Regional Banks Bumping Into Stiff Resistance

Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

Regional banks have been on a run of late, but are encountering resistance stemming from 2011.

Over the course of the post-February stock rally, the financial sector has been among the lagging areas of the market. Yes, financial stocks are well off their February lows, but they have struggled to make any gains since early June and are still well off their 2015 peak levels. However, in recent days and weeks many areas within the sector have enjoyed breakouts of sorts. Included among them is the regional bank industry.

Specifically, the KBW Regional Bank Index (KRX) has in the past few days finally managed to surmount the highs reached several times from late May through early August. That said, the coast may not totally be clear for the KRX. That’s because if we scroll back 5 years, we see that the index is bumping into the underside of the Up trendline stemming from the late 2011 lows.

image

 

As the chart shows, the trendline in question has been a particularly effective one in supporting prices prior to this past January, and repelling them since. The KRX bounced up off the trendline in October 2014 and in January, August and October 2015. Then, in April and May-June of this year, the underside of the trendline served as resistance in repelling the KRX rally.

Recent hawkish talk from the Fed has presumably boosted financial shares as they stand to benefit from higher interest rates. However, as always, we would caution against basing one’s investment decision-making process on trying to predict what a group of central bankers are going to say or do (especially as they likely have no idea what their course of action will be anyway.)

One useful approach, however, would be to watch prices in financial stocks, not merely to monitor those, but also in an effort to detect potential clues as to the likely movement of rates. We often say that the market is an unparalleled discounting mechanism. Any potentially worthwhile inputs will be filtered through prices and may provide a clue on interest rate policy.

If KRX prices are able to reclaim the top of the post-2011 trendline, then not only is more upside opened up immediately in the sector, but it may be a vote of confidence for a continued hawkish tone out of the Fed. If the index is rejected here, then not only is further upside in financial shares going to be a challenge, but the interest rate pendulum may again swing back to the doves.

*  *  *

More from Dana Lyons, JLFMI and My401kPro.

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Shocked Mexican Citizens To Protest Trump Visit – “Out With Trump. Out With Pena Nieto”

At least some Mexican citizens waking up this morning to news of a Trump visit are not happy.  Many have taken to various media outlets to express their "disappointment" that Trump has been invited to meet with Mexico's President, Enrique Pena Nieto.  Apparently some people south of the border are not happy being referred to as "rapists" and "drug-traffickers."  

Twitter is abuzz with Mexican citizens distributing flyers for an anti-Trump protest to be held at 11AM at Angel de la Independencia (the Angel of Independence Monument) in downtown Mexico City.  But apparently protesters are just as unhappy with Nieto, with signs saying "Out With Trump.  Out With Pena Nieto."

 

Vicente Fox also took to Twitter and CNN to express his outrage over the Trump visit.  Fox made headlines earlier this year when he told CNN in a live interview that he's "not going to pay for that fucking wall."

 

Vicente Fox told CNN that Trump "is not welcome to Mexico."

 

 

The secret service expressed some concerns surrounding the security of the last minute trip.  Which is not terribly surprising given the immediate responses online and that silly little threat posted to Twitter by El Chapo last summer.  According to The Gateway Pundit, the tweet reads "If you keep pissing me off I’m going to make you eat your words you fucking blonde milk-shake"…well that's somewhat less than cordial.

El Chape

 

All of this comes as Trump is set to deliver a "major" immigration speech tonight at 9pm EST in Arizona.  The biggest question that voters will be looking to have answered is whether Trump will stand behind his previous promises to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States or temper that stance in order to appeal to a broader swath of the American electorate.  Trump's rhetoric on deportations has seemingly softened since Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon joined the campaign leaving Trump's base wondering where he currently stands.  Viewers will also be looking to see whether Trump has shifted his view on building "the wall" and if/how he will attempt to reach out to Hispanic voters. 

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A Chinese “Mystery” Has Become The Biggest Wildcard For The Price Of Oil

At the end of July, we wrote an article titled “Oil Bulls Beware: Crude Demand Is About To Slide As China’s SPR Is “Close To Capacity“” which explained why what until recently had been a record hoarding of oil by China, was starting to fade. The reason: according to JPM China’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve was filling up.

