank will again respond by talking negative interest rates as a possibility. People start to hoard cash, the Reserve Bank responds by imposing restrictions on cash withdrawals. The Reserve Bank then follows through on its threat to impose negative interest rates to force people to spend their savings. The opposite occurs. People start hoarding things to trade with as an alternative to cash. No-one has confidence to borrow even at negative rates because assets are falling in value faster than the rate of return that you receive on your negative interest rate.

The Reserve Bank admits defeat as it no longer has any tools left to combat deflation.
Enter the Government to put capital controls in place to stop capital exiting the country. Fiscal policy tools then come in to play as the Government seeks the Robin Hood approach of taxing the rich to keep the economy afloat.

Think this is all a little farfetched?

Such a scenario all but occurred in Japan twenty years ago. Japan did not go to the extreme of bringing in negative interest rates as their economists did not believe rates could go lower than zero percent. The difference with Japan was that the rest of the world was in boom times and was prepared to buy everything that Japan could produce. And yet despite this, Japan could not inspire confidence of its people to invest and grow their businesses even with zero rate loans.

If you think negative interest rates are a fiction ask anyone with money in Switzerland, Sweden or Denmark. In the past 6 months each of these countries have done just that. Japan last month (Feb 2016) announced its plan to go negative rates as well. 

Other Warning Signs

There are plenty of warning signs out there that things are much worse than we might be led to believe.

The oil industry for example. The oil industry has been battling these past months in the face of free-falling demand for oil and corresponding price falls. What is not widely known is that the majority of the high cost oil producers (namely the fracking boys from Canada and USA) are funded by bonds that come to maturity within the next 12 months. These bonds are sitting as assets at face value today on the lenders balance sheet but will end up as worthless junk bonds by year end as the fracking companies go broke and will be unable to refinance their debts. Not all the fracking industry borrowing was by way of bond issues – some of it was through normal commercial bank loans. None of these banks are volunteering to let us know how exposed they are to this oil industry.

The shipping industry is going through its worst time in modern history as evidenced by the all-time lows in the Baltic Dry Index. On Thursday 3 March 2016 dry bulk shipper Golden Ocean Group CEO, Herman Billung, addressed an industry conference:

"In the coming months there will be a lot of bankruptcies, counterparty risk will be on everybody's lips."

"The market has never been this bad before in modern history. We haven't seen a market this bad since the Viking age. This is not sustainable for anybody and will lead to dramatic changes."

Bank Exposures

The exposure that banks have to lending within failing commodity markets is as yet unknown, but all will be revealed when the bankruptcies start. These exposures will undoubtedly reveal some of the stronger banks are in fact insolvent. This then leads to risk premiums being loaded onto inter-bank lending which will see lending rates start to rise and a potential for difficulty for some borrowers to even refinance their existing debts.

Some of these banks will be found to hold large portfolios of derivatives which will suddenly see counterparty defaults spread a contagion of defaults throughout the financial and sovereign debt markets.

NIRP and The War on Cash

A number of countries world-wide are declaring a war on cash in preparation for NIRP (Negative Interest Rate Policy). They are doing this under the guise of reducing organised crime, drugs, tax evasion, terrorism etc. but the real thrust is to prepare people for fully digital currency that the Government can have absolute control over.  

The Eurozone countries are clearly preparing for this. In France it will be illegal to use cash for any transaction exceeding 1,000 euros from 1 September 2016. Any cash deposit or withdrawal of more than 10,000 euros will be reported to the French anti-fraud and money laundering agency. Italy already has a ban on cash transactions exceeding 1,000 euros and Spain has one at 2,500 euros.  Even economic commentators from the USA are suggesting the removal of the high denomination US dollar notes from circulation. The Federal Reserve is also not ruling out the possibly of using negative interest rates if required.

There is a lot of talk about removing the €500 note from circulation, even in the US, Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president, is pushing the U.S. to ban $50 and $100 bills.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has recently appointed the immediate past president of Google Australia to its team to increase the Reserve Bank’s capabilities in digital currencies. The bank has also announced its plans to investigate a move to a digital currency http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/reserve-bank-says-australian-dollars-could-come-in-digital-form-in-future-20160223-gn0zxx.html

Japan has proven that at some point close to zero there is no incentive to borrow money when you know the asset you are borrowing for will be worth less in the future. Zero interest rates placed Japan into a coma economically for more than twenty years. Negative interest rates will be like pulling the plug on a patient reliant on life support.

Meltdown

The world is directly headed for an economic meltdown fuelled by decades of excessive and ever growing debt and asset bubbles that were not allowed to pop when they were relatively small. Low interest rates have provided the fuel for high risk lending on assets such as housing and the share market. The increased demand for these assets has inflated the asset bubble leading to more debt accumulation and an increasing appetite for yield with little or no thought to risk.

Company profits have been falling and yet their share prices continue to rise both from an increase in demand (more people buying shares) and a reduction in supply (as companies invest their own surplus cash in buying back their own shares).

