Panem et Circenses
The transfer of wealth from workers and savers to governments and big banks continued this week with Swiss-like precision. The process is both mechanical and subtle. Here in the USA the automated elegance of this ongoing operation receives little attention.

Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt… so said Juvenal, reportedly [PT]

NFL football. EBT card acceptance at Del Taco. Adam Schiff’s impeachment extravaganza. You name it. Bread and circuses like these – and many others – offer the American populace countless opportunities for chasing the wild goose.
All the while, and with little fanfare, debts pile up like deadwood in Sequoia National Forest.  These debts, both public and private, stand little

The Bubble Machine
The launch angle of the U.S. stock market over the past decade has been steep and relentless. The S&P 500, after bottoming out at 666 on March 6, 2009, has rocketed up over 370 percent. New highs continue to be reached practically every day.

S&P 500 weekly, since the low of 2009. A party of roaring 20s proportion in terms of duration, extent and end point valuations (a post-war inflation episode triggered a devastating bear market from November 1919 to August 1921, in which the DJIA fell from ~120 to ~64 points. It then rose until early September 1929, topping at ~380 points. By the time it peaked, Wall Street had created all sorts of new-fangled instruments such as the then highly popular investment trusts, everybody

Monetary Lunacy, Nipponese Version
Earlier this month, Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda commented that Japan’s central planners are considering a 50-year government bond issue as a long-term means of putting a floor under super-long interest rates.  How this floor would be placed is extremely suspect; we will have more on this in a moment.  But first, the dual benefits – according to Japan’s central planners…

Kuroda-san: the man with a plan, or rather, a plethora of plans (過剰な計画). [PT]

One, the 50-year government bond would allow the government to lock in cheap long-term funding. Two, it would give yield-starved investors higher returns.  Cheap funding. Higher yield. What’s not to like?
Kuroda, if you didn’t know, is a

Prettifying Toxic Waste
The promise of something for nothing is always an enticing proposition. Who doesn’t want roses without thorns, rainbows without rain, and salvation without repentance?  So, too, who doesn’t want a few extra basis points of yield above the 10-year Treasury note at no added risk?

The yield-chasing hamster wheel… [PT]

Thus, smart fellows go after it; pursuing financial innovation with unyielding devotion.  The underlying philosophy, as we understand it, is that if risk is spread thin enough it magically disappears. In other words, the solution to pollution is dilution.
With this objective, new financial products are fabricated into existence. The risk free rewards of several extra basis points are then packaged up

Beta-driven Fantasy
The decade long bull market run, aside from making everyone ridiculously rich, has opened up a new array of competencies. The proliferation of ETFs, for instance, has precipitated a heyday for the ETF Analyst. So, too, blind faith in data has prompted the rise of Psychic Quants… who see the future by modeling the past.

Gandalf, quant of Middle-Earth, dispensing sage advice. [PT]

For the big financial outfits, optimizing systematic – preprogrammed – delta hedges is an essential aptitude of the 21st century. Our guess is that many of today’s high-fliers will crash and burn during the next bear market. But what do we know?
As far as we can tell, the stock market, circa November 2019, is an absolute fantasy. The Dow

The Sky is Falling

“We believe monetary policy is in a good place.”
– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, October 30, 2019.

The man from the good place. “As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, Oh how I wish he’d go away!” [PT]

Ptolemy I Soter, in his history of the wars of Alexander the Great, related an episode from Alexander’s 334 BC compact with the Celts ‘who dwelt by the Ionian Gulf.’  According to Ptolemy’s account, which survives via quote by Arrian of Nicomedia some 450 years later, when Alexander asked the Celtic envoys what they feared most, they answered:

“We fear no man: there is but one thing that we fear, namely, that the sky should fall on us.”
 
Today, at the risk

Wildfire Surge
The hillsides are always brown in the land of fruits and nuts come autumn.  After baking away all summer long in the hot sun, the dense sage and chaparral covering the coastal hillsides and canyons are dry and toasty. Though, before conditions get better, they must first get worse.

California is ablaze again… as every year.  [PT]
Photo credit: Noah Berger / AP

High pressure systems form over the high-elevation deserts of the Great Basin, between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, each fall like clockwork. The pressure builds and forces the air to the south and west. The warm, dry winds of Santa Ana then race towards Southern California where they scorch the earth.
The winds howl from the east, across

Planning on Your Behalf 
Watch out! At this very moment, professional economists of all stripes are making plans on your behalf. They are dreaming and scheming new and innovative ways to spend your money long before you have earned it.