As we said then, “as many speculated, a big source of China’s demand in the past 5 months was Beijing’s decision to stockpile oil for its SPR. However, that is now over as China is likely close to filling its strategic petroleum reserves after doubling purchases for it this year as prices plunged. JPM estimates that China’s SPR demand was equivalent to approximately 1mm bpd. More importantly, stopping shipments for the reserve would wipe out about 15 percent of the country’s imports, according to the bank.”


Storage tanks stand in China’s strategic oil reserve complex in Zhoushan

For context we said that “Chinese crude imports had risen 16% this year, and the country was rivaling the U.S. as the world’s biggest oil purchaser. That demand, along with supply disruptions from Canada to Nigeria, has helped boost oil prices about 80 percent since January. Chinese imports surged to a record 8.04 million barrels a day in February. The nation may surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest crude importer this year with average inbound shipments of 7.5 million barrels a day, according to Zhong Fuliang, vice president with China International United Petroleum & Chemicals Co., the trading arm of the nation’s biggest refiner. However, if JPM is right, China’s imports are about to hit a brick wall.

Yet while Chinese imports have indeed slowed down, the rate of decline has been less than what JPM may have envisioned. That said, the slowdown may hit any moment.

In its June calculation, JPM said that the implication to China’s oil imports from a nearly full SPR is that “our base case assumes China continuing high volumes of (1mbd) SPR builds through August, while factoring in 7% domestic crude production decline and 2% refinery throughput increase. This means 15% mom decline in China’s crude imports in September, or 1.2mbd loss from the China inventory demand. China’s net oil imports ytd has expanded 16% yoy, versus a flat consumption growth.”

We’ll find out very soon if JPM was right.

Meanwhile, as attention turns to what is finally perceived as the biggest wildcard in global oil demand, one which could directly lead to the evaporation of up to 1 mm bpd in demand, Bloomberg writes that “the world is puzzling” over China’s oil hoard, and with good reason: if 1mm barrels of oil demand were to disappear, the price of oil would plunge as the already oversupplied market would find itself with an unprecedented glut of excess production.

One part of the mystery is that while China outlined in 2009 its plans to build reserves equivalent to 100 days of net imports, since then it’s only provided sporadic scraps of detail on its strategic petroleum reserves. 

A big reason for this is that unlike the US, in China stockpiled oil does not have one defined, centralized location. As a result, “from underground caverns by the Yellow Sea to a scattering of islands in the Yangtze River delta, the government has been stockpiling crude for emergencies in a network of storage sites dotted around the country.”

That’s the unknown – what is known, and what we reported two months ago, is that China’s record purchases of oil this year “have helped oil prices recover from the worst crash in a generation. What the country plans to do next could determine where they go from here. “

As Bloomberg writes, “the difficulty is that nobody outside China really knows for certain. The government won’t say how much it’s holding or when the tanks will be full. Energy Aspects Ltd. says the country will probably keep buying and fill up commercial tanks if it has to, while the likes of JPMorgan Chase & Co. say the purchases may soon stop. The difference in opinion is equivalent to about 1.1 million barrels a day, or more than the Asian country buys from Saudi Arabia.”

“China seems to feel no obligation to report on its strategic stocks, and that might confer a genuine advantage in its favor,” said John Driscoll, the chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte, who has spent more than 30 years trading crude and petroleum in Singapore. “The scope of their purchases The can dramatically affect fundamentals and prices. However, since they will likely be shrouded in secrecy, it will remain challenging to quantify the impact.”

The chart below is BBG’s calculation of the amount of crude oil that China imported over the what it has used in recent years.

According to a statement on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics in December, the Asian country had about 191 million barrels of crude in its SPR as of the middle of last year. But China also said at the time that total combined capacity of seven above-ground sites and one location with underground caverns was the equivalent of only 180 million barrels. The figures haven’t been updated since. Additionally, China has pushed back completion of its SPR stockpile to beyond the 2020 deadline, according to a Five Year Plan released in March 2016.

What adds to the mystery is that the government has also said it has leased space in commercial sites, signaling it could buy additional oil while more of its own tanks are constructed.

