Thursday, August 22, 2013
Jim Rickards – Triple Whammy Threat To Emerging Markets
Jim Rickards, Senior Managing Director at Tangent Capital, says weakening demand for exports, a stronger U.S. dollar and the prospect of Fed tapering spell difficulties for emerging markets going forward.
When “QE Infinity” Turns Into A Pipedream: Hot Money Evaporates, Rout Follows – See Emerging Markets
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Printing money and forcing interest rates to near zero, that’s how the Fed and other central banks papered over the Financial Crisis, duct-taped the bursting credit bubble back together, inflated new asset bubbles, and propped up TBTF banks. And in so doing, they accomplished a feat: a worldwide tsunami of hot money.
QE drove yield-seeking investors, whose livelihood was evaporating before their very eyes, to chase down yield wherever they could find it, no matter what the risks, and they found it in emerging markets and in junk, where they joined forces with the hot money. India, Indonesia, Thailand, and of course the BRICS, and other developing countries could suddenly borrow at record low rates from the future – much like developed countries – to goose growth. Companies and consumers ran up debts. Imports ballooned.
It had nefarious consequences. As the Fed was trying to devalue the dollar, other currencies rose. In September 2010, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega denounced the “international currency war” that the money-printers in Washington and elsewhere were waging against his and other emerging countries where the hot money had washed ashore. “This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness,” he warned.
But in early May, when the Fed penciled “taper” on the calendar as something to consider, the hot money got antsy, and markets were reacting. That month, interest rates started to soar globally. Junk bonds got slammed, as did the debt of emerging markets, particularly of countries that had splurged on imports and had to fund large current-account deficits.
The selloff doused all sorts of hopes in India and has since contaminated Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries. As Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher explained so eloquently last Friday on Fox: “I think the market has come to realize there is no QE infinity.”
Since QE infinity turned into a pipedream in early May, the Indian rupee lost 20% of its value and hit a historic low of 64.13 to the greenback early Tuesday, after a 2.3% swoon on Monday. The Indian stock market index Sensex has fallen 10.4% since mid-July. Government debt, a hair above junk, got hammered, with the 10-year yield jumping 20 basis points to 9.43%, a Lehman-moment high. The stench of crisis was in the air, and investors who’d been holding their noses for years, finally smelled it and tried to yank their money out.
India, which is in dire need of foreign capital, is a sitting duck. It has to fund a large current-account deficit. It’s importing much of its energy, but the crashing rupee is turning that into a burden for the economy. Badly needed reforms haven’t happened, or only minimally so. A slew of issues, such as inadequate infrastructure and electricity supply, bedevil the country, but they’re not being dealt with. Instead, the government is ingeniously trying to tamp down on gold imports. And it limited the amount of money people and companies can send overseas. Outright capital controls would be next.
So on Tuesday, to assuage his nervous countrymen, Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram, a senior official at the Finance Ministry, announced ineffectually, “There is no intention of government of India to put any capital controls as such.”
To prop up the rupee, the Reserve Bank of India had been raising interest rates, but the higher borrowing costs hit the corporate sector, and investors lost their appetite for bonds. It tightened liquidity to make it harder to short the rupee. Nothing worked. So on Tuesday, to save the day, it dumped dollars hand over fist. And to prop up the collapsing bond market, itannounced that it would buy 80 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) worth of government bonds with long maturities on August 23. It would decide later how much more it would have to buy.
Alas, buying bonds to prop up the bond market and force down long-term interest rates contradicted its efforts to prop up the rupee by raising interest rates. QE with all its messes has arrived in India to stave off the crisis caused by the consequences of QE, or rather the end of QE, in the US. But it did stop the rupee’s slide on Tuesday, at least temporarily.
Similar selloffs are circulating around the developing world as the hot money is pulling out. In Indonesia, the rupiah dropped to a four-year low. The Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite index is down 20.5% since May 20. The government is in full prop-up mode. Its state-owned pension fund PT Jamsostek announced that it would buy equities to halt the four-day 11% slide. That deus ex machina caused the stock market to recover a little after having been down 5.8% intraday, to close down only 3.2%.
What QE giveth, the end of QE taketh away. And this is just the beginning. The Fed hasn’t even announced the end of QE; it is merely palavering about it. And it has affirmed that its zero-interest-rate policy would remain in place, possibly for years to come. The Bank of Japan is in all-out QE mode. Other central banks haven’t given up on it either – because just idle banter of ending QE has these kinds of consequences around the world.
