Spread & Containment
The Dollar and the Fed
One of the stark developments since the initial shock of the pandemic has been the aggressiveness of the US monetary and fiscal response. This was also true in dealing with the Great Financial Crisis. The divergence then and now had shaped the investmen

One of the stark developments since the initial shock of the pandemic has been the aggressiveness of the US monetary and fiscal response. This was also true in dealing with the Great Financial Crisis. The divergence then and now had shaped the investment climate.
On a per-capita basis, pandemic struck the US harder than in most other high-income countries, and some see the wide disparity of income and wealth as a contributing factor. In any event, the vaccine rollout has been quite good by international standards. This, coupled with vigorous policy support, economic activity has exploded.
A growing chorus of economists has argued that the Fed ought to target nominal GDP. Two percent inflation, which the Fed targets at 2% (now on an average basis, but no term for the average has been declared) and three percent real growth, has been an elusive but desired goal. In nominal terms, the US economy grew by more than 10% annualized in Q1, and it appears well above that here in Q2. In fact, after the disappointing employment report, the Atlanta Fed's GDP tracker sees Q2 real GDP at 11% annualized, down from 13.6% prior to the employment report. The NY Fed's tracker slipped to 5.1% last week from 5.3%.
Many high-income countries contracted in Q1 but are recovering, and positive growth is likely going forward. The acceleration of the US economy is still quicker, meaning that the divergence may extend a bit longer. However, the real takeaway from recent news and developments is that the divergence meme is ending. In fact, models of data surprises show the US faltering and Europe improving and can only be underscored by the nonfarm payroll report. In addition, the vaccine rollout in other high-income countries is accelerating, and Europe's seven-day average has surpassed the US. Partly, this is a function of catching up after a slow start. However, there is another issue that is unfolding. A significant minority appear reluctant to take the vaccine.
As we have come to appreciate, herd immunity does not require everyone is vaccinated. The greater the contagion, the greater the percentage of people needed to have immunity. It is possible that some areas, and even states, may fall shy of the coverage that doctors and scientists say is required to achieve herd immunity. In the US, the vaccines are still regarded as for emergency purposes only, making it difficult for public authorities to force the issue. Making the vaccines not just for emergencies could make it easier to impose greater social ostracization on those who refuse a vaccine. While the modern libertarian spirit may be the force behind attempts to decentralize finance, the public health crisis seems to push in the opposite direction.
We have anticipated that the divergence meme morphs into its opposite, namely convergence. However, another divergence is opening and one in which the US is the laggard. The Federal Reserve's leadership says it too soon to even talk about talking about adjusting the open spigot of monetary policy by slowing the pace of bond purchases from the current $120 bln a month pace. Canada has also begun the process of tapering. Last week, Norway's central bank reaffirmed its intention to raise rates before the end of this year. The Bank of England said it would slow its weekly bond purchases and look to complete them this year.
There will be a vigorous debate next month at the ECB about the pace of its bond purchases. Several of the more hawkish members apparently want to slow from the stepped-up pace agreed to in March. New staff forecasts at the meeting will likely revise up their growth forecasts and take into account the spillover of the significant US fiscal stimulus. The Reserve Bank of Australia may also be in line ahead of the US to adjust its policies. In July, it will decide whether to extend its yield-curve control to the November 2024 bond and about a new bond-buying program.
With the strong fiscal support, the pent-up demand, the vaccine, the re-opening, the Fed's stance seems to stretch credulity. While April's employment data were terribly disappointing, and the 146k downward revision in March's estimate shows recovery in the labor market is not a powerful as it had appeared. Cleaning the weekly initial jobless claims from fraudulent filings may have exaggerated the decline in filings, but it also exaggerated the increase. Weekly initial jobless claims fell below 500k at the end of April for the first time since March 2020. The four-week was 866k at the end of January.
Unlike the downside of a business cycle, the problem might not be on the demand side of the labor market but the supply side. Without schools and daycare fully open, many who might be taking new positions or returning to old positions cannot. Others may still be reluctant due to the virus and availability and confidence in public transportation. Like the Chamber of Commerce, some called for the end of the federal government's $300 weekly supplement unemployment compensation to address what anecdotal reports suggest is a labor shortage.
