He was wrong before. And he's going to be wrong again. Enjoy:
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
USD & Various Treasury Yields (by Gary Tanashian)
Hey, happy new year all Slopers, and TK, a special happy new year to you! I wish we had more honest and rational voices out there in the wilderness, which is exactly what Slope is in my limited but increasing experience. Something I wrote this morning while pondering a trigger point in treasury rates:
What is the story here? 5, 10 and 30 year treasury yields are marching
in lock step saying these bonds' would-be buyers want greater
compensation if they are going to take on the debt of a society that
literally lives by inflation, and by debt. The yields are rising as if
to say "Look, we will keep the
illusion intact as long as you are willing to manufacture more debt to
sustain it, but we must be better compensated as the moral risks get
higher here in Full Hubris '10".
The key yield to watch
is of course the 3 month t-bill, which will tell the Fed what it is
going to do (you don't really believe these clowns are in control of
such things, as they pretend to make these decisions, do you?) and if
the T-bill tells the Fed that rates are going to rise, then we will
find out how sustainable the economic recovery is.
As an aside,
you may know that I have a position in the real world where my finger
is on the pulse of the US manufacturing economy. The better than
expected mid-west manufacturing activity is not a lie. There is
recovery, and I see it elsewhere as well. I'll talk about my vantage
point on the 'real' economy a bit more in NFTRH. 'THE' recovery is not in dispute and mine is surely no perma-bear, perma-Armageddon blog.
But
it is sustainability that is the question, and rising yields, if they
are not stopped at our 'line in the sand' of secular change, will
answer a lot of questions in that regard as we move forward. The dollar
has predictably been rescued from the abyss that the MSM were
trumpeting. Now there are actually strong dollar wise guys coming out
of the woodwork. Now things get interesting.
A Much Nicer Bull/Bear Spread (by Gary Tanashian)
I am not sure what caused the anomaly that Biffermas noted earlier, but here is the chart updated as of yesterday at SentimenTrader.com. It joins many other indicators pointing bearish to at least NOT BULLISH. You should see the Investors Intelligence data at SentimenTrader. It measures newsletter bullishness, and let me tell you folks, those trend followers are BULLISH to an extreme.
Separately, have you seen the latest hero being trumpeted? Here he is in full regalia, man of the year!
Tell me, just what was Time saying last year at this time? What were the major media saying in March? Patience my bearish friends. Hope '09 may extend a bit into Full Hubris '10, but there is not much bullish going on from sentiment and risk/reward standpoints. Nuh uh. Oh, also check out the dollar.
Another Contrary Indicator?
It certainly wouldn't be the first time a person "peaked" with such a cover story. (Nixon in 1972; Bush in 2004; countless other examples……including………….)
Mishkin Slams Paul Bill (by Gary)
Hello from Gary. I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. 🙂
Mishkin Calls Ron Paul Fed-Audit Bill 'Dangerous'
No,
what is dangerous is trotting out former Fed governors to scare the
Munchkins, keep people off the yellow brick road and attempt to quash
all questioning of the all powerful wizards. We will just click our
heels and it will all work out… 'there's no place like home'.
This is America, Mr. Mishkin. It is not Oz and it is not a place where the people have no
right to know. America's government – whose Congress works closely with
your former institution in financing all manner of debt fueled
enterprise – is of the people. And through Dr. Paul's bill, all the people would ask is to know, well after the fact, what the Fed is doing.
“The
Ron Paul bill is incredibly dangerous,” said Mishkin, who is now a
Columbia University professor, in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “It is
remarkable the kind of attacks that are occurring on Fed independence.”
Asking for limited transparency is an attack?
Paul’s
bill “would be very dangerous in terms of promoting inflation,” Mishkin
said. “If you make the central bank beholden to politicians on a
short-run basis, you get very bad outcomes: high inflation and less of
the ability to deal with shocks like the ones we had recently.”
That's
funny Frederic, I always thought inflation was what you guys do every
time the system hiccups, when new debt is issued and Federal Reserve
Notes are printed out of nowhere.
“A
number of the legislative proposals being circulated would
significantly reduce the capacity of the Federal Reserve to perform its
core functions,” he wrote. The measures “would seriously impair the
prospects for economic and financial stability in the U.S.”
If
the 'stability' exhibited in Q4 2008, which directly resulted from
years of the Greenspan Fed's policy will be seriously impaired, then
let's hear it for impairment.
“This
is not the way to do monetary policy,” he said. “There are a whole
bunch of proposals about regulatory authority and the Federal Reserve,
which are potentially extremely damaging to the economy.”
Okay then, how exactly do we do
monetary policy Mr. Mishkin? You would have to be a myopic bureaucrat
or an academic to believe that the economy is not already damaged
beyond repair and has been for many years. Yet the wizards continue to
repair it, cycle after cycle with more of what killed it in the first
place, debt. In short, it is an ongoing Ponzi scheme with an as yet
undetermined time frame on final resolution.
“You
have to make sure you are not fighting the last war,” he said. “In the
U.S. context, there have been people talking about bubbles in the
United States and saying this is a big problem and the Federal Reserve
needs to exit from its expansionary monetary policy in order to deal
with them. This is fighting the last war.”
We are not in Oz. We are in Wonderland, down the rabbit hole. You created
the last war and now you are not willing to fight it. You would create
new wars for our kids to fight. Do you have children Frederic? What
about grandchildren?
Mishkin
called surging gold a “sideshow” and said prices of the metal “move all
over the map for many, many different reasons and have very little
impact on the economy.”
“If
gold price movements are reflecting other factors that could be
important, you might worry,” he said. “For example, if gold is going up
because people are worried the Federal Reserve won’t be able to contain
inflation, that is serious.”
You are hopeless, sir.
But you have the pulpit known as Bloomberg and other major media
outlets with which to influence a few Munchkins. Keep 'em off the
yellow brick road at all costs because you know what is good for them.
But it seems more and more each day are realizing that 'hey, maybe I'd
better take matters into my own hands… this Fed policy (with my
Government's money) is crazy!'
There is little doubt that there
will be $100 down days in gold ahead, but on the big picture the price
of this monetary anchor will continue to seek out a level of value that
is in direct opposition to the level of confidence in the system that
the Fed manages so well.