The emerging markets were among the first destinations of the hot money. It’s logical that they would be among the first places the hot money is trying to get out of while it still can. As the end of “QE infinity” approaches, and if the Fed actually stops printing money for the first time in five years of drunken partying, the movie now playing in the emerging markets will likely start playing at theaters closer to home.
The new salvation religion being preached in Japan to a hardened and cynical bunch who’ve lived through one of the worst bubbles and busts in recent history is this: prodigious money-printing will devalue the yen, causing exports to skyrocket and imports to shrink. The resulting trade surplus will save Japan. But the opposite is happening. And fast! Read….Abenomics Utter Fail: Japan’s Crazy Exploding Trade Deficit.
Printing money and forcing interest rates to near zero, that’s how the Fed and other central banks papered over the Financial Crisis, duct-taped the bursting credit bubble back together, inflated new asset bubbles, and propped up TBTF banks. And in so doing, they accomplished a feat: a worldwide tsunami of hot money.
QE drove yield-seeking investors, whose livelihood was evaporating before their very eyes, to chase down yield wherever they could find it, no matter what the risks, and they found it in emerging markets and in junk, where they joined forces with the hot money. India, Indonesia, Thailand, and of course the BRICS, and other developing countries could suddenly borrow at record low rates from the future – much like developed countries – to goose growth. Companies and consumers ran up debts. Imports ballooned.
It had nefarious consequences. As the Fed was trying to devalue the dollar, other currencies rose. In September 2010, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega denounced the “international currency war” that the money-printers in Washington and elsewhere were waging against his and other emerging countries where the hot money had washed ashore. “This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness,” he warned.
But in early May, when the Fed penciled “taper” on the calendar as something to consider, the hot money got antsy, and markets were reacting. That month, interest rates started to soar globally. Junk bonds got slammed, as did the debt of emerging markets, particularly of countries that had splurged on imports and had to fund large current-account deficits.
The selloff doused all sorts of hopes in India and has since contaminated Indonesia, Thailand, and other countries. As Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher explained so eloquently last Friday on Fox: “I think the market has come to realize there is no QE infinity.”
Since QE infinity turned into a pipedream in early May, the Indian rupee lost 20% of its value and hit a historic low of 64.13 to the greenback early Tuesday, after a 2.3% swoon on Monday. The Indian stock market index Sensex has fallen 10.4% since mid-July. Government debt, a hair above junk, got hammered, with the 10-year yield jumping 20 basis points to 9.43%, a Lehman-moment high. The stench of crisis was in the air, and investors who’d been holding their noses for years, finally smelled it and tried to yank their money out.
India, which is in dire need of foreign capital, is a sitting duck. It has to fund a large current-account deficit. It’s importing much of its energy, but the crashing rupee is turning that into a burden for the economy. Badly needed reforms haven’t happened, or only minimally so. A slew of issues, such as inadequate infrastructure and electricity supply, bedevil the country, but they’re not being dealt with. Instead, the government is ingeniously trying to tamp down on gold imports. And it limited the amount of money people and companies can send overseas. Outright capital controls would be next.
So on Tuesday, to assuage his nervous countrymen, Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram, a senior official at the Finance Ministry, announced ineffectually, “There is no intention of government of India to put any capital controls as such.”
To prop up the rupee, the Reserve Bank of India had been raising interest rates, but the higher borrowing costs hit the corporate sector, and investors lost their appetite for bonds. It tightened liquidity to make it harder to short the rupee. Nothing worked. So on Tuesday, to save the day, it dumped dollars hand over fist. And to prop up the collapsing bond market, itannounced that it would buy 80 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) worth of government bonds with long maturities on August 23. It would decide later how much more it would have to buy.
Alas, buying bonds to prop up the bond market and force down long-term interest rates contradicted its efforts to prop up the rupee by raising interest rates. QE with all its messes has arrived in India to stave off the crisis caused by the consequences of QE, or rather the end of QE, in the US. But it did stop the rupee’s slide on Tuesday, at least temporarily.
Similar selloffs are circulating around the developing world as the hot money is pulling out. In Indonesia, the rupiah dropped to a four-year low. The Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite index is down 20.5% since May 20. The government is in full prop-up mode. Its state-owned pension fund PT Jamsostek announced that it would buy equities to halt the four-day 11% slide. That deus ex machina caused the stock market to recover a little after having been down 5.8% intraday, to close down only 3.2%.
