by Larry Levin
The old saying is, Don't fight the Fed. That's good advice. I have dutifully been following the developing story by watching what the Fed does, not what it says, and by letting prices tell me which way the wind is blowing. It's a regrettable position to be in, because it's nearly impossible to make any long-range plans when you have no idea what the Fed is going to do next. But here we are.
How long the stock market rally will last is therefore unknowable, but stocks and bonds and commodities will remain elevated in price for as long as the Fed continues to dump hundreds of billions of thin-air money into the markets. The only problem is that there's no clear exit strategy for the Fed.
Putting money into the markets is a very easy thing for the Fed to do. Letting rope let out under full sail is easy; tugging it back in is difficult.
The Fed faces a similar asymmetry. Market participants are always eager to take fresh money hot off the press. An infinite number of things can be done with that money almost instantly. But coming up with money to give backto the Fed for Treasury of MBS paper? All sorts of difficulties arise.
"Wait, we'd have to sell a lot of things to free up that kind money and what, exactly, are you proposing to hand us in return? Treasuries? Um, no thanks, not right now. Agency debt? Uh, no, that doesn't fit our portfolio needs right now either. Perhaps next week?"
Further, when the Fed goes to get its money back from the marketplace, that action will drain liquidity, creating ripples throughout all sorts of markets, especially and including knocking the stock market down. Very few people complain about adding thin-air money; a crowd roars its disapproval for the reverse.
History suggests that inflation is best tamed early, but the Fed is already late and demonstrating a remarkable callousness by doing the exact opposite of fighting inflation. While we cannot know what it is that the Fed sees, or which demons it is fighting that provide the internal rationalization for risking a hyperinflationary outcome, we can only conclude that these threats are more spectacular than the alternatives.
Unfortunately, these events conform to the main themes that I have been writing and advising about for the past several years. Sadly, they are not a surprise at all; the only mystery to me so far is how they have managed to carry on as long as they have.
Events of the past few weeks - unrest in Tunisa/Egypt/Jordan, skyrocketing food prices, Dow cracking a 2-year high, dropping dollar with rising bond yields - make me even more confident in the conclusions of my recent report on How This Will All End (published January 12) in which I derive a calculated estimate of when a final fiscal deterioration will overwhelm even the best of intentions. While the money-printing-induced high we're currently on may feel fun today, the unavoidable inflationary smackdown we'll experience tomorrow most certainly will not.
I stumbled across a good blog today that covered what is happening in the market today and the potential inflation it may cause. In fact, it covers much of the ground I wrote about just yesterday, which is why I called this a “follow up.”
The full article can be found here:
The full article can be found here:
The headlines are screaming at the top of every financial media outlet tonight: The Dow Closes Above 12,000 For the First Time in Two Years!
What's going on here? Is the recovery well and truly underway? And, if it is, why is the Fed dropping hints again that "QE3 may get discussed" at future Fed meetings, as Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig said on Feb 1st?
Given the raft of good economic news lately, one might be forgiven for wondering what the Fed has in mind here. If everything is so economically rosy, why are they already dropping trial balloons about more Quantitative Easing? What are they seeing that we are not seeing, that justifies more than $100 billion in thin air money each month, and why won't they just tell us what it is?
…Over a 36 week period spanning from May 2010 to the end of January 2011, there was only one instance of 'investors' putting more money into stock mutual funds than they withdrew, and that one ,outlier was well under a billion dollars. Over that 36 week period, over $100 billion was removed from the markets by investors. Even when money started moving back in over the past two weeks, I want you to note the scale; the combined total is $6.7 billion. Keep that figure in mind.
Instead, we should first focus on the massive injections of raw, potent, thin-air money (a.k.a. "credit easing") by the Fed into the financial system. Sometimes this is referred to as "liquidity," which it is. But that's too narrow a definition, because it is much more; it also happens to be high-powered base money (a.k.a. 'Wall Street rocket fuel').
Note that QE II began in early November of 2010 and that the stock market is up 20% since the end of August.
As an aside, I used to track the Fed's thin-air money programs very closely, and if you had told me as recently as three years ago that the Fed would have been running 11-figure POMO operations each and every month, I would have told you it was unthinkably impossible. But here we are, that is exactly what is happening, and I am largely numb to the process, which worries me somewhat, as it means that my baseline has shifted.
At any rate, the point here is that from those August lows to now, retail investors have taken out far more money from the stock market than they've placed back in; a total of around minus $38 billion.
But over that same period, the Fed has placed nearly an entire order-of-magnitude more thin-air money, some $350 billion dollars, into the hands of financial institutions, some of whom consider the stock market their personal playground.
Should we consider the injection of more than a third of a trillion dollars and a stock market that is up by 20% to be a coincidence? No, not in the least. The stock market has become, if anything, a liquidity gauge first and a discounting machine second. The fundamental that matters most is how much money is flowing into the machine.
So it is my view that the trillions of dollars of thin-air money and deficit spending are finally finding their mark (asset prices) and doing their work, just as I predicted they would. Where some called for deflation to be the irresistible force that would drag us all down, I've consistently leaned towards the side of inflation. Although, to be fair, I have always hedged that view somewhat, with a 70/30 split held for nearly 5 years that was recently amended to 80/20 (in 2010 shortly after QE II was announced).