Housing yields continue to fall and yet more and more demand for city housing continues to drive prices higher as employment moves with population to where the economies of scale are (in big cities). This urbanisation is a global phenomenon from Auckland to London, from New York to Shanghai.

The hunt for yield, combined with low interest rates over an extended period of time, combined with a too big to fail bail-out mentality that started in 2008 has seen the measurement of risk skewed immensely. Markets are cyclical in nature like any system. Boom will always be followed by bust, which enables markets to re-evaluate, revalue, and grow again in a sustainable fashion.  To believe otherwise and “protect” markets from failure results in a ponzie scheme on a global scale. Such is the monster we have all allowed to occur since 2008.

Demographics

In the western world we also have demographics working against us. An aging population is going to see demand side economics fail. In Germany the production of adult nappies will soon out-number baby nappies. This is already the case in Japan. This type of population shift out of the workforce means reductions in productivity will occur. It means less demand for goods and services. It means less demand for housing. It means less investment in capital, less of everything on the demand side leads to excess supply and shrinking prices. Even if we cure deflation at an economic level in the next 10 years we are still faced with the reality of deflationary pressures from an aging population. 

Germany (seen as the strongest economy in Europe) will be the first victim of the demographic demise.  Perhaps this is the problem Angela Merkel was looking to solve when deciding to open the doors to refugees from Syria.  Just as attempting to import inflation by devaluing your currency is essentially a zero-sum-gain or a race to the bottom, attempting to attract immigrants to your country by offering incentives or taxing those who try to depart will also be a zero-sum-gain.

USA has already prepared for an exodus of its wealthy citizens by imposing FATCA rules on every banking institution in the world. The Eurozone and other big players globally are looking at introducing similar measures as FATCA to control capital and labour exiting their country.

Surely if this melt-down were coming everyone would be talking about it, economists would be warning of its coming etc?

The reality is that it is not in an economists’  best interest to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Economists are not going to bite the hand that feeds them as they are invariably employed by the banks, by the Government or at least by Government funded entities. There are not enough lifeboats for the flood coming so there is no point creating widespread panic by warning the public what is coming. The Government clearly believe they have a better chance of controlling matters through their own planned initiatives (like negative interest rates and controls on cash). These initiatives rely on the element of surprise to be effective.

In the end savers will be essentially taxed to destruction as the Government seeks to repay its debts and cover its derivatives exposures. 

In a global melt-down there is no-one left to borrow from. Central banks can’t print their way out of trouble this time around without causing a crash in faith in the currency as a whole. Payment for our exports would be in default, demand for our commodities would all but dry up and the NZ economy would come to a grinding halt.

Government balance sheets globally would see massive write-downs in the value of their assets, defaults on their borrowings, and they would be looking for a way to get out of the mess relevant to their neighbour.

Enter the IMF.

The IMF are the only player with very little debt on their balance sheet. They alone have the power to issue a new currency that all countries would have faith in. They already have this currency in the form of SDR (Special Drawing Rights) which comprise a basket of currencies at relative values. China’s Yuan currency will join this basket with the current participants USD, Euro, GBP and the Yen later this year.

The IMF has the ability to issue a currency which already has the faith of the participating countries. This would have the potential to be not only the new reserve currency for world trade but also act as a backstop for the currencies within the SDR.

Will China follow suit?

China have followed suit in terms of inflating asset prices (both stock market and real estate bubbles)  and increasing debt to extreme levels. The difference with China is that they borrowed to build new infrastructure. They created excess capacity that one day will be filled. They are playing the game slightly ahead of their demographic situation.  When the bubble bursts they will still have their physical assets along with a growing population to demand them. Elsewhere in the world we will have assets and infrastructure that will be aging, falling into disrepair, and falling demand for their use.

China play the long game. They plan generations ahead not 4 years ahead. So what is their game?

Let’s look at what they are buying and selling for clues.

China are selling their foreign reserves i.e. US Treasury bonds. Q. Who is buying them? A. Difficult to tell as it appears mystery buyers of these are buying though institutions in Brussels. You can bet it’s not the Belgian's  buying these. Rumour has it that the Federal Reserve is buying these to keep the demand for the US dollar going. Regardless who is buying the Chinese are selling these in large quantities every month. (China were buyers until 2010.)

China is buying gold. Lots of gold.  Physical gold (not paper gold, not gold options or futures).  Not only is China the largest producer of mined gold in the world, they have also been buying vast quantities of gold each month for the past 5 or more years. The gold is being acquired from USA, Canada, European countries as well as emerging markets. Gold has been historically held by central banks as a strong asset backing for their balance sheet. It is held as a store of value, irrespective of movements in interest rates and currency movements. In essence countries used gold instead of, or together with derivatives for this purpose. Three countries are known to be buying gold in recent times. China, India and Russia.

India are in fact even willing to rent gold from their citizens by paying interest on any gold the public of India allow the Government to hold on their behalf.

Why is China buying gold?