What QE giveth, the end of QE taketh away. And this is just the beginning. The Fed hasn’t even announced the end of QE; it is merely palavering about it. And it has affirmed that its zero-interest-rate policy would remain in place, possibly for years to come. The Bank of Japan is in all-out QE mode. Other central banks haven’t given up on it either – because just idle banter of ending QE has these kinds of consequences around the world.
The emerging markets were among the first destinations of the hot money. It’s logical that they would be among the first places the hot money is trying to get out of while it still can. As the end of “QE infinity” approaches, and if the Fed actually stops printing money for the first time in five years of drunken partying, the movie now playing in the emerging markets will likely start playing at theaters closer to home.
The new salvation religion being preached in Japan to a hardened and cynical bunch who’ve lived through one of the worst bubbles and busts in recent history is this: prodigious money-printing will devalue the yen, causing exports to skyrocket and imports to shrink. The resulting trade surplus will save Japan. But the opposite is happening. And fast! Read….Abenomics Utter Fail: Japan’s Crazy Exploding Trade Deficit.
33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy Has Tanked Since Obama Became President
Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an "economic recovery", but the truth is that things have not
gotten better under Obama. Compared to when he first took office, a
smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the
quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has
been absolutely shredded.
If we are really in the middle of an "economic recovery", why is the
homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years? Why has the
number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while
Obama has been in the White House? Why has the national debt gotten
more than 6 trillion dollars larger during the Obama era? Obama should
not be "taking credit" for anything when it comes to the economy. In
fact, he should be deeply apologizing to the American people.
And of course Obama is being delusional if he thinks that he is actually "running the economy". The Federal Reserve
has far more power over the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system
than he does. But the mainstream media loves to fixate on the
presidency, so presidents always get far too much credit or far too much
blame for economic conditions.
But if you do want to focus on "the change" that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy. That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality. The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president...
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.
#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.
#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.
#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 36.6 weeks.
#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" soared by an astounding 8,332,000. That far exceeds any previous four year total.
#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#9 When Obama was elected, the homeownership rate in the United States was 67.5 percent. Today, it is 65.0 percent. That is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.
#10 When Obama entered the White House, the mortgage delinquency rate was 7.85 percent. Today, it is 9.72 percent.
#11 In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 268 billion dollars. Last year, it was 315 billion dollars.
#12 When Obama first became president, 12.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs. Today, only 11.9 million Americans have manufacturing jobs.
#13 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#14 The poverty rate has shot up to 16.1 percent. That is actually higher than when the War on Poverty began in 1965.
#15 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.
#16 When Barack Obama entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.
#17 At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#18 When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.53.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse.
#21 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#22 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
#23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars. At this point, it has shot up to about a trillion dollars.
#24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
#25 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.
#26 The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.
#27 According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.
#28 As I wrote about the other day, American households are now receiving more money directly from the federal government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#29 Under Barack Obama, the velocity of money (a very important indicator of economic health) has plunged to a post-World War II low.
#30 At the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve held $475.9 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. Today, Fed holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds have skyrocketed past the 2 trillion dollar mark.
#31 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 101 percent.
#32 During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more new debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
But if you do want to focus on "the change" that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy. That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality. The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president...
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.
#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.
#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.
#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 36.6 weeks.
#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" soared by an astounding 8,332,000. That far exceeds any previous four year total.
#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#9 When Obama was elected, the homeownership rate in the United States was 67.5 percent. Today, it is 65.0 percent. That is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.
#10 When Obama entered the White House, the mortgage delinquency rate was 7.85 percent. Today, it is 9.72 percent.
#11 In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 268 billion dollars. Last year, it was 315 billion dollars.
#12 When Obama first became president, 12.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs. Today, only 11.9 million Americans have manufacturing jobs.
#13 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#14 The poverty rate has shot up to 16.1 percent. That is actually higher than when the War on Poverty began in 1965.
#15 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.
#16 When Barack Obama entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.
#17 At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#18 When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.53.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse.
#21 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#22 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
#23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars. At this point, it has shot up to about a trillion dollars.
#24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
#25 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.
#26 The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.
#27 According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.
#28 As I wrote about the other day, American households are now receiving more money directly from the federal government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#29 Under Barack Obama, the velocity of money (a very important indicator of economic health) has plunged to a post-World War II low.
#30 At the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve held $475.9 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. Today, Fed holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds have skyrocketed past the 2 trillion dollar mark.
#31 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 101 percent.
#32 During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more new debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
#33 When you break it down, the amount
of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama's first
term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States. Are you able to pay your share?