After the Great Financial Crisis, it took five years for the unemployment rate to fall below 6%. It stood at 6.1% last month after falling to 6% in March. It has more than halved from last year's peak. After the Great Financial Crisis, it took six years from the peak in unemployment to be reduced by half. The underemployment rate fell to 10.4% from 10.7% in March. In the GFC, it peaked in 2009 and was not under 10% until late 2015.
The April retail sales and industrial production reports will shed light on the meaning of the disappointing employment data. Does it signal a slowing of the US economy? Did the fiscal buzz wear off, as some are suggesting? The strong, strong auto sales hint at a healthy retail sales report, but the employment data seemed to have spooked some economists who reduced their forecasts. March's record US trade deficit showed businesses anticipating strong consumer demand. Manufacturing employment fell by 18k instead of rising by 54k as the median forecast in Bloomberg's survey had it, and some revised down their forecasts for manufacturing output/industrial production.
The other target is inflation. Next week the April CPI and PPI will be released. Whether price pressures prove temporary, reasonable people may differ, but what seems to be clear is that threat of deflation has all but disappeared. The year-over-year CPI rate stood at 2.6% in March and is expected to have jumped to 3.6% in April. This is partly the base effect, as the last April's decline drops out of the 12-month comparison.
The average monthly increase of CPI in Q1 was a little more than 0.4%. This is picking up the impact of the supply chain issues and shortages. The median forecast in Bloomberg's survey was for a 0.2% increase in April. Over the last 10 years (120 months), US CPI has averaged a 1.7% increase and 2.3% over the past 30 years (360 months). The similar core rate averages are 1.9% and 2.3%. The averages capture the broad trend of lessening price pressures and how closely they track each other on a medium and long-term basis.
Producer prices jumped 1% in March for a 4.2% year-over-year rate. Bloomberg's survey's median forecast is for the monthly rate to slow to 0.2%, but the year-over-year rate to accelerate to 5.8%. A little more than a third of the year-over-year increase stems from food and energy, which, if stripped out, should around a 3.7% year-over-year pace in April. This means that the cost of inputs, including packaging and transportation costs, are rising. As a result, one of three things, or more frequently it seems, a combination takes place, costs passed on to the consumer, narrow profit margins are accepted, perhaps to maintain market share or productivity increases.
The point, again, is that the threat of deflation has been exorcised. The first debate is not about removing monetary stimulus. It is about slowing the amount of new accommodation by reducing the bond purchases. In Japan, quantitative easing via Rinban operations before the Great Financial Crisis was the norm, but in the US, the purchase of long-term assets is about triage, but now the patient has had a large fiscal and medical vaccine, and some extra monetary vitamins, and is beginning to run. Therapy is still needed, but triage, less so.
While the Fed's leadership is reluctant to signal that it may begin considering reducing the pace of its bond purchases, the Treasury will auction $126 bln of coupons in next week's quarterly refunding. The primary dealer system obligates the necessary buying. However, the auctions can be sloppy--low bid cover, a large tail, an immediate post-auction decline in yield, as we have experienced with the sale of the seven-year note earlier this year.
Given the size of the budget and current account deficits, the US has to offer a combination of higher interest rates or a weaker dollar. The Federal Reserve is blocking the former and is willing to accept the latter. Among the high-income countries, the US 10-year note has performed best over the past month. The yield has fallen by almost 10 bp, while European yields have risen 10-27 bp.
In addition to the signals from the 10-year, look at what has happened to the December 2022 Eurodollar futures contract. The implied yield trended higher in Q1 and peaked in early April around 53 bp (cash is around 16 bp), almost 35 bp higher than it had begun the year. The dollar generally trended higher in Q1. Since early April, the yield has trended lower and took another big step down after the employment disappointment. The implied yield traded near 37 bp before the weekend, essentially unwinding this year's increase. The dollar has been tracking the yield lower.