This has forced watchers to estimate China’s daily SPR-filling needs. “SPR has been a China mystery due to the lack of government data disclosure,” said Ying Wang, a Hong Kong-based analyst at JPMorgan. The bank estimates the amount of crude China is putting into stockpiles by calculating how much more oil the country is buying and producing than it’s using. As we reported in June, that amounted to about 1.2 million barrels a day over the first half of the year, according to JPMorgan. The bank estimates the country built up a total of about 400 million barrels by mid-2016 out of a targeted 511 million barrels.

Energy Aspects has provided a different interpretation, suggesting that there is no true limit to SPR buying: “the government may be able to increase purchases even if it runs out of its own space”, said Michal Meidan, a London-based analyst for the industry consultant. “Another 150 million barrels of commercial storage space is coming online by the end of next year that can be filled,” she said. That means that while reserve buying may slow, it won’t fall significantly.

“Even if SPR tanks only come online later in the year, more commercial tanks are starting up,” Meidan said. Energy Aspects sees demand for the reserves dropping by only 100,000 barrels a day in the second half of the year to 300,000 barrels daily. In other words, with consolidated US oil stocks at record highs, China merely continues to copy what the Obama administration is doing, and filling up every possible storage facility, public or private, in hopes prices will eventually turn higher while taking advantage of lower prices to warehouse as much crude as it can store.

Considering that China’s oil imports have averaged an unprecedented 7.5 million barrels a day so far this year, the portion going to the SPR is as much as 15% of the daily demand, which is why the current state of China’s SPR is so very critical.

China’s record purchases, along with temporary production outages in Nigeria and Canada, helped rebalance supply and demand in the market, leading Brent crude to jump almost 90 percent from mid-January to June.

However, now that the recent outages have been largely resolved, with key OPEC producers pumping at or near record levels, and with both Nigeria and Algeria gradually resuming oil exports, it is all about demand. To be sure, earlier today the EIA delivered an unexpected announcement when it reported that it overestimated US demand by as much as 16% in the first half of 2016.

Which is why should roughly 15% of Chinese oil demand be about to hit a wall, it’s all downhill from here for oil prices.

Finally, how will the market know if China is indeed at SPR capacity? Recall from JPM’s calculation:

Based on our base case of assuming another high SPR builds through August and the following three assumptions listed below, our model suggests a 15% mom decline in China’s crude oil net imports in September, or a loss of 1.2mmbbl versus August and 0.8mmbbl less from the 12-month average.… We do not believe the 16% growth in oil imports ytd is sustainable despite a domestic oil production decline, as demand is weak (2% expansion in oil processing with gasoline an increased risk), if inventory capacity reaches the limit.

In other words, we should know the answer soon. For now, however, judging by today’s sharp, 4% drop in the price of oil, the market appears to already be making up its mind.

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Critical Thinking In Short Supply? What About Short Demand?

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

A survey by the Wall Street Journal shows  ‘Soft Skills’ Like Critical Thinking in Short Supply.

The sought-after soft skills most in demand are communication, organization, teamwork, punctuality, critical thinking, social savvy, creativity and adaptability.

The job market’s most sought-after skills can be tough to spot on a résumé.

 

Companies across the U.S. say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find applicants who can communicate clearly, take initiative, problem-solve and get along with co-workers.

 

A recent LinkedIn survey of 291 hiring managers found 58% say the lack of soft skills among job candidates is limiting their company’s productivity.

 

In a Wall Street Journal survey of nearly 900 executives last year, 92% said soft skills were equally important or more important than technical skills. But 89% said they have a very or somewhat difficult time finding people with the requisite attributes. Many say it’s a problem spanning age groups and experience levels.

 

A LinkedIn analysis of its member profiles found soft skills are most prevalent among workers in the service sector, including restaurant, consumer-services, professional-training and retail industries.

 

To determine the most sought-after soft skills, LinkedIn analyzed those listed on the profiles of members who applied for two or more jobs and changed jobs between June 2014 and June 2015. The ability to communicate trumped all else, followed by organization, capacity for teamwork, punctuality, critical thinking, social savvy, creativity and adaptability.