Mish Video: Troubled Currencies (And There are Lots of Them), Gold, Bernanke, Carry Trades, Bubbles
The Fed money is pouring — right back into the US. Over the last few years, Bernanke’s cheap quantitative easing money flowed outward into developing countries. But countries such as India, Indonesia and Thailand have seen currency devaluation of up to 40%. Hedge funds are losing massive amounts of money on QE bets. Just last week India’s currency, the rupee, sank to a record level, prompting the Indian Prime Minister’s attempt to reassure markets, stating “There is ‘no question’ of India going back to an economic crisis experienced in 1991, as its rupee currency is now linked to the market and foreign exchange reserves are adequate.” Nothing is confirmed until officially denied. Bob speaks with Mike Shedlock, author of Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis, about the decline in India’s rupee and emerging markets.
Presidential Meeting Signals Catastrophic Event: “There Is a Crisis Unfolding Somewhere in the Background”
If there’s one thing we know about how the US government operates, it’s that the American people are often the last to know about serious problems that may be taking place behind the scenes.
This week, in a move that has spooked a lot of economic and financial analysts, President Barack Obama held a special, closed door meeting with the heads of the U.S. government’s financial, monetary and oversight agencies. It included members of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the CFTC, the SEC, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
This has left many wondering what is really going on – and if a serious event is about to take place yet again.
Behind the scenes, however, President Bush, the Federal Reserve, and the world’s leading financial institutions were scrambling to figure out how to keep the whole thing from falling apart. As former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson noted, we were on the brink of a historic collapse, and they knew it well ahead of time.
The American people were not as fortunate. Most of us came to the realization things had taken a turn for the worse only after 50% of our wealth had been wiped out in a stock market and housing crash.
Today, like before, all of the experts in Washington and the mainstream media are making a point to reassure us that we are in the midst of an economic recovery. However, key economic indicators suggest otherwise. We are seeing a plunge in global shipping, a halt in consumer spending, and perhaps most importantly, a significant rise in interest rates and the US government’s borrowing costs.
Now, as the President meets with a veritable who’s who of government finance, lending and monetary policy one can’t help but think something is amiss.
Are we on the brink of another global disaster?
This week, in a move that has spooked a lot of economic and financial analysts, President Barack Obama held a special, closed door meeting with the heads of the U.S. government’s financial, monetary and oversight agencies. It included members of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the CFTC, the SEC, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
This has left many wondering what is really going on – and if a serious event is about to take place yet again.
I guess I’m always unnerved as a result of what happened in April, the last time the President of the United States had a meeting with all of the bank heads, and two days later the price of gold was smashed for over $200.Ahead of the 2008 collapse, as the pillars of our financial system were undergoing a controlled detonation, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve assured us the crisis had been contained. Experts and pundits on television were screaming to investors that everything was fine and to keep buying the dips.
Now, the President is meeting with all of the heads of the various agencies, institutions, the Fed, and all of the other key money entities in the United States today. What’s that all about?
But clearly if the President is having this meeting, there is a crisis unfolding somewhere in the background, and it could very well relate to the dollar, interest rates, and the massive derivatives market associated with interest rates…
…
This surge in interest rates may have already seriously destabilized the entire financial system, and that’s why there is this meeting taking place in the White House today. The fact is that the vast majority of derivatives in the global financial system are related to interest rates.
Now, the entire financial system may be on the precipice of some sort of catastrophic event unfolding because of what we have already seen in the bond market, and how the derivatives are so heavily intertwined. Meaning, we may be on the verge of another disastrous derivatives meltdown.
John Embry – King World News via Steve Quayle
Behind the scenes, however, President Bush, the Federal Reserve, and the world’s leading financial institutions were scrambling to figure out how to keep the whole thing from falling apart. As former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson noted, we were on the brink of a historic collapse, and they knew it well ahead of time.
The American people were not as fortunate. Most of us came to the realization things had taken a turn for the worse only after 50% of our wealth had been wiped out in a stock market and housing crash.
Today, like before, all of the experts in Washington and the mainstream media are making a point to reassure us that we are in the midst of an economic recovery. However, key economic indicators suggest otherwise. We are seeing a plunge in global shipping, a halt in consumer spending, and perhaps most importantly, a significant rise in interest rates and the US government’s borrowing costs.
Now, as the President meets with a veritable who’s who of government finance, lending and monetary policy one can’t help but think something is amiss.
Are we on the brink of another global disaster?
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