What's going on here? Is the recovery well and truly underway? And, if it is, why is the Fed dropping hints again that "QE3 may get discussed" at future Fed meetings, as Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig said on Feb 1st?
Given the raft of good economic news lately, one might be forgiven for wondering what the Fed has in mind here. If everything is so economically rosy, why are they already dropping trial balloons about more Quantitative Easing? What are they seeing that we are not seeing, that justifies more than $100 billion in thin air money each month, and why won't they just tell us what it is?
…Over a 36 week period spanning from May 2010 to the end of January 2011, there was only one instance of 'investors' putting more money into stock mutual funds than they withdrew, and that one ,outlier was well under a billion dollars. Over that 36 week period, over $100 billion was removed from the markets by investors. Even when money started moving back in over the past two weeks, I want you to note the scale; the combined total is $6.7 billion. Keep that figure in mind.
Instead, we should first focus on the massive injections of raw, potent, thin-air money (a.k.a. "credit easing") by the Fed into the financial system. Sometimes this is referred to as "liquidity," which it is. But that's too narrow a definition, because it is much more; it also happens to be high-powered base money (a.k.a. 'Wall Street rocket fuel').
Note that QE II began in early November of 2010 and that the stock market is up 20% since the end of August.
As an aside, I used to track the Fed's thin-air money programs very closely, and if you had told me as recently as three years ago that the Fed would have been running 11-figure POMO operations each and every month, I would have told you it was unthinkably impossible. But here we are, that is exactly what is happening, and I am largely numb to the process, which worries me somewhat, as it means that my baseline has shifted.
At any rate, the point here is that from those August lows to now, retail investors have taken out far more money from the stock market than they've placed back in; a total of around minus $38 billion.
But over that same period, the Fed has placed nearly an entire order-of-magnitude more thin-air money, some $350 billion dollars, into the hands of financial institutions, some of whom consider the stock market their personal playground.
Should we consider the injection of more than a third of a trillion dollars and a stock market that is up by 20% to be a coincidence? No, not in the least. The stock market has become, if anything, a liquidity gauge first and a discounting machine second. The fundamental that matters most is how much money is flowing into the machine.
So it is my view that the trillions of dollars of thin-air money and deficit spending are finally finding their mark (asset prices) and doing their work, just as I predicted they would. Where some called for deflation to be the irresistible force that would drag us all down, I've consistently leaned towards the side of inflation. Although, to be fair, I have always hedged that view somewhat, with a 70/30 split held for nearly 5 years that was recently amended to 80/20 (in 2010 shortly after QE II was announced).
How long will it last?
The old saying is, Don't fight the Fed. That's good advice. I have dutifully been following the developing story by watching what the Fed does, not what it says, and by letting prices tell me which way the wind is blowing. It's a regrettable position to be in, because it's nearly impossible to make any long-range plans when you have no idea what the Fed is going to do next. But here we are.
How long the stock market rally will last is therefore unknowable, but stocks and bonds and commodities will remain elevated in price for as long as the Fed continues to dump hundreds of billions of thin-air money into the markets. The only problem is that there's no clear exit strategy for the Fed.
Putting money into the markets is a very easy thing for the Fed to do. Letting rope let out under full sail is easy; tugging it back in is difficult.
The Fed faces a similar asymmetry. Market participants are always eager to take fresh money hot off the press. An infinite number of things can be done with that money almost instantly. But coming up with money to give backto the Fed for Treasury of MBS paper? All sorts of difficulties arise.
"Wait, we'd have to sell a lot of things to free up that kind money and what, exactly, are you proposing to hand us in return? Treasuries? Um, no thanks, not right now. Agency debt? Uh, no, that doesn't fit our portfolio needs right now either. Perhaps next week?"
Further, when the Fed goes to get its money back from the marketplace, that action will drain liquidity, creating ripples throughout all sorts of markets, especially and including knocking the stock market down. Very few people complain about adding thin-air money; a crowd roars its disapproval for the reverse.
Too Late
The bottom line is that by the time the Fed becomes institutionally aware that inflation is raging across the globe - and I often wonder when they'll finally awake to the threat - it will be too late. Inflation will have the momentum, and it will take a vast overreaction on the part of the Fed to restrain it. They'll have to drain enormous amounts of liquidity and tolerate vastly higher interest rates to be able to do that, and I doubt they have the courage for such bold action. I think they will hesitate, equivocate, and ultimately be late.History suggests that inflation is best tamed early, but the Fed is already late and demonstrating a remarkable callousness by doing the exact opposite of fighting inflation. While we cannot know what it is that the Fed sees, or which demons it is fighting that provide the internal rationalization for risking a hyperinflationary outcome, we can only conclude that these threats are more spectacular than the alternatives.
Unfortunately, these events conform to the main themes that I have been writing and advising about for the past several years. Sadly, they are not a surprise at all; the only mystery to me so far is how they have managed to carry on as long as they have.
Events of the past few weeks - unrest in Tunisa/Egypt/Jordan, skyrocketing food prices, Dow cracking a 2-year high, dropping dollar with rising bond yields - make me even more confident in the conclusions of my recent report on How This Will All End (published January 12) in which I derive a calculated estimate of when a final fiscal deterioration will overwhelm even the best of intentions. While the money-printing-induced high we're currently on may feel fun today, the unavoidable inflationary smackdown we'll experience tomorrow most certainly will not.
Trade Date: 2/2/11
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