Tapering is not tightening, but the market knows, and the Fed knows that the market knows that tapering is the first step toward tightening. The Fed may not want to signal tapering because it does not want markets to run with it and tighten financial conditions prematurely. Fed officials appreciate arguably, if not better than Wall Street, that there is no free lunch; there are trade-offs. The disequilibrium will be addressed by either higher interest rates or a lower dollar, or a combination.
Disclaimer
unemployment pandemic stimulus monetary policy fed federal reserve vaccine therapy herd immunity gdp recovery interest rates unemployment japan canada european europeSpread & Containment
From LTCM To 1966. The Perils Of Rising Interest Rates
Based on some comments, it appears we scared a few people with A Crisis Is Coming. Our article warns, "A financial crisis will likely follow the Fed’s…

Based on some comments, it appears we scared a few people with A Crisis Is Coming. Our article warns, “A financial crisis will likely follow the Fed’s “higher for longer” interest rate campaign.” We follow the article with more on financial crises to help calm any worries you may have. This article summarizes two interest rate-related crises, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) and the lesser-known Financial Crisis of 1966.
We aim to convey two important lessons. First, both events exemplify how excessive leverage and financial system interdependences are dangerous when interest rates are rising. Second, they stress the importance of the Fed’s reaction function. A Fed that reacts quickly to a budding crisis can quickly mitigate it. The regional bank crisis in March serves as recent evidence. However, a crisis can blossom if the Fed is slow to react, as we saw in 2008.
Before moving on, it’s worth providing context for the recent series of rate hikes. Unless this time is different, another crisis is coming.

LTCM’s Failure
John Meriweather founded LTCM in 1994 after a successful bond trading career at Salomon Brothers. In addition to being led by one of the world’s most infamous bond traders, LTCM also had Myron Scholes and Robert Merton on their staff. Both won a Nobel Prize for options pricing. David Mullins Jr., previously the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve to Alan Greenspan, was also an employee. To say the firm was loaded with the finance world’s best and brightest may be an understatement.
LTCM specialized in bond arbitrage. Such trading entails taking advantage of anomalies in the price spread between two securities, which should have predictable price differences. They would bet divergences from the norm would eventually converge, as was all but guaranteed in time.
LTCM was using 25x or more leverage when it failed in 1998. With that kind of leverage, a 4% loss on the trade would deplete the firm’s equity and force it to either raise equity or fail.
The world-renowned hedge fund fell victim to the surprising 1998 Russian default. As a result of the unexpected default, there was a tremendous flight to quality into U.S. Treasury bonds, of which LTCM was effectively short. Bond divergences expanded as markets were illiquid, growing the losses on their convergence bets.
They also wrongly bet that the dually listed shares of Royal Dutch and Shell would converge in price. Given they were the same company, that made sense. However, the need to stem their losses forced them to bail on the position at a sizeable loss instead of waiting for the pair to converge.
The Predictable Bailout
Per Wikipedia:
Long-Term Capital Management did business with nearly every important person on Wall Street. Indeed, much of LTCM’s capital was composed of funds from the same financial professionals with whom it traded. As LTCM teetered, Wall Street feared that Long-Term’s failure could cause a chain reaction in numerous markets, causing catastrophic losses throughout the financial system.
Given the potential chain reaction to its counterparties, banks, and brokers, the Fed came to the rescue and organized a bailout of $3.63 billion. A much more significant financial crisis was avoided.
The takeaway is that the financial system has highly leveraged players, including some like LTCM, which supposedly have “foolproof” investments on their books. Making matters fragile, the banks, brokers, and other institutions lending them money are also leveraged. A counterparty failure thus affects the firm in trouble and potentially its lenders. The lenders to the original lenders are then also at risk. The entire financial system is a series of lined-up dominos, at risk if only one decent-sized firm fails.
Roger Lowenstein wrote an informative book on LTCM aptly titled When Genius Failed. The graph below from the book shows the rise and fall of an initial $1 investment in LTCM.

The Financial Crisis of 1966
Most people, especially Wall Street gray beards, know of LTCM and the details of its demise. We venture to guess very few are up to speed on the crisis of 1966. We included. As such, we relied heavily upon The 1966 Financial Crisis by L. Randall Wray to educate us. The quotes we share are attributable to his white paper.