Strange and strangely persistent beliefs… [PT]

While you are busy at the gristmill, grinding away for clients and customers, claims are being laid upon your life.  Your future earnings are being directed to boondoggles galore.  Yet these claims are in addition to everything Washington has already signed you up for.
At last count of the U.S. National Debt, every American citizen’s on the hook for nearly $70,000.  Add U.S. Unfunded Liabilities – which includes Social Security, Medicare Parts A, B, and D,

Under the Influence
 
“This feels very sustainable.” 
– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, October 8, 2019

Understandable confusion… [PT]

Conflict and contradiction.  These were two of the main themes reverberating around the world of centralized monetary planning this week.
On Tuesday, for instance, a novel and contradictory central banker parlance – “reserve management purposes” – was birthed into existence by Fed Chair Jay Powell.  We will have more on this later on. But first, to best appreciate the contradiction, we must present the conflict.
Free of government intervention, the economy and financial markets would get along within a low standard deviation. Extremes would appear from time to time.  But they would be quickly

21st Century Hooverville
There are places in Los Angeles where, although the sun always shines, they haven’t seen a ray of light in over 100-years.  There’s a half square mile of urban decay centered on the Union Rescue Mission at 545 South San Pedro Street, where depravity, chaos, addiction, insanity and archaic diseases multiply and ricochet about like metastatic cancer.

One of LA’s modern-day Hoovervilles in San Pedro Street…  In 2015 it was reported that Union Rescue Mission CEO Reverend Andy Bales had caught three different bacterial infections from merely walking around in the area. One of the infections rendered him unable to ever walk again (doctors eventually had to amputate his foot, which had fallen prey to flesh-eating

Groping in the Dark
This week central planners pursued their primary mission with steadfast conviction. They planned. They prodded. They prearranged tomorrow to save us from ourselves. Some also grubbed a little graft for their trouble. Other central planners took to debasing the dollar to price fix the federal funds rate within a narrow band of tolerance.  What in the world do they think they are doing?

Central planning committee in the analysis and forecasting phase… [PT]

We know from our own everyday experience that people make choices. What’s more, these choices do not occur in isolation.  There are a myriad of influences and constraints factoring into the countless choices people make as they go about their day.
One person drives

An Odd Combination of Serenity and Panic
The United States, with untroubled ease, continued its approach toward catastrophe this week.  The Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate 25 basis points, thus furthering its program of mass money debasement.  Yet, on the surface, all still remained in the superlative.

S&P 500 Index, weekly: serenely perched near all time highs, in permanently high plateau nirvana. [PT]

Stocks smiled down on investors from their perch upon what Irving Fischer once called “a permanently high plateau.”  As of the market close on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average held above 27,000, the S&P 500 above 3,000, and the NASDAQ above 8,000.  401k accounts, to the delight of working stiffs of all ages, origins,

The Future and the Past
Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 156 requires financial institutions to advise investors to not be idiots. Hence, the disclosure pages of nearly every financial instrument in the U.S. are embedded with the following admission or variant thereof:

“Past Performance Is Not Indicative of Future Results”

“Buy and hold”… “The market goes always up”… “No-one can time the market”… “Buy the dip” “With what? You said not to sell anything”… “Simple, mortgage the farm…”  The image above shows roughly what happens right after everybody feels the warm & fuzzies due to the fact that the market has been going up without a hitch for quite some time. Once the  conviction that it can only rise further is widespread and firmly

A Case of Highway Robbery
What if the savings in your bank account lost 55 percent of its value over the last 12 months?  Would you be somewhat peeved?  Would you transfer some of your savings to another currency?

USD-ARS, weekly. For several years the Argentine Peso has followed a certain pattern: it declines mildly, but steadily, with little volatility for long time periods, and then spikes in crash waves whenever a crisis situation comes to a head. In early 2011, it took roughly four pesos to buy one US dollar – which was already an enormous loss of value relative to the 1:1 exchange rate that prevailed under Argentina’s currency board prior to the government default and banking system collapse of 2001. When Mr. Macri was elected

Brainwashed by Academe
Not a day goes by that doesn’t supply a new specimen of inane disclarity.  Muddy ideas are dredged up from tainted minds like lumps of odorous pond muck.  We do our part to clean up the mess, whether we want to or not.

No longer in demand: famous Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who is widely considered the “Father of Liberalism” (classical liberalism, that is). [PT]

These days, individuals, who like John Locke “love truth for truth’s sake,” are far and away in the minority.  Out of the bowels of America’s higher learning institutions comes a young populace with soiled brains.  What’s more, you will likely end up on the hook for their idiocy.
Take one Andy Vila, for instance.  The 21 year old

The Pointlessness of Negative Yields
If there are any virtues of debt instruments with negative yields we have yet to realize them. Certainly, we understand that as bond yields fall, bond prices rise, and bond investors are rewarded with capital appreciation. But when capital is appreciating as a consequence of negative yields, we suspect there is something fundamentally wrong with the capital itself.