At Two Bostons, a small chain of pet boutiques outside Chicago, owner AdreAnne Tesene conducts at least three rounds of interviews before she hires someone.

 

For higher-level positions, she invites job candidates and their significant others out to dinner with the rest of the management team, “so we can see how they treat their family.” She also has her employees fill out an evaluation of a new co-worker after 90 days.

 

Ms. Tesene, who opened her first store 11 years ago, said she sees fewer candidates who can hold a conversation, want to interact with people and are eager to excel.

Dare to Be Different?

Outside of communication and punctuality, I wonder how many companies really want what they say. Large technology firms like Google and Apple do. So might small startups.

What about banks?

For most bank positions, the last thing banks want is for someone to think for themselves. There are rules for everything.

Group Think

Critical thinking was 5th on the list. How many companies really want just that? One way to find out is to express opinions different that the one your boss has.

Want to work on a government sponsored global warming project? If so, you better not have be open to the idea that man-made global warming is a theory and not a fact.

Want to replace Ben Bernanke or Janet Yellen when they retire? If so, you better think just like them.

When your job depends on believing idiocy, you believe idiocy. You won’t get hired in the first place if you don’t.

Regardless of what they say, most companies really want punctual robots, not creative thinkers.

No one will care if robots are “socially savvy” as long as they do not make blatantly obvious mistakes.

What About Unions?

Public unions are the worst of all.

Union leaders expect union members to be paid on the basis of how long they have been on the job, not how well they do the job.

Not even communication skills matter, once someone is hired in the first place.

Short Supply or Lack of Demand?

If critical thinking is in short supply, it’s for one reason only: Lack of genuine demand.

Unions permeate the “thinking not necessary” culture, so do something for nothing beliefs at the Fed. So does Obama, and so do Democrats in general with counterproductive government handouts.

In general, critical thinking is so unwanted. It’s fully functional robots that are truly in short supply.

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‘Everyday American’ Taxpayers Funded $90,000 Private Jet For Hillary (And Her Mom) To Visit Her Chef

The Navy officer in the picture below got a lot of attention back in May when he accompanied Hillary to a Memorial Day parade in her home town of Chappaqua, NY.  Many online questioned whether Hillary had paid an actor to convince voters she had military supporters.

Hillary

 

Turns out, that Navy officer is retired Chief Culinary Specialist, Oscar Flores, of the U.S. Navy Reserve, and he seems to have an unusually close relationship with the Clintons.  Flores originally served as Bill's White House Chef but has stuck with the Clintons over the years and currently serves as their "Director of Operations" at their home in Chappaqua.  

In fact, according to a note from CNBC, the Clinton's are so tight with their chef that back in 2011 then Secretary of State Hillary chartered a G-5 to attend his Navy retirement ceremony in San Diego.  Per Hillary's official schedule below, she also brought Bill, Chelsea and her mom, Dorothy Rodham, along for the ride…the extra seats were just going to be wasted otherwise…might as well bring the family along to enjoy the lovely San Diego weather. 

According to the official Navy press release, Hillary described Flores as the "Mayor of Chappaqua because a simple trip to the grocery store or to the post office turns into a three hour town hall meeting. Everybody wants to talk to Oscar."  So cute.

Hillary Schedule

 

Given the critical nature of his service to the Clintons, we probably shouldn't be surprised that Hillary would charter a $90,000 private jet, at taxpayer expense, to attend his retirement ceremony. 

We know what you're thinking…she must have had some other official business in San Diego, aside from a retirement ceremony of her former chef, that required her presence, right?  Well apparently not.  Per her schedule below there are a couple of "FYIs" but no official meetings outside of Flores' retirement gathering…just a lot of free time to enjoy the beautiful Estancia Hotel in La Jolla and the 68 degree weather…the type of living that would impress even the wealthiest of NY hedge fund billionaires.  

 

Hillary Schedule

Hillary Schedule

Hillary Schedule

 

As a side note, it turns out the specific jet that Hillary chartered, tail number N200LC, is currently for sale for $2.5mm.  Looks like a pretty sweet ride!