As the post-WW2 economic expansion progressed, companies and municipalities increasingly relied on debt and leverage to fuel growth. For fear of rising inflation due to the robust economic growth rate, the Fed presided over a series of rate hikes. In mid-1961, Fed Funds were as low as 0.50%. Five years later, they hit 5.75%. The Fed also restricted banks’ reserve growth to reduce loan creation and further hamper inflation. Higher rates, lending restrictions, and a yield curve inversion resulted in a credit crunch. Further impeding the prominent New York money center banks from lending, they were losing deposits to higher-yielding instruments.
Sound familiar?
The lack of credit availability exposed several financial weaknesses. Per the article:
As Minsky argued, “By the end of August, the disorganization in the municipals market, rumors about the solvency and liquidity of savings institutions, and the frantic position-making efforts by money-market banks generated what can be characterized as a controlled panic. The situation clearly called for Federal Reserve action.” The Fed was forced to enter as a lender of last resort to save the Muni bond market, which, in effect, validated practices that were stretching liquidity.
The Fed came to the rescue before the crisis could expand meaningfully or the economy would collapse. The problem was fixed, and the economy barely skipped a beat.
However, and this is a big however, “markets came to expect that big government and the Fed would come to the rescue as needed.”
Expectations of Fed rescues have significantly swelled since then and encourage ever more reckless financial behaviors.
The Fed’s Reaction Function- Minksky Fragility
Wray’s article on the 1966 crisis ends as follows:
That 1966 crisis was only a minor speedbump on the road to Minskian fragility.
Minskian fragility refers to economist Hyman Minsky’s work on financial cycles and the Fed’s reaction function. Broadly speaking, he attributes financial crises to fragile banking systems.
Said differently, systematic risks increase as system-wide leverage and financial firm interconnectedness rise. As shown below, debt has grown much faster than GDP (the ability to pay for the debt). Inevitably, higher interest rates, slowing economic activity, and liquidity issues are bound to result in a crisis, aka a Minsky Moment. Making the system ever more susceptible to a financial crisis are the predictable Fed-led bailouts. In a perverse way, the Fed incentivizes such irresponsible behaviors.

Nearing The Minsky Moment
As we shared in A Crisis Is Coming: Who Is Swimming Naked?:
The tide is starting to ebb. With it, economic activity will slow, and asset prices may likely follow. Leverage and high-interest rates will bring about a crisis.
Debt and leverage are excessive and even more extreme due to the pandemic.

The question is not whether higher interest rates will cause a crisis but when. The potential for one-off problems, like LTCM, could easily set off a systematic situation like in 1966 due to the pronounced system-wide leverage and interdependencies.
As we have seen throughout the Fed’s history, they will backstop the financial system. The only question is when and how. If they remain steadfast in fighting inflation while a crisis grows, they risk a 2008-like event. If they properly address problems as they did in March, the threat of a severe crisis will considerably lessen.
Summary
The Fed halted the crises of 1966 and LTCM. They ultimately did the same for every other crisis highlighted in the opening graph. Given the amount of leverage in the financial system and the sharp increase in interest rates, we have little doubt a crisis will result. The Fed will again be called upon to bail out the financial system and economy.
For investors, your performance will be a function of the Fed’s reaction. Are they quick enough to spot problems, like the banking crisis in March or our two examples, and minimize the economic and financial effect of said crisis? Or, like in 2008, will it be too late to arrest a blooming crisis, resulting in significant investor losses and widespread bankruptcies?
The post From LTCM To 1966. The Perils Of Rising Interest Rates appeared first on RIA.
bankruptcies default economic growth economic expansion treasury bonds bonds yield curve fed federal reserve spread pandemic gdp interest ratesSpread & Containment
No Privacy, No Property: The World In 2030 According To The WEF
No Privacy, No Property: The World In 2030 According To The WEF
Authored by Madge Waggy via SevenWop.home.blog,
The World Economic Forum…

Authored by Madge Waggy via SevenWop.home.blog,
The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded fifty years ago. It has gained more and more prominence over the decades and has become one of the leading platforms of futuristic thinking and planning. As a meeting place of the global elite, the WEF brings together the leaders in business and politics along with a few selected intellectuals. The main thrust of the forum is global control.