1.  It is a natural hedge against the US dollar. Any collapse of the USD would see a run to gold for safety. China still holds vast amounts of US Treasury Bonds so it makes sense that they would want to create an insurance policy to protect themselves if the dollar collapsed and made their Treasury bonds worthless.

2.  Bill Holter from JSMineset.com believes China plan to devalue the Yuan against gold. Instead of devaluing against the US dollar, if China devalue their currency against gold they are essentially going to collapse the entire global financial system as it forces the devaluation of all global currencies along with it. This then makes gold extremely valuable for countries that still have it. Gold reserves held by a central bank then become the backing for revaluing the country’s balance sheet and essentially allows the country to move forward with debt (denominated in their old currency) wiped clean.

So what would China end up with under scenario 2?

An initial collapse, followed by default on the treasury bonds it holds, followed by devaluation of all currencies, followed by write-off of its treasury bonds after offsetting the write of its own debts owed, a revalued Treasury full of gold, brand new infrastructure that cost pittance in terms of the replacement cost to build if using gold as the currency.
China would emerge as the super-power economy that could pick off any key economic or strategic asset it desires globally to acquire at cents on the dollar.

What about Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies as a hedge?
This relatively new asset class appears to have tremendous potential as a store of value that is uncorrelated to other assets. Bitcoin in particular with its distributed ledger "Blockchain" technology, immense security from attack (the reward for successfully attacking the network is all the Bitcoin in existence - and this has been open to every hacker in the world to attack from the day it launched in January 2009) and its ability to move currency any where, any time, instantaneously, essentially free of cost and is censorship resistant.  The pseudonymous nature of being able to disguise the owner's identity made it the favoured currency for the infamous Silk Road website where people were buying drugs, weapons etc.  These attributes coupled with scarcity of supply (there can only ever be $21m Bitcoins created, and creation or "mining" of new Bitcoins halves every 4 years or so). 

The concept of a Cyrptocurrency is relatively new. The idea was brought to reality by an anonymous person or group of persons known as Satoshi Nakamoto who solved the problem of double-spending digital currency in the production of a whitepaper in 2008. This was followed soon after with the release of code and the creation of the first block of 1 million Bitcoins on January 2009 together with the following message (quoted from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block) 
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks[1]

This was probably intended as proof that the block was created on or after January 3, 2009, as well as a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking. Additionally, it suggests that Satoshi Nakamoto may have lived in the United Kingdom.[3]

This detail, "second bailout for banks" could also suggest that the fact a supposedly liberal and capitalist system, rescuing banks like that, was a problem for Satoshi . . . the chosen topic could have a meaning about bitcoin s purpose . . .

The current price of Bitcoin is USD$385.00 and fluctuates wildly. This volatility makes it difficult to see Bitcoin as a store of value at the present time but if a financial collapse occurred then this asset class could well be an alternative to gold based on the attributes described above. All things being equal, the scarcity and deflationary nature of the supply alone should see its value increase over time.

The use cases for Bitcoin are limited at present, however this technology may well be the future of our financial system in both currency, accountability, stewardship, governance and proof of ownership.

Bitcoin is mined or created by a network of computers racing to solve a new mathematical problem every 10 minutes. The first computer to solve it, broadcasts the solution to the other machines on the network and is rewarded with newly minted Bitcoin. The current reward is 12.5 Bitcoins and is due to halve to 6.25 Bitcoins in mid 2016. In 2020 this miner reward will again halve to 3.125 Bitcoins. The miner is free to sell these newly created coins, save them as a store of value or spend them to defray mining costs. 

The big cost of mining is the cost of hardware and electricity. The computers required to win this race need to be extremely fast in performing the calculations - fast processors = big dollars, and working these processors to perform millions of trial and error calculations per minute uses vast amounts of electricity. Processors working hard generate a lot of heat which also requires electricity to drive massive fans and heat exchangers to keep the machinery from overheating.

China inadvertently (or perhaps purposely) created an environment where the world's largest miners are found. This is due to their cold climate which helps keep the mining machinery cool and their heavily subsidised electricity for Bitcoin miners. In some cases the miners are getting their power for free (with an appropriate fee paid to the right people). 

Control of Bitcoin mines is almost the equivalent of control of gold mines. Control production and supply of scarce mined assets can create additional scarcity and demand which in turn sees prices skyrocket in times of economic turmoil.

With the knowledge of an imminent collapse in credit coupled with some insurance by way of increasing gold reserves, brand new infrastructure, and the majority of Bitcoin mines residing inside their borders it is not hard to see why China was so happy to join the world debt accumulation game in recent years. They clearly had their exit strategy worked through before climbing the debt ladder in what they must know will be a free-fall to the bottom… the difference between China and the western world is they have a golden parachute and a Bitcoin reserve chute.

© 2016


Saturday, August 15, 2015

Are We Looking at an Economic Collapse? - Aug 15

Are we looking at an economic collapse?

The economies of the world are on a knife edge. The solutions experimented with in the past economic crisis by Reserve Banks around the world have not cured the problem but simply deferred it. Worse than just deferring the problem, it has been allowed to grow bigger.  We are moving from a sub-prime global financial crisis (GFC) towards a sovereign debt crisis – one which has no solution in current economics.