Not only is the stock of negative-yielding debt at a new record high of almost $17 trillion, lately there has been a big surge in corporate debt sporting negative yields-to-maturity. [PT]

Capital markets, as we have always understood them, are centered around lenders buying debt – such as a bond – at a yield that compensates for the risk

Not Adding Up
One of the more disagreeable discrepancies of American life in the 21st century is the world according to Washington’s economic bureaus and the world as it actually is.  In short, things don’t add up.  What’s more, the propaganda is so far off the mark, it is downright insulting.

Coming down from the mountain with the latest data tablet… [PT]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports an unemployment rate of just 3.7 percent.  The BLS also reports price inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), of 1.8 percent.  Yet big city streets are lined with tents and panhandlers grumble “that’s all” when you spare them a dollar.
In addition, good people of sound mind and honest intentions are racking up debt like

Suspicious Phrases
There are certain phrases – like “trust me” or “I got this” – that should immediately provoke one’s suspicion.  When your slippery contractor tells you, “trust me, your kitchen renovation will be done before Christmas,” you should be wary.  There is no way it will be done before late spring.

USD-CNH (offshore yuan) exchange rate – the support/resistance level at 7 finally breaks amid escalating trade war rhetoric. [PT]

Or when your incompetent client says, “I won’t be needing your services at this time, I’ve got this.”  You should expect a panicked phone call at 5:00 PM on Friday. “This is way more than I can handle,” your client will say, “take care of it.”
On Monday, when the sky was falling, and there was much

Do You Hear a Bell Ringing?
The sun shines brightest across the North American continent as we enter summer’s dog days.  Cold sweet lemonade is the refreshment of choice at ballparks and swimming holes alike.  Many people drink it after cutting the grass, or whenever else a respite from the heat and some thirst quenching satisfaction is needed.

Regardless of whether companies were able to “beat estimates” (which as often happens, were revised lower just before the reporting season started), their actual Q2 results didn’t look very encouraging so far. The manufacturing sector in particular looks a bit frayed around the edges as the saying goes. [PT]

The economy, after 10 years of growth, appears to be heading for a respite too.  Second

Realizing the Full Implications of the Forthcoming Catastrophe

“Facilis descensus Averno.” – Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

Delivering Tomorrow’s Curses
Roman poet Virgil penned these words in his epic, The Aeneid, roughly a generation before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  They can be loosely translated to, “the descent to hell is easy.”  Those who’ve traversed this passage can attest to the veracity of this axiom.

Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia and Livia. Contrary to what one might think at first blush, Octavia didn’t fall asleep because she was bored by it – rather, when Virgil recited Book Six, she fainted (the veracity of this account is not undisputed, but it’s a good story anyway). A little side note: Virgil

Tending Towards Maximum Perversity
According to Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law, “Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment.”  Taken a degree further, per O’Toole’s corollary of Finagle’s law, and the second law of thermodynamics, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

Murphy’s law in action… not even Murphy himself was safe from it. [PT]

No doubt, the perverse effect of central planning on the economy is tending towards a maximum.  This tendency can be traced back well over a century, with the advent of the Fed and the federal income tax in 1913. Our purpose today, however, is to look back a mere decade. This offers an adequate sampling of O’Toole’s corollary of Finagle’s law in action.
For

A Good Story with Minor Imperfections
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there,” is a quote that’s oft misattributed to Lewis Carrol. The fact that there is ambiguity about who is behind this quote on ambiguity seems fitting. For our purposes today, the spirit of the quote is what we are after. We think it may help elucidate the strange and confusing world of fake money in which we all travel.

Consumer price index, y/y rate of change – the Fed is not satisfied with the speed at which monetary debasement raises everybody’s cost of living lately. And no, they don’t think said speed should be lowered. [PT]

For example, the monetary policy outlook immediately following last month’s FOMC meeting was as clear as a

Freedom and Apple Pie
The days are long and hot in the Northern Hemisphere when real American patriots raise the stars and stripes. Today the free and brave, with duty and self-sacrifice, begrudgingly accept federal holiday pay to stand tall upon their own two feet. Rugged individualism and uncompromising independence are essential to their character.

Independence day festivities…

With purpose and intent, they assemble as merry mobs along the shoreline to celebrate American Independence. Freedom lovers – descendants of Daniel Boone – gather to eat hot dogs and pitch horseshoes while downing tipples of corn syrup and fermented grain. When the sun slips beyond the western horizon and the stars twinkle bright, they hoot and holler at the

A Distorted Landscape
One of the more remarkable achievements of fake money creation is that it distorts and disfigures the world in odd and uncanny ways.  Dow (not quite) 27,000.  Million dollar shacks.  Over $13 trillion in subzero-yielding debt. You name it.  Any and every disfiguration is possible with enough fake money.