Free markets and individual choice do not stand as the top values, but state interventionism and collectivism. Individual liberty and private property are to disappear from this planet by 2030 according to the projections and scenarios coming from the World Economic Forum.
Eight Predictions
Individual liberty is at risk again. What may lie ahead was projected in November 2016 when the WEF published “8 Predictions for the World in 2030.” According to the WEF’s scenario, the world will become quite a different place from now because how people work and live will undergo a profound change. The scenario for the world in 2030 is more than just a forecast. It is a plan whose implementation has accelerated drastically since with the announcement of a pandemic and the consequent lockdowns.
According to the projections of the WEF’s “Global Future Councils,” private property and privacy will be abolished during the next decade. The coming expropriation would go further than even the communist demand to abolish the property of production goods but leave space for private possessions. The WEF projection says that consumer goods, too, would be no longer private property.
If the WEF projection should come true, people would have to rent and borrow their necessities from the state, which would be the sole proprietor of all goods. The supply of goods would be rationed in line with a social credit points system. Shopping in the traditional sense would disappear along with the private purchases of goods. Every personal move would be tracked electronically, and all production would be subject to the requirements of clean energy and a sustainable environment.
In order to attain “sustainable agriculture,” the food supply will be mainly vegetarian. In the new totalitarian service economy, the government will provide basic accommodation, food, and transport, while the rest must be lent from the state. The use of natural resources will be brought down to its minimum. In cooperation with the few key countries, a global agency would set the price of CO2 emissions at an extremely high level to disincentivize its use.
In a promotional video, the World Economic Forum summarizes the eight predictions in the following statements:
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People will own nothing. Goods are either free of charge or must be lent from the state.
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The United States will no longer be the leading superpower, but a handful of countries will dominate.
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Organs will not be transplanted but printed.
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Meat consumption will be minimized.
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Massive displacement of people will take place with billions of refugees.
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To limit the emission of carbon dioxide, a global price will be set at an exorbitant level.
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People can prepare to go to Mars and start a journey to find alien life.
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Western values will be tested to the breaking point..
Beyond Privacy and Property
In a publication for the World Economic Forum, the Danish ecoactivist Ida Auken, who had served as her country’s minister of the environment from 2011 to 2014 and still is a member of the Danish Parliament (the Folketing), has elaborated a scenario of a world without privacy or property. In “Welcome to 2030,” she envisions a world where “I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.” By 2030, so says her scenario, shopping and owning have become obsolete, because everything that once was a product is now a service.
In this idyllic new world of hers, people have free access to transportation, accommodation, food, “and all the things we need in our daily lives.” As these things will become free of charge, “it ended up not making sense for us to own much.” There would be no private ownership in houses nor would anyone pay rent, “because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it.” A person’s living room, for example, will be used for business meetings when one is absent. Concerns like “lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment” are things of the past. The author predicts that people will be happy to enjoy such a good life that is so much better “than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth.”
Ecological Paradise
In her 2019 contribution to the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils of the World Economic Forum, Ida Auken foretells how the world may look in the future “if we win the war on climate change.” By 2030, when CO2 emissions will be greatly reduced, people will live in a world where meat on the dinner plate “will be a rare sight” while water and the air will be much cleaner than today. Because of the shift from buying goods to using services, the need to have money will vanish, because people will spend less and less on goods. Work time will shrink and leisure time will grow.
For the future, Auken envisions a city where electric cars have substituted conventional combustion vehicles. Most of the roads and parking spaces will have become green parks and walking zones for pedestrians. By 2030, agriculture will offer mainly plant-based alternatives to the food supply instead of meat and dairy products. The use of land to produce animal feed will greatly diminish and nature will be spreading across the globe again.
