Armstrong Economics Blog
Re-Posted May 8, 2016 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; some people say you are wrong because the Fed did not create “cash,” but rather made more debt available through the QE process and whether people hoard money is irrelevant. I do not agree with this statement for the Fed clearly bought bonds, they did not create debt. It seems some people have completely got this all confused. Can you clarify this.
Thanks
ANSWER: This is a very strange question. I really do not know how in the world someone can say the Fed did not create cash but debt. The entire theory of QE was to increase the money supply in circulation by purchasing government bonds. That would then inject cash into the system since the Fed does not and cannot create debt for it has no such borrowing authority. If they are saying that the debt still increased because Congress always spends more each year, that is irrelevant and cannot be attributed to the Fed creating debt. Then to say hoarding does not take place or is irrelevant is just unbelievable. I do not understand the reasoning.
The Feb bought in government bonds. The banks sold their bond holdings to the Fed and then complained they would have no place to park their cash. They lobbied the Fed to pay 0.25% interest on excess cash parked at the Fed beyond their required reserves. The Fed accommodated the banks defeating the entire theory of QE which is in part why it did not create inflation; the banks never lent the money out parking (hoarding) it at the Fed instead. Here is a chart of the Fed’s facility they created to satisfy the banks. It stands at about $2.4 trillion. The banks HOARDED the cash injected by the Fed and did not lend it out. The Fed has the power to create money known as the elastic money supply, but it does not create debt. There were no excess reserves before QE. Instead of stimulating the economy, the banks themselves have hoarded the cash and not lent it into the economy.
Then corporations also HOARDED cash to such a point they have engaged in a massive buy-backs of their shares. This too is counter-trend to the entire idea of “stimulus.” Corporations reducing shares and handing back cash is deflationary reducing assets.
Now let’s mix into this madness Europe. Why is Draghai unable to create inflation in Europe with his outrageous QE program and negative interest rates? The answer is very simple. There is no real confidence in Europe to borrow money to start any business. So what are the banks doing there? They are shipping money over to their US branch which must be part of the Fed system and as such they then park the money at the Fed and collect 0.25%. When rates are negative, they have a great spread and no risk. This is not me making up stuff or speculating. I have spoken with banks in Europe directly.
So normally I would not bother to answer such a frivolous question. This should be as simple as black and white. This is exactly what Bill Gross is hoping for that the Fed will once again exchange bonds for cash and thus place a bid underneath the market that will support bonds. There are disagreements behind the curtain and it is not entirely certain the Fed would attempt something they themselves now realize failed. They just lucked out that the US economy is in far better shape than Europe. This is why Yellen met at the White House and has kept saying that interest rates have to be normalized. The central banks are trapped. When the economy turns down starting next year more aggressively, she knows that creating more “helicopter money” by this QE program will not work. The very first thing she MUST do is shut down the excessive reserve facility allowing worldwide banks parking money at the Fed. Only doing that will the banks be force to actually “stimulate” by lending money to real live people to create something. That seems to not be old-school.
Thanks to Goldman Sachs, you took an investment bank and allowed it to change the entire banking system from Relationship Banking transforming it into Transactional Banks. So now, normal banks think the way to do business is not to lend to real live people, but lend the money and then resell it to someone else. They have altered the face of banking forever. (I also sat on the board of a bank 30 years ago when large loans would be presented to the board and that was our decision to lend or not to that customer. Those days are gone).









ANSWER: Even now, investigations into DNA will tell you what your traits are and what disease you will develop. Everything is determined by a predetermination which is coded within the fabric of the Universe. Nothing can be purely random. If that were the case, then what is there to stop our planet from suddenly revolving around Jupiter? We confuse events by focusing on the actors. The press attributes so much to Trump, but fail to understand that the people are selecting Trump and Bernie not because of them personally, but because they are angry at the system. As long as others and the press personalize things and try to attack Trump for something he has said, they completely miss the point.






I should point out that these fundamentals tend to apply only to the investing class. I remember 1981 when interest rates reached their peak. My mother and her sister went out and bought bank CDs at 20% for 10 years. They did not ask me. They made the decision on their own and said they would never see that much interest again. They are countless others changes the trend and made that peak in the Public Wave 1981.35. This class of people act out of common sense and do not listen to the fundamentals applied in the investing class. This is the real group of people who are the movers & shakers. The rest of us are trying to figure out what they are doing. Keep in mind that within the investing class, they always try to assign some fundamental to explain something. Everyone wants to know WHY. I named by debut report on the ECM back in 1979 – “WHY”.