We have all seen boom and bust cycles in financial terms. Stock market bubbles, bond market bubbles, real estate bubbles, and debt bubbles. We have never before experienced a global sovereign debt bubble.

First things first, how did we get to where we are now, and what was the GFC?

The Global Financial Crisis 2007/08

The GFC was caused by a number of factors. Underlying it was political motivation, market manipulation, lack of regulation, and our old friend - greed. The political motivation came from the need for George W Bush to stimulate the US economy. He embarked on a campaign for every American to own their own home. With the backing of Alan Greenspan (the then chair of the Federal Reserve) the Bush administration pushed for every American to be able to get into their own home. To do this a number of normal banking practices needed to be tweaked. First the financial markets needed to be incentivised to lend to those who would not otherwise qualify for a home loan. The Government solution to this was for two Government Sponsored Enterprises to be instructed to make this lending happen. The two organisations were called Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. They were affectionately called Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These institutions followed the brief perfectly and further stimulated borrowing by introducing non-recourse loans. The policy worked incredibly well. A housing boom was created as demand for housing surged. Those in modest houses could borrow and move into the bigger homes they so very much deserved. The houses they moved out of were available for first home buyers to purchase. House prices went only one way…UP UP UP. The policy that anyone with the desire to own a home could do so, led to the creation of NINO loans (No Income No Assets= No Problem). Thus the sub-prime lending market was born.

The banks were climbing over themselves to lend into this market. There is a great deal of money to be made when there is strong demand for borrowing. There was no down side. After all, property prices have only ever gone one way in the past.  Even the ratings agencies who were supposed to protect the humble investor and independently assess risk were sucked into this mind-set. They gave A ratings to these lending institutions - but then again, what choice did they have? The ratings agencies rely on these institutions for their survival. More ratings demand = more revenue for them. It would have been business suicide for them to declare that the Emperor has no clothes = so the lie continued.

The housing bubble peaked in 2004 in the US but then went world-wide. Cheap credit, ever increasing real estate prices saw a surge of greed embrace the world.

Then in late 2007 the unthinkable happened. House prices started to fall! The Government policy had achieved its goal of getting everyone who wanted a home into one. The supply shortage had been met… and then some. Now there was an oversupply. Demand had slowed and thus developers were now faced with cutting prices to get rid of their housing stocks.

Now for the first time financial institutions were having a closer look at the security they held on these sub-prime mortgages. Banks who had originally lent to the home borrowers had cleverly bundled these up into packages containing 1000's of individual loans. The credit-worthiness of the individual borrowers had never been tested and yet the banks unloaded these sub-prime mortgages onto financial institutions based on the A rating from Standard and Poors. These financial institutions were about to face the reality that what they were holding was worthless.

Prices continued to fall and once people realised their house was now worth far less than their mortgage a panic set in among the people. Non-recourse finance meant the owner could simply post the keys to the house back to the bank. It became the bank’s problem. The banks were unable to cope with the losses and threatened the Government that if these major financial institutions were allowed to fail it would take down the entire financial system.

Enter the white knight.

Who better to solve this crisis that the Federal Reserve.

The Chairman of Fed at this time was Ben Bernanke. Ben had a strong knowledge of the cause and effects of the Great Depression having written about it many times. His most notable work was entitled “The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression” which he wrote in 1990. Ben believed he was on the cusp of the US economy plunging into a deflationary death spiral that would lead to an even Greater Depression than that of the 1930’s.

In a decisive action (behind closed doors) Fed Chair Ben Bernanke met with the Government and the major banks to negotiate a bail-out package. As part of this deal Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were nationalised and following this, the Government set about paying the banks large sums of money to see them through the crisis.
The terms of the bailout were hurriedly passed through congress and thus a new bubble was about to come forth.

In this move, the  banks debt burden was essentially moved to the Government books and the banks were free to continue. Surprisingly the terms of bailout did not state how the funds were to be spent. Banks simply put their hand out and were able to have their deposits secured by the Government. 

The Sovereign Debt Bubble

The Federal Reserve also had to play its part to inject money into the banking sector. It did this by issuing encouraging the US Treasury to issue more Treasury Bonds (the equivalent of Government Stock in NZ) to the banks and financial institutions. These banks in turn sold these Treasury Bonds (at a profit) to the Federal Reserve.

The moment the Federal Reserve paid for these bonds (essentially drawing a cheque for these on a bank account that hold no actual money) new currency was born into existence.   

The issuing of Treasury Bonds is essentially an IOU guaranteed by the Government which pay a fixed rate of interest and have a maturity date for repayment (much like a term deposit). This debt is how a Government borrows money = sovereign debt.