Fabricating Social Consent
How can people be brought to accept such a system? The bait to entice the masses is the assurances of comprehensive healthcare and a guaranteed basic income. The promoters of the Great Reset promise a world without diseases. Due to biotechnologically produced organs and individualized genetics-based medical treatments, a drastically increased life expectancy and even immortality are said to be possible. Artificial intelligence will eradicate death and eliminate disease and mortality. The race is on among biotechnological companies to find the key to eternal life.
Along with the promise of turning any ordinary person into a godlike superman, the promise of a “universal basic income” is highly attractive, particularly to those who will no longer find a job in the new digital economy. Obtaining a basic income without having to go through the treadmill and disgrace of applying for social assistance is used as a bait to get the support of the poor.
To make it economically viable, the guarantee of a basic income would require the leveling of wage differences. The technical procedures of the money transfer from the state will be used to promote the cashless society. With the digitization of all monetary transactions, each individual purchase will be registered. As a consequence, the governmental authorities would have unrestricted access to supervise in detail how individual persons spend their money. A universal basic income in a cashless society would provide the conditions to impose a social credit system and deliver the mechanism to sanction undesirable behavior and identify the superfluous and unwanted.
Who Will Be the Rulers?
The World Economic Forum is silent about the question of who will rule in this new world.
There is no reason to expect that the new power holders would be benevolent. Yet even if the top decision-makers of the new world government were not mean but just technocrats, what reason would an administrative technocracy have to go on with the undesirables? What sense does it make for a technocratic elite to turn the common man into a superman? Why share the benefits of artificial intelligence with the masses and not keep the wealth for the chosen few?
Not being swayed away by the utopian promises, a sober assessment of the plans must come to the conclusion that in this new world, there would be no place for the average person and that they would be put away along with the “unemployable,” “feeble minded,” and “ill bred.” Behind the preaching of the progressive gospel of social justice by the promoters of the Great Reset and the establishment of a new world order lurks the sinister project of eugenics, which as a technique is now called “genetic engineering” and as a movement is named “transhumanism,” a term coined by Julian Huxley, the first director of the UNESCO.
The promoters of the project keep silent about who will be the rulers in this new world. The dystopian and collectivist nature of these projections and plans is the result of the rejection of free capitalism. Establishing a better world through a dictatorship is a contradiction in terms. Not less but more economic prosperity is the answer to the current problems. Therefore, we need more free markets and less state planning. The world is getting greener and a fall in the growth rate of the world population is already underway. These trends are the natural consequence of wealth creation through free markets.
Conclusion
The World Economic Forum and its related institutions in combination with a handful of governments and a few high-tech companies want to lead the world into a new era without property or privacy. Values like individualism, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at stake, to be repudiated in favor of collectivism and the imposition of a “common good” that is defined by the self-proclaimed elite of technocrats. What is sold to the public as the promise of equality and ecological sustainability is in fact a brutal assault on human dignity and liberty. Instead of using the new technologies as an instrument of betterment, the Great Reset seeks to use the technological possibilities as a tool of enslavement. In this new world order, the state is the single owner of everything. It is left to our imagination to figure out who will program the algorithms that manage the distribution of the goods and services.
Spread & Containment
Vehicles Sales increase to 15.67 million SAAR in September; Up 15% YoY
Wards Auto released their estimate of light vehicle sales for September: September U.S. Light-Vehicles Sales Bounce Back Despite Gloomy Conditions (pay site).Hard to say exactly how much but sales could have been slightly stronger in September if not f…

Hard to say exactly how much but sales could have been slightly stronger in September if not for some lost inventory caused by production cuts related to plant shutdowns from UAW strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis. Sales losses will be more strongly felt in October as production cuts mount.
This graph shows light vehicle sales since 2006 from the BEA (blue) and Wards Auto's estimate for September (red).
The impact of COVID-19 was significant, and April 2020 was the worst month. After April 2020, sales increased, and were close to sales in 2019 (the year before the pandemic). However, sales decreased in 2021 due to supply issues. The "supply chain bottom" was in September 2021.

Sales in September were above the consensus forecast. fomc open market committee transmission pandemic covid-19
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