Hillary G5

Hillary G5

Hillary G5

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Brazil Formally Impeaches Dilma Rouseff In 61 To 20 Vote

As was widely expected, the final step of Brazil’s historic impeachment process of former president Dilma Rouseff, concluded moments ago with a decision to formally impeach the former president Dilma Rouseff, with 61 senators voting for her ouster, and 20 voting against.

Dilma Rousseff thus becomes the second president to be impeached in Brazil’s 31-year-old democracy, after 13 years of her party’s leftist rule, paving the way for what the market hopes is a fundamental shift in economic policy.

Rouseff was previously charged for breaking the country’s budget laws. As a result, the just as unpopular Michel Temer is set to become Brazil’s official president until 2018. Behind the narrow allegations of breaking budget laws, what led a majority of Brazilians to back impeachment was a sense that Rousseff mismanaged the economy and was lenient on rampant corruption.

As Bloomberg reports, the decision caps a tumultuous period that began after Rousseff’s narrow re-election victory in 2014 and exacerbated the worst recession in decades.

The second impeachment since Fernando Collor was ousted in 1992 has been a traumatic experience for this young democracy, coming on top of a two-year corruption scandal and unemployment at its highest in over a decade. With his mandate as Brazil’s leader confirmed, Temer hopes he can now push more forcefully to put the economy back on track, a challenge that includes unpopular austerity measures. 

Many hope that her ouster will allow the economy to finally revert to a growth path: “Reforms become easier with impeachment out of the way,” said Edwin Gutierrez, the London-based head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, which oversees $420 billion. “That’s not to say it will be smooth sailing.”

While some disagreed with the decision, notably Sen. Humberto Costa, from Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, who argued that the two issues — her removal from office and a ban from public office — be considered separately, adding that “the punishment is disproportional in relation to the crime she is accused of” it appears the Senate had its mind made up.

 Janaina Paschoal, the lawyer leading the case against Rousseff, said the suspended president had committed fraud when breaking fiscal laws. “We are not dealing with a little accounting problem,” she said. “The fraud was documented.”

Meanwhile Rousseff told senators in a 30-minute address that”I know I will be judged, but my conscience is clear. I did not commit a crime.”

Rousseff also had sharp words for her vice president, Michel Temer, who took over when she was temporarily suspended and will finish her term through 2018 if the Senate permanently removes her.

She called him a “usurper” who in May named a Cabinet of all white men in a country that is more than 50 percent non-white. Temer’s Cabinet has been roundly criticized for its lack of diversity, with three ministers were forced to step down within a month of taking office because of corruption allegations.

Rousseff asserted that impeachment was the price she paid for refusing to quash a wide-ranging police investigation into the state oil company Petrobras, saying that corrupt lawmakers conspired to oust her to derail the investigation into billions in kickbacks at the oil giant.

Rousseff said it was “an irony of history” she would be judged for crimes she did not commit, by people accused of serious crimes.

* * *

And now atteion shifts to her replacement, her former Vice President, Michel Temer, who has already seen three his ministers resign amid allegations of corruption or trying to cover up graft. The Senate chief, a member of Temer’s party, is under investigation for corruption as well. All four deny wrongdoing.

The 75 year-old constitutional lawyer also faces growing opposition within his own rank and file to unpopular austerity measures, such as caps on civil servants’ pay and cuts to pension benefits. Prospects that a rift in his coalition could deepen after impeachment has made investors more cautious and taken some steam out of the market rally.

“Temer’s ability to win parliamentary support for his fiscal reforms is now being put to the test,” said Nicholas Spiro, a partner at London-based Lauressa Advisory Ltd., which advises asset managers.  “This is the moment of truth for Brazilian assets.”

For now, Temer is turning abroad in search of support. Wednesday afternoon, only hours after the Senate impeachment vote, he will embark on the first of a series of international trips to attract investors and show the world that he is Brazil’s legitimate leader.

The market’s reaction was modest, as the vote’s outcome was largely expected, and the BRL as well as the Brazilian EWZ ETF have both risen modestly following the news.

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The Mass Escape From Reality

Submitted by Tim Price via The Cobden Centre,

"Built into the speculative episode is the euphoria, the mass escape from reality, that excludes any serious contemplation of the true nature of what is taking place.