Ben Bernanke was terrified of the deflationary spiral that made the Great Depression last so long. When people lose confidence in the economy they slow down their spending. When spending slows down, goods and services margins get tightened as businesses have to lower prices in order to generate sales and keep staff employed. The public see the panic in businesses’ eyes  as prices continue to be discounted, so they defer their spending in the knowledge goods and services will be cheaper tomorrow than they are today. This downward spiral continues until the businesses lay off staff, go broke etc. Less people willing to spend in the economy leads to tighter margins….and so the deflationary death cycle continues.

Ben promised he would never allow deflation to take hold of the economy. He vows to drop cash from helicopters if necessary to entice the public to spend cash. It never happened like that, instead he undertook the biggest economic experiment of all time…

He told the Government to start spending. John Maynard Keynes (a renowned economist upon whose theories most western economies are based) theorised that an economy could not distinguish Government spending from that of the public. So if you want to maintain growth or avert deflation the Government should step in to spend at times when the public were unwilling to do so.

The Government did just that. Roading money, infrastructure money etc was thrown around the country. Runways on disused airports were resurfaced, beautification of ghost towns was undertaken, money was thrown at places that had no need or beneficial use of the spending. Even Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills got an upgrade!

So who purchased these Treasury Bonds?

China was eager to get a piece of the action and furiously purchased these bonds up until 2010. Thereafter it was the institutions that eagerly sought risk free rates of return on their portfolios as their investors did not want to suffer losses like they did in the GFC.

The US Government also undertook an experiment was called Quantitative Easing (QE). Three tranches of QE have been actioned to date. All this newly created money gets channelled through the banking system and as such the banks get to clip the ticket on the way through.

The other strategy employed by Ben was to slash interest rates to near zero levels. And here they have remained ever since. 

As a final plunder of the Government resources the Treasury borrowed money from the jars of cash set aside to meet future commitments to social security etc.

The New Zealand Government and Reserve Bank reacted in a similar fashion. We bailed out the finance companies, put in place Government guarantees, went on an infrastructure spend-up on roading, new cycle ways etc etc. We slashed interest rates, issued Government Stock at attractive interest rates but unlike the USA we stopped short of Quantitative Easing. We also stopped short of borrowing funds from our Cullen fund and ACC funds (however we did stop adding any further contributions to the Cullen fund).


Central Banks/Reserve Banks and the Money Multiplier

The central banking systems of the world’s largest economies are essentially privatised. The US Federal Reserve for example is owned and controlled by a select few of the Wall Street banks. It has been this way since the Fed was conceived in the 1913. The Fed was introduced to ‘bring stability to the banking system’ after runs on various banks saw deposit holders lose their money. The problem was due to Fractional Reserve Banking and while the symptoms could be resolved by introducing central banks to come in and support a bank in trouble it created a far more sinister problem.

Central banks control the supply of money in the system. To understand this you need to understand that all money in existence today is essentially debt. It is an IOU issued by the Central Bank as a form of legal tender currency. How did the money come into existence?

1 Treasury issues Government Bonds and sells them to the banks
2 The banks in turn sell the bonds (some of which are purchased by the central bank).
3 The central bank pays for them via a book entry in terms of reserves and thus
4 the banks receive a book entry payment for the bonds sold in the form of money credited to their bank account and thus money is born into existence.
5 The Government (Treasury) now has a bank balance that can be used to pay its workers and suppliers. 

This money is then grown via the magic of the money multiplier effect of Fractional Reserve Banking Rules


Here’s a step by step guide to fractional reserve banking and growth on the money supply:
Step 1 Government uses some of this created money to pay one of its staff Say $1000
Step 2 The staff member banks the money into Westpac $1000
Step 3 Westpac keep $100 in deposit and lend out $900
Step 4 lender from Westpac buys a laptop from Noel Leeming $900
Step 5 Noel Leeming bank the $900 into their ANZ account
Step 6 ANZ keep $90 in deposit and lend out $810
Step 7 Lender from ANZ buys a Mountain bike for $810
Step 8 Bike shop deposits this $810 with BNZ
And so it continues…

At this stage (up to step 7 the original money supply created by the Government of $1000 has grown to $ ($1000+$900+$810) $2,710.  In reality this money multiplier system continues until the sums get very small. For example by the time the money going round is down to $1 the total money in circulation has grown to $9,990. ($1,000 of it was printed by the Government and the $8,990 was created out of thin air by the banks).

It works because the banking system is a closed loop (like a wagon wheel with the central bank as the hub). The banks all borrow from one another to meet any daily shortfalls and pay interest at a a rate set by the reserve bank called the official cash rate. 

This is the ‘magic’ of monetary supply and is often referred to as the money multiplier. Each Central bank determines how much its member banks must hold in reserve. In the USA it is a 1/10 ratio or 10% for most major banks (as in the above example). In NZ we governed by capital requirements which operate in a similar manner at around 12-13%. The Central Banks attempt to control the speed of increase in the money supply (which is measured by inflation) via control of short term interest rates (the OCR). If they want to slow down the velocity of money through this cycle they raise interest rates and if they want to increase the velocity of money to stimulate the economy they lower them.

What’s the Problem with Sovereign Debt?