The global stock of outstanding government bonds with negative yields-to-maturity reaches a new record high of more than $13 trillion – this is insanity writ large. [PT]

However, when it comes to the full range of ways fake money distorts the economic landscape, asset price inflation is merely a cheap facade. The real, mega-disfigurations pile up in the arena of international trade.  What’s more, they extend well

An Epic Folly for the Ages
Today we begin with a list.  A partial list.  And in no particular order…
Angela Merkel. Donald Tusk. Mario Draghi. Donald Trump. Jerome Powell.  Shinzo Abe.  Haruhiko Kuroda.  Theresa May. Boris Johnson. Mark Carney. Xi Jinping.  Emmanuel Macron.  Vladimir Putin. Justin Trudeau. Juan Trump.  And many, many more…

Politicians and bureaucrats of the modern age of statism and central planning… fighting a rearguard action doomed to fail. [PT]

These central planners – though they may not know it – are facing a no-win situation. They have extrapolated the past and are attempting to preserve the status quo into the future.  Yet their efforts to perpetuate the upward growth curve of their countries and unions are

A Loose Relationship
The Dow Jones Industrial Average made another concerted run at the elusive 27,000 milestone over the last several weeks.  But, as of this writing, the index has stalled out short of this psychosomatic barrier.  By our estimation, this is for the best.

Since early 2018 the DJIA has gone nowhere, albeit in interesting ways… [PT]

While not always apparent, the stock market generally maintains a loose connection to the underlying economy. Over long multi-decade periods, as measured by the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, it will undulate between stages when it is cheap and stages when it is dear. Eventually, however, the stock market reverts towards its mean P/E ratio – always overshooting and undershooting as it cycles

A Plan for Everything!
The run-up to the presidential primaries offers a funhouse reflection of American life.  Presidential hopefuls, hacks, and has-beens turn to focus groups to discover what they think the American electorate wants. Then they distill it down to hollow bumper stickers. After that, they pump their fists and reflect it back with mindless repetition.

A plea for clemency from Mr. 1/1024th crow. [PT]

Change We Can Believe In.  Feel the Bern.  Make America Great Again.  Sí Se Puede.  Fighting for Us.  Compassionate Conservatism.  A Stronger America.  Ross for Boss.  Morning in America. Not Just Peanuts. Nixon’s the One.  Dean Scream.  And much, much, more…
The mantras are both idiotic and comical. They provide political

The Ugly End of Globalization
Sometime in the fall of 2018 a lowly gofer at the New York Stock Exchange was sweating  bullets.  He had made an honest mistake.  One that could forever tag him a buffoon.

Art Cashin the living hat-stand, going through a succession of DJIA milestone hats. He promised was going to crack a smile for the Dow 27,000 hat photo, alas, it was not to be. [PT]

After trading sideways for most of the spring, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was on the move.  When it closed at 26,828 on October 3, it appeared the Dow was but one trading day away from eclipsing 27,000.  Everyone, including Jim Cramer, just knew it was about to happen.
And this was precisely what the NYSE gofer feared most.  For he had failed to procure

A Jolly Little War
The dawn of war is a time of simple clarity and purpose.  Good guys vs. bad guys.  Cowboys vs. Indians.  Confederates vs. Yankees.  Coppers vs. robbers.  It’s a time when lines are drawn, songs are sung, and drums are beaten with gaiety and confidence.

A jolly little trade war – easy to win, according to the CiC [PT]

Indeed, calls for ‘a jolly little war’ are always greeted with merriment and optimism.  This also goes for the dawn of a trade war.  Regardless of whether you’re from Scranton or Suzhou, the escalating  Trump vs. Xi standoff all seems so virtuous.  “We are right, they are wrong,” and vice versa.
Here in the USA, the perspective is crystal clear.  America’s rightful bounty is within reach.  After several

Fake Work
Clarity.  Simplicity.  Elegance.  These fundamentals are all in short supply.  But are they in high demand? As far as we can tell, hardly a soul among us gives much of a rip about any of them.  Instead, nearly everyone wants things to be more muddled, more complicated, and more crude with each passing day.  That’s where the high demand is.

One can always meet the perils of overweening bureaucracy with pretend happiness… [PT]

For example, executing and delivering work in accordance with the terms and conditions of a professional services contract these days is utterly dreadful.  The real work is secondary to fake work, trivialities, and minutia.  Superfluous paperwork and an encumbrance of mandatory web-based tools are immense