 

“Contributing to and supporting this euphoria are two further factors little noted in our time or in past times. The first is the extreme brevity of the financial memory. In consequence, financial disaster is quickly forgotten. In further consequence, when the same or closely similar circumstances occur again, sometimes in only a few years, they are hailed by a new, often youthful, and always supremely self-confident generation as a brilliantly innovative discovery in the financial and larger economic world. There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.”

 

John Kenneth Galbraith, ‘A short history of financial euphoria’.

From the vantage point of the great bond bubble of 2016, the first dotcom insanity now looks like an oasis of common sense. With the benefit of hindsight, it was clearly unwise to give Pets.com, for example, an online seller of pet supplies whose spokesperson was a sock puppet, a market capitalisation of $121 million, but then hindsight’s a wonderful thing. The company had its IPO in February 2000, missing the peak of the market by just a month, and within 270 days it was gone altogether.

In defence of the first wave of dotcom investors (“the pioneers get the arrows; the settlers get the land”), how should you price a business which might disappear within months, but which might also go global in the fullness of time and turn a commensurately enormous profit ?

On that score, by comparison with bond “investors” today, the first dotcom investors were being almost comically conservative. An early stage technology venture has the potential to generate eye-popping returns. Dell Computer, for example, during the decade of the 1990s delivered total returns to shareholders of 91,863%.

Anybody buying 5 year Japanese government bonds today, for example (with Japan’s government debt to GDP ratio at 230%), and holding to maturity, will not make 91,863%. The yield to maturity on these bonds is minus 0.2% – a guaranteed loss, before any impact from inflation or currency movements.

How to account for the behaviour of bond “investors” in 2016 and their collective participation in a mass escape from reality ?

Elliott Management’s Paul Singer provides a simple explanation: the global bond market is broken. “Everyone is in the dark,” he writes in a letter to investors; “Experience doesn’t count for much, and extreme confidence could be fatal”; “the ultimate breakdown (or series of breakdowns) from this environment is likely to be surprising, sudden, intense, and large.”

But we’re not trading bonds (or anything else, for that matter). We are, however, indebted to Mr J. Escott for being introduced to a new word in our vocabulary: apophatic.

An investor is behaving apophatically if he is expressing macro-economic concerns by avoidance rather than specifically betting on a seemingly inevitable outcome.

Chances are you’ve experienced someone speaking apophatically – apophasis being a rhetorical style particularly popular with politicians. The US presidential candidate Donald Trump is a past master at it. For example, in 2015 he said of his rival and the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina,

“I promised that I would not say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, that she laid off tens of thousands of people, and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say it, so I will not say it.”

Used rhetorically, aphophasis is clearly a sneaky manoeuvre.

But used in an investment context, it’s more down-to-earth. It essentially means: if you don’t really understand the rules of the game or if the price of something seems unsustainably high, don’t try and benefit by speculating (either selling it short or buying it ) because that’s too dangerous – it’s easier, and altogether less risky, just to stop playing that game, and go play a different game somewhere else.

The last quarter century of ever-shrinking Japanese bond yields has been the widowmaker trade par excellence. It would seem that where Japan has led the way, the rest of the world is finally playing catch-up.

In a world where the bond market feels irretrievably broken, which investments still have fundamental appeal ? We continue to identify three specific types. One is systematic trend-following, which offers the potential for meaningful portfolio insurance in a world where systemic risk is in the ascendant. One is monetary metal, with reassuring scarcity in a world where money, money-printing and money substitutes are becoming painfully commonplace. And one is defensive value in the stock market.

J.K. Galbraith, again:

“The only remedy, in fact, is an enhanced scepticism that would resolutely associate too evident optimism with probable foolishness and that would not associate intelligence with the acquisition, the deployment, or, for that matter, the administration of large sums of money. Let the following be one of the unfailing rules by which the individual investor and, needless to say, the pension and other institutional fund manager are guided: there is the possibility, even the likelihood, of self-approving and extravagantly error-prone behaviour on the part of those closely associated with money.”