In the US this is where the majority of public debt has been growing from. The Government sells these to the banks who on sell them to financial institutions, mum and dad investors and to retirement superannuation schemes as well as to other off-shore institutions or Governments. These instruments have been known in the past as a risk free investment and the returns they pay as being the risk free rate of return.

The issue with Sovereign debt is that one day it has to be repaid. It has an expiry date. In the past this was met by either re-issuing Govt Stock or in some cases printing more money to repay it. A common method employed by countries where the debt is owed to foreign countries is to devalue  their currency which cheapens the burden of repaying this money. In the USA and Euro zone countries this devaluation strategy poses a real problem.

China were the main purchasers of Treasury bonds until 2010. They have a sword hanging over the US in terms of holding such a huge amount of debt. Since 2010 the main buyer has been superannuation funds (KiwiSaver type schemes), Cullen Fund type schemes and the biggest of these are the baby-boomers of the USA through their IRA’s and 401K’s. As the baby boomers get closer to retirement they want less risk and move their investments from the volatility of the share market and more towards the risk free fixed rate of return offered by the Treasury Bonds.

Here is the problem: How will the US repay these bonds as they mature in the years to come? Answer: They have no clue! The retiree’s will see this very shortly and cause a run on selling these Govt Stocks. Unlike a run on one bank, a run on Govt Stocks is a one-way downward spiral.

The retiree’s may not be the trigger for this run. China hold a tremendous amount of these Treasury Bonds, such that a sudden sell-off of a sizeable parcel of these bonds be enough to trigger a massive run on them. The USA know this and so does China.

On 23 July 2015 China started to apply pressure to the US by publically announcing they would like to swap some of these debt instruments for equity (ownership of US public assets). They did not go as far to say what they will do if the US do not comply with their request. More on China later.

Saudi Arabia also hold a large number of these Treasury bonds. Most of their foreign reserves are in fact held in US dollars in this form.

The velocity of money creation in the USA is much faster than NZ as banks there only need give $100 to the Federal Reserve in return for the ability to lend out $900. In other words they can generate loans without waiting for a depositer to bank money with them. As such they have a far greater degree of leverage than NZ.

NZ banks were stress tested by the IMF in 2012. While they came through much better than most international banks there were still some serious shortcomings. Namely it only took a 30% reduction in house prices, a decrease in output of 4% and an increase in unemployment to 11.4% to see our NZ banks capitalisation fall from 12.6% to 3.3%. The IMF sited this as a very real threat to our stability and the RBNZ responded by introducing LVR restrictions (to slow down the Auckland property bubble) and the Open Bank Resolution (OBR) legislation which authorises the RBNZ to give deposit holders a haircut on their money held in any bank to avert its failure.

Just on the OBR legislation. There is a myth that NZ banks are Government guaranteed. They are not. The OBR legislation has been implemented in nearly every OECD country since 2007/08. Why is that?

Since 2012 we have seen the property bubble expand massively while at the same time seen a reduction in economic output (look at dairy and forestry for evidence of this). Milk powder prices have gone down by more than 40% since 2012 and volume of supply has diminished greatly as farmers consolidate to less risky production methods. Log prices are falling quickly. Some strong operators are down by 20% in volumes harvested. This is all despite the NZ dollar depreciating by 20% against the USD over this time.

The reality is NZ is much better off than most other countries. Our national debt is lower in relation to our GDP and at least our Reserve Bank is owned by the NZ Govt (not privatised). The US Federal Reserve which effectively has the power to print money is separate from Govt and is in fact privately owned. Who in their right mind would allow private banks control over the printing of money? The largest economy in the world – that’s who!

We are not insulated from the corruption however as our NZ banks are actually owned by the same corporate banks that own the Federal Reserve. These are the likes of JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, HSBC, etc. Look through all these and you come back to the corporate family dynasties of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Rothschilds etc. – This is the web of power which runs the world.

“Permit me to issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Fractional Reserve Banking arose from the need to grow an economy quickly and was usually used during times of major economic growth or more commonly to fund a war effort. The problem with getting onto a treadmill of this kind is that it can never slow down or the system will crash. Keynesian economics is based on this premise too. An economy that fails to grow at a certain rate will inevitably fall over like every other pyramid scheme or ponzie scheme you have heard of. Sooner or later you will either run out of suckers or resources.

In our case the globe will run out of investors. Unfortunately those who miss the early opportunities to get their debts repaid may find themselves like the child at the party with no seats left when the music stops.  China are clearly angling towards swapping their debt instruments for one of equity signalling that the music may stop at any time.


Are the Baby Boomers, Inflation or Keynesian Economics to Blame?

Have you ever considered how the baby boomer generation have been the most wealthy of any generation before it? The answer is inflation. Inflation is a tax that will one day have to be repaid. Those in the 70’s-80’s will acknowledge that even though interest rates were eye-wateringly high, so long as you had a job you were able to meet the repayments on your house. All the while watching your house more than double in value. This was the wind fall of an unprecedented magnitude for those who held assets with a mortgage, but disastrous to the poor.

