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The Vulnerability of Private Wealth to Government Financial Stress
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QEs, Currency Wars, the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin and the Route to “Modern” Inflation
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The Vulnerability of Private Wealth to Government Financial Stress
Tag Archives: Political economy
Goodbye to the Robinson Crusoe Bond Market
With the U. S. economy having achieved lift-off momentum, the Federal Reserve has ended it epic and historic bond buy known as quantitative ease. The corollary reflex is that interest rates will return to our historic sense of normal, but that is not occurring. The Fed is not all-powerful and is losing pricing control to collective global forces. Continue reading
The Deflationary Trap and the Central Bank Game of Chess
Few who lived through the “runaway” inflation of the 1970s would have dreamed that someday inflation would be a desirable public policy? We have come to find out that it surely beats deflation. But how to achieve inflation has proven to be elusive. Continue reading
The Keynesian Dead End: A Watershed Moment
John Maynard Keynes had an idea that seemed good at the time (the 1930s): Governments can stimulate an economy with what he called “loan-expenditures” — that is, debt-financed spending. This past week, the UK is paying down its World War I debt, as if we needed a reminder. Debt doesn’t go away; it just accumulates, requiring additional taxes to pay the forever-interest meter and miring its own economy as well as their trading partners. Continue reading
The Evils of Serial Quantitative Ease and the “Welfare of Everyone”
Not since the days when Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer charged his friends for the privilege of painting his fence has the world gone quite so upside down and backwards as when the European Central Bank pushed market interest rates into negative territory. This means borrowers are being paid to borrow. This, in the mind of the Fed’s Chairwoman serves “the welfare of everyone” though it serves the welfare of no one. Continue reading
America’s Exorbitant Privilege is Skating on Thin Ice
The willingness of the rest of the world to hold a block of its assets denominated in the U.S. dollar means that U. S. asset prices are enhanced and the U. S. is able to sell a substantial portion of its government debt to foreign holders at cheaper interest rates. This is known to foreigners are U.S. “Exorbitant Privilege.” But that privilege is being squandered by short sighted U. S. policies and plans are underway to switch reserve currencies. Continue reading
Financial Price Discovery Postponed for the Duration
At the moment, financial market prices float detached from the anxieties of market investors because the same anxieties drive the central banks into large scale asset purchases. As a result, risks that trouble investors instead of being translated into lower prices are being translated into high prices, a condition equally true for bonds and stocks. Continue reading
The Robin Hood Reflex Once Again Confronts Capitalism
Thomas Piketty, a name you are not likely familiar with, is a French economist who has given voice to the notion that the rich are getting richer at a faster rate than others. His recent book skyrocketed to first on the Amazon best-selling list immediately. And of course, what follows is the Robin Hood reflex to redistribute. Don’t dismiss the political ramifications that Piketty-mania is having and the costs to society from adopting redistribution. Continue reading
Posted in The Spellman Report
Tagged Dollar as a reserve currency, Economic policy and financial markets, Economy and financial markets, Inflation and financial prices, Political economy, Redistribution of income, Redistribution of wealth, Thomas Pikkety, US Sovereign risk and investing, wealth preservation
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Bill Gross and the Rise and Fall of Bond Market Nirvana
Bonds are fun to own when interest rates are very high and then bond prices start to rise. That makes for favorable income and capital gains simultaneously. Such was the opportunity bond investors in U.S. markets enjoyed commencing in 1981 …and then for three following decades. It was bond market Nirvana, which unfortunately for bond investors is fading into the rear view mirror. Continue reading