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Negative Interest Rates: The Tax On Capital

 

 

 

 


 

So-called “negative interest rates” are illegal. This is an inescapable conclusion of law, arrived at simply by applying some of the most fundamental principles of our entire legal system. But let’s put aside this issue of legality, it is a topic which will be dealt with comprehensively, in a sequel to this piece.


There is no such thing as a “negative interest rate”. By definition, an “interest rate” is a positive number. It is the price which we pay in exchange for the use of capital. Thus the phrase “negative interest rate” is a non sequitur. It is a euphemism used to conceal the inherent criminality of this newest, Western financial fraud. However, let’s put this proposition of logic aside as well.


The purpose of this commentary is two-fold.


  1.  Exposing the lies and propaganda which supposedly justify this systemic financial crime.
  2.  Explaining what a so-called “negative interest rate” is, in reality: a tax on capital.

 

Before exposing the fraud which is inherent with so-called negative interest rates, it is necessary to back-track, and examine the evolution of monetary criminality which has brought us to this point. Before we got to the fraud and insanity of so-called negative interest rates, we had the “0% interest rate”.


There is no such thing as a “0% interest” loan. Again, the legal technicalities here will be explained in greater detail in the sequel to this piece. For the moment, it will suffice to say that any so-called “0% loan” (and 0% interest rate) is a sham transaction, null-and-void as an elementary premise of law.


Skeptical readers can easily find this out for themselves. Engage in some “0% loans” in your own financial affairs, and see what happens when you report those transactions to the tax authority of your jurisdiction. You will receive a letter informing you that any/all of your so-called “0% loans” are sham transactions, and the tax authority has deemed all such transactions to be null-and-void.


A negative interest rate is not the natural, logical progression from a 0% interest rate, because neither of these concepts exists in the real world. The moment we reached “0% interest” we completely left behind any semblance of legitimacy (and legality) in our monetary system. Why? Why the frauds? Why all of the lies about these frauds?


Let’s start by examining what the bankers and politicians tell us that these fraudulent/criminal interest rates are supposed to do. They are supposed to “stimulate our economies”.


Really? What is a “0% interest rate”, in reality? It is free money – a gift. That’s what the tax officials will call any supposed “0% loans” which we try to execute in our own personal finances. Does free money stimulate our economies? Yes, but with two, gigantic caveats.


First of all, what does it mean when any central bank starts to spew “free money” (i.e. free currency) into that economy? It means that the currency is worthless. As an elementary proposition of logic, any “good” which is produced at zero cost, and in (near) infinite quantities, like our fiat currencies, must be worthless. This was the subject matter of a previous commentary. Producing free money destroys our entire monetary system.


Secondly, using free money as a form of economic stimulus has the obvious effect of causing asset bubbles to explode all over that economy. The reckless peril of causing such asset bubbles to spring into existence grossly outweighs any “stimulative” benefit to the economy.


But don’t accept the word of this writer for this simple proposition. Look at our history. If a fraudulent 0% interest rate was a good way to stimulate our economies, why haven’t we always engaged in such a monetary policy? Put into negative terms, why has such monetary fraud and criminality never been perpetrated in our economies until now?


It is because it has been universally accepted, throughout our economic history, that the financial perils of the reckless policy of free money grossly outweigh any economic benefits. A “0% interest rate” doesn’t work as a policy of stimulus because it has never worked. We now have empirical proof of this elementary principle, spelled J-A-P-A-N.


Has 30 years of free money fixed Japan’s economy? No. Thirty years of free money has destroyed one of the world’s strongest economies. Look at what near-zero, 0%, and now negative rates have reaped in our own economies: massive real estate bubbles, all over the Western world; massive bond bubbles, all over the Western world.


Look at the United States. It has the largest bond bubble in its history, and the largest stock market bubble in its history, simultaneously. This isn’t even supposed to be theoretically possible. Monetary criminality and financial fraud has reached an exponential extreme. And now the criminal regimes of the West have embarked upon something much, much worse: their so-called negative rates: borrowers stealing from lenders and savers. This is a good idea?


Observe the reasoning of the central bankers and the puppet politicians who take their orders. If a 0% interest rate “stimulates” our economies, then moving to negative rates will provide even more “stimulus”. It is the logic of a six-year-old.