This century has also seen the advent of “having your money work for you”. Previous generations had no such thing. You lived, worked hard and lived off your capital in retirement. In fact charging interest on loans was illegal in many countries as it was thought to be usury.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s we got used to high levels of interest and receiving a healthy return on our money. Interest rates now are much lower than we have been used to but what happens when you get negative interest rates – Since January 2015 in Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden for example a depositer can expect a bill from their bank for holding large sums of money in their account. Put another way the Central Bank pays people to borrow money to keep the wheels of inflation turning.

A large number of international pension funds have a guaranteed inflation adjusted annuity payable upon the retirement of their contributors. The problem is when these funds were created in the 1970’s – 1990’s they were working on a conservative 8% return pa going forward. The actuaries also worked on much shorter life expectancies than are currently achieved. Long story short - these pension funds do not have the funds available to meet the ongoing retirement commitments made to those who contributed. This is a real problem for an entire generation of retirees in coming years.

Never mind, there’s always the Social Security backstop to fall back on if your own private superannuation falls over, right? Well, no unfortunately. The Government of the US raided this piggy bank to help bail out the banks…remember? All that's left is an IOU in jar. Oops, now what?

Keynesian economics requires a continual level of growth year on year to ensure prosperity and keep the system from crashing. Any mathematician will explain such a phenomenon as an exponential curve. Eventually it goes to infinity in terms of needing more people, more resources etc to function. The sovereign debt in the world is on this same exponential curve and it is not maintainable. Nor can it even pause without crashing the system.

If we all decided to pay down our debts at the same time the monetary supply would shrink at such a fast rate the economy would collapse. Like all ponzie schemes our monetary system relies on more and more debt every year to maintain our standard of living. When interest rates hit 0% an interesting problem arises. The reserve banks lose their power to influence monetary supply, unless the Govt can devalue their currency and try to import inflation into the economy. Our Reserve Bank has more room to move on interest rates than other countries but how low can we devalue our currency at the cost of other countries?

China devalued its currency against the USD in a shock move earlier this week. This is to be expected of course. They want their exports to be sold at strong prices to maintain growth in China. China have a population approaching 1.4billion. That’s a lot of people to maintain  control of - even for a controlling Government such as China. To maintain control they need to maintain stability. Stability at any cost. This in turn requires a steady level of inflation. China is attempting to do what NZ is doing – that is devalue our currency and increase the return we get from our exports.  We are all in a race to the bottom.  The problem is not all countries can devalue their currencies at the same time – it becomes ineffective! Moreover if some currencies are unable to devalue (like the Eurozone participants and the USD) – they end up bearing the cost of us devaluing. It amounts to a currency war.

The USD is bearing this pain at present and will continue to do so until a breaking point occurs.

Let’s look at Europe.

The Euro was introduced in 1999 to unify Europe’s trading position. It was doomed from the start however as it would never be a political unification nor a social unification (i.e. people were never going to identify themselves as European instead of Italian, French or German etc). The biggest flaw from an economic point of view is that while the currencies were consolidated the national debt of each country was left as individual sovereign debt. 
Countries who previously found it hard to borrow offshore now had the backing of a strong currency and went on a spending spree. They had access to seemingly unlimited credit at exceptionally low interest rates and countries like Germany (with the backing of the ECB) continued to lend to these countries until 2007/08. In the wake of the GFC cross-border credit was hard to find which together with increased demands for repayment drove the debtor countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and even France deeper and deeper into debt.

The austerity measures being imposed on countries like Greece will never work long term and in reality these countries face either being forced from the Euro or bankruptcy in the long term. Switzerland exited its artificial pegging against the Euro in January 2015 having seen the Euro marriage as a bad one.

The IMF & The World Bank are controlled by the voting power of the USA currently. The IMF act as the banker of last resort for countries in trouble. They already have their own world-wide currency created in 1969 which member countries must hold in their possession called Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s). When originally issued 1 SDR = 0.888671 grams of gold = $1 USD. Since the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 the SDR  world reserve currency currently comprises of a basket of international currencies namely:
USD 47.0%
Euro 33.6%
GBP  12.4%
YEN 7.0%

A rebalancing of this basket of currencies is undertaken every five years. The last review was undertaken in 2010 and the next is due this year.

China have been working hard over the past 5 years to have their currency included as a major player in this basket, thus paving the way for them to trade internationally in a currency that is not USD. They started reporting their gold holdings to the IMF in July (first time since 2009) and then announced their new holdings yesterday as having increased by 19 tonnes in the past month. This is part of their plan to show greater transparency to the IMF. The IMF require all member countries to report their gold reserves every month. It is widely speculated that China are understating their actual holdings by a huge margin.

The ramifications economically for the USA are not good. A move away from the USD as the major trading reserve currency would see panic selling of he US dollar. This would also see the US lose its status as the world’s largest economy.

Unsurprisingly the US are reluctant to allow China voting power at the IMF, but the IMF are pressuring the US for a decision by 15th September 2015. The IMF have not advised what they will do if the USA refuses – nor has China. Remember, China is not a country the US would be wise to mess with.