Two factors are completely ignored in this infantile reasoning. First, a 0% interest rate does not stimulate an economy, it destroys an economy, as just explained. The positive “interest” paid to savers which is supposed to (partially) protect us from the rapacious “inflation” of the bankers is removed. Our savings are stolen – at the full rate of inflation.


In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation
[i.e. theft] through inflation.


Alan Greenspan, 1966


The banking Crime Syndicate and the puppet politicians have already taken away our gold standard. The only partial protection which remained against banker “inflation” (banker theft) was the interest paid on our savings. Now that protection has been taken away from us as well, by the same bankers and puppet politicians.


This is particularly important for people who live in the real world, and are cognizant of the real rate of inflation – not the absurdly fraudulent inflation “statistics” spewed by our corrupt governments. With real inflation running at 10+% per year, having no protection from this rapacious confiscation of our wealth is an extremely serious form of economic theft and economic destruction.


Negative interest rates go well beyond even this level of injustice and criminality. Negative interest rates tax capital. How do you “stimulate” an economy by taxing capital? Anyone with even an ounce of economic savvy would immediately realize that you don’t stimulate an economy with a tax – any tax.


However, taxing capital is arguably the most-destructive form of taxation which could ever be devised. It is even more destructive than the intellectually bankrupt concept of “income taxation”. The full, destructive force of a tax on capital can once again be summarized with one word: D-E-N-M-A-R-K.


Denmark was the first regime in the Corrupt West to go fully “negative” with its criminalized interest rates. It has the most-negative rates in the world. And the destructive impact of this policy of taxing capital could not be more obvious. We see this simply by looking at the reaction of Denmark’s corporate community to this overt, monetary criminality – bankers stealing their operating capital via the tax of negative interest rates.


In response to having their operating capital stolen by the Big Banks, Danish corporations began to pre-pay their (official) taxes, in ever-increasing amounts. No, this is not a misprint. Denmark’s corporations began pre-paying their taxes at such an extraordinary rate that Denmark’s government was forced to pass a law limiting the pre-payment of corporate taxes. Insanity piled atop more insanity.


Negative interest rates punish-and-destroy economies in two ways – directly and indirectly. Directly, it obviously does not “stimulate” an economy to allow bankers to steal the operating capital of businesses. Indirectly, the more taxes that Denmark’s corporations pre-pay (or hide in other manners) in order to avoid the theft of their operating capital, the less operating capital which remains to build Denmark’s economy.


Taxing capital does not stimulate an economy. Obviously, allowing the Big Banks to steal the operating capital of businesses could never stimulate an economy any more than allowing the Big Banks to steal the savings of ordinary people could stimulate an economy. Simultaneously, businesses and savers are then also subjected to the second form of banker theft: theft-via-inflation.


Let’s pretend that the banking Crime Syndicate and the puppet politicians beneath them actually did want to stimulate our economies. What would they do? First they would eliminate the overt criminality of our interest rates. No more “negative” rates. No more “0% interest”. Interest rates would be restored to being legitimate, positive numbers.


Savers would once again be paid by their bank, in exchange for bestowing the bank with the privilege of using their capital. Lenders would once again be paid by borrowers in exchange for the use of their capital. Monetary legitimacy and monetary sanity would be restored. No more “taxation” (i.e. theft) in the form of criminalized interest rates.


Secondly, the bankers and puppet politicians would put an end to the banking crime syndicate’s game of theft-by-inflation: taxing (and pocketing) all of our wealth via the monetary fraud of their excessive money-printing. Obviously all of our economies would receive a massive jolt of stimulus if the bankers were prevented from stealing all of the wealth of citizens and businesses at the rate of 10+% per year.


Legitimate interest rates foster sustainable economic growth and development. The obvious sanity and justice of positive interest rates is fully supported by economic fundamentals. The monetary voodoo imposed upon us by criminal central banks, and rubber-stamped by puppet politicians is the ultimate extreme in financial corruption. The inevitable result of this systemic criminality can only be the complete economic destruction of the Western world.

 

 

 

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