War! What is it Good For?

Not all wars are fought on the battle ground.

We have seen wars recently fought with drones etc remotely from the safety of the US, we have seen terrorism used as a weapon, we have not really seen a war fought with nuclear weapons on both sides yet but neither have we seen a war declared on a particular currency. Or have we?

As stated earlier the USA relies heavily on the strength of its dollar to keep demand for its treasury bonds going and keep the hamster running on the wheel. When the US dollar broke away from the gold standard in 1971, President Nixon negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia (and later all the other OPEC nations) that would see them supplied with arms and come under the protection of the USA if these countries undertook to only ever sell oil internationally in US dollars. Hence the Petrodollar was born!

Sadam Hussein threatened that Iraq would break away from the Petrodollar and refused to budge despite economic sanctions etc. The rest is history.

The fact that the USA is taking a far more relaxed attitude to Iran is worrying Saudi Arabia. There is no love lost between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi’s are fearful that Iran will gain an advantage in terms of access to nuclear technology that may threaten the Saudi dominance of OPEC and even the defence of their borders. This represents a potential threat to the USA in terms of loss of the Petrodollar status.

China has another card to play in breaking the reliance of the US dollar. BRICS.

BRICS  is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These BRICS countries have threatened to form a rival institution to the IMF/World Bank. China are in fact hedging their bets by threatening to put their weight behind the BRICS coalition if they fail to get acknowledged by the IMF. There are some dangerous players in this alliance from an economic viewpoint.

Russia too are very keen to avoid having to buy/sell US dollars as it is crippling their economy and gives the economic sanctions imposed on them more weight.

That said China had made it very clear they favour joining the IMF rather than having to take the long way through the BRICS  alliance.

Currency wars can be fought a number of ways.

All banking transactions internationally are run through a system called SWIFT. It is essentially a portal based in Brussels which allows transactions between banks in all countries to be made. If you restrict a countries ability to use SWIFT you essentially cripple their banking system and economy overnight.

Such a threat was made to Russia in January 2015 as part of the proposed economic sanctions to which Russia responded such action would be regarded as an act of war.

Specifically the Russian Prime Minister stated:
"We’ll watch developments and if such decisions [to restrict access to SWIFT] are made, I want to note that our economic reaction and generally any other reaction will be without limits."

There is speculation that China may be amassing large quantities of gold in anticipation of pegging their currency to a gold standard. Such a move by an economy as large as China would see a flee from fiat currency world-wide to this new reserve currency that actually has real value. Real value in that you cannot print more of it than is currently backed by Gold thus eliminating inflation – and collapsing any economy that did not hold gold reserves.

Cyber warfare is also a real tool in bringing down an economy. Russia, China and even North Korea have proven their abilities in this area. An attack on the NY stock exchange, the banking system, in fact “any system” could see a run on the markets. 


How might the sovereign debt problem be resolved?

The USA is already gearing itself up for methods of repaying its loans in the future. When their attempts at using monetary policy fail they will have to resort to fiscal policy. i.e. cutting spending and increasing taxation. In the US you are taxed on your world-wide income if you a citizen of the USA or have residency there. The new Foreign Account Taxation Compliance Act (FATCA) rules which every country in the world has signed up for (including NZ, China, Russia and all the tax haven countries) enforce every bank in the world to collect tax from these US citizens if so requested. 

FATCA is a mechanism by which the USA can give offshore bank accounts of their citizens a haircut if they ever need to. Taxation  in various forms is the only way that a sovereign debt bubble can be resolved. The people must be taxed heavily in order to reduce the debt. Capital controls and world-wide reach mean that the USA can continue to tax its citizens despite a resident deciding to flee to a lower tax jurisdiction. The Eurozone are contemplating the introduction of rules similar to FATCA for their citizens also.

Incidentally, USA was able to enforce FATCA compliance on foreign banks by threatening to cut them off from SWIFT if they refused to comply. 

This is only scratching the surface of what is happening at an economic level... and only what we are allowed to see. The bottom line is all these events are brewing into something very large and would change society instantly if any one of these wobbly dominos start to fall.

Socially we have seen what happens in panic situations in the US with hurricane Katrina, etc. We have become so accustomed to consumption on demand are we prepared for even one week of not having access to fuel, food, electricity, water and the necessities for survival?

Our reliance on ‘just in time’ inventory, transport, instant communication,  international trade, specialisation in employment, economies of scale and fiat currency give us a very false sense of security but no ability to survive if we had to rely on ourselves for survival.
We hold our wealth in bank accounts that if we needed it would not be there. We have seen in Cyprus and Greece how easy it is to stop runs on the markets. Simply close the banks, the stock markets and restrict access to cash through ATM limits.

We are slaves to the dollar right now. Take it away and what do we become?

Perhaps we will not have much time. Perhaps they will find a way to kick the can further down the road. Who knows? Events in economic warfare happen instantly and often in back room secret deals. One theme remains constant however - it is always occurs without warning. 


© 2015