Inflation – Deflation – Interest Rates


inflation-deflations

QUESTION:

Is there a correlation between the GDP rate and interest rate ?
Best regards,

BL

ANSWER: No. What central bankers fail to take into consideration is that the interest rate is the OPPORTUNITY COST of money as reflected into the future. This is why interest rates naturally decline during a recession because of the future expectation of what money will buy when it returns. If inflation is say 10%, then lenders demand at least that much back plus a profit. Interest rates reflect the inflation rate (opportunity cost of money) plus a profit.

Deflation is when the purchasing value of money rises and tangible assets fall in value. This is also reflected in the drop of interest rates. Often, rates have gone negative for brief periods when people are parking money while expecting it to buy more. They are willing to pay to park their money just to know it will buy more tomorrow.

SDR – China – Dollar


imf-sdr

COMMENT: You are wrong. The SDR will destroy the dollar as of October 1st when they include China. You will see. China will sell all its US Treasurys and buy SDRs.

REPLY: Your very statement is totally absurd. The SDR is calculated simply by a basket of currencies including the dollar, yen, pound, and euro (see IMF calculation). So please explain to me, when the SDR is just a basket of currencies that have all declined against the dollar, just how the SDR could destroy the dollar when it is its largest component?

china-m

Here is a chart of the SDR against the dollar. It too has declined like the components of the yen, euro, and pound. Now let’s look at the Chinese yuan. This too has declined against the dollar. So I fail to see how the SDR will destroy the dollar without a magical recovery in Japan, China, Britain, and Brussels. The dollar has been rising against the yuan since 2013. So why would you sell all treasury bonds when they have made a fortune on the currency and swap into something that depreciates?

NKorea warns ready to attack South over ‘US military provocations’… ‘Wounded’ Obama mocked on TV…


If they do attack it will need to be before Obama is gone because they will not like a Trump counter attack!

Donald Trump and Mike Pence Economic Club New York – 11:30am Live Stream


Trump did well and speaking from an economic education I agree with his over all approach and I also believe it will work.

Jim Grant Rejects Rogoff’s “Curse Of Cash”, Warns “Government Wants To Control Your Money”


The FED is only interested today in supporting the federal government its original charter was to prevent bank runs by buying and selling commercial paper. FDR changed that and so today the FED tries to control the economy with interest rates and buying and selling government debt neither of these works at economic smoothing and so we have what we have a situation where the government thinks it can control the economy but actual has no way to do so. The discussion is to long for a blog post but it is a fact why else to we have under 2% growth +/- 1% interest and trillions of dollars in debt?

Draghi Cannot Admit He is Wrong


Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi cannot possibly admit that he is dead wrong in managing the European economy. This idea that continuing to lower rates will somehow inspire people to risk it all is just insane. This is even coming from Goldman Sachs, which means nothing for qualification. The people in the elitist banking group think that power makes everything and they believe the conspiracy theories, which shows that they are drunk on their own egos. Just because you are running the central bank does not mean you are all-powerful, and the utter failure of Mario Draghi is exposing that to the world.

The ECB’s entry into the corporate bond market has shown that Draghi is becoming desperate for he is buying bonds with junk ratings. It is one thing to buy good corporate paper, but he is buying the bottom of the barrel in hopes of fending off corporate failures. Draghi has even bought notes from troubled German carmaker Volkswagen AG.

Draghi’s first corporate bond purchases indeed made an impact, but one has to wonder how this will inspire growth rather than prevent failures. The ECB publicly said it would buy bonds from companies with a single investment-grade rating. Yet, people assumed the ECB would be buying the region’s highest-rated securities.

We are witnessing how governments collapse. We have unqualified people running things who are incapable of admitting to mistake and merely accelerate the same process.

Turkey Replaces 28 Elected Officials With Appointees


From Epoch Times ISTANBUL—Clashes erupted between police and protesters Sunday after Ankara announced it had replaced 28 elected municipal and district mayors in several predominantly Kurdish towns…

Source: Turkey Replaces 28 Elected Officials With Appointees

Demonize and Distract: Sanitizing Syria for the Masses  


From Counter Punch JASON HIRTHLER Summoning the Humanitarian Pretext The arch pragmatist Machiavelli once wrote that, “If you watch the ways of men, you will see that those who obtain great wealth …

Source: Demonize and Distract: Sanitizing Syria for the Masses  

Failed EU Design – The Great Divide West v East


EU Parliament

QUESTION: I saw you at your presentation in Dresden last year. Things in the East are rather different from the West in Europe. Do you have any comments on this great divide?

Thank you for coming to Dresden.

KMV

ANSWER: There is a great divide in Europe between East and West that is rarely, if ever, talked about. A tremendous disparity has emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Euroland is not one happy place. Indeed, some countries are members of all European integration levels (EU, Eurozone, Schengen), such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. This stands in contrast as other countries are members of the EU and of the Schengen area, but not the Eurozone such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Some others are just EU members, forming a second-class member status, including Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania as well as Britain even before BREXIT. There remains a reluctance to provide these countries with the privilege of the freedom of movement within Europe (Schengen area). To this chaos, we add the candidate states who were promised to be taken into consideration for immediate membership, but remain in political limbo such as Georgia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Consequently, we have a hodgepodge of combinations with varying degrees of integration that embed different rights from one member to another. This creates real inequalities of treatment within the Euroland experiment. Eurozone member countries (those who use the euro) try to appear lofty and superior. Romania was actually the first country to apply for EU membership back in 1995. Nonetheless, Bulgaria and Romania are at risk of being left on the other side of the new Euro Wall being constructed by Brussels. Such a development would politically exclude these two countries and leave the risk that the Balkan region could end back within the Russia sphere when the economy turns down harder.

This great divide between East and West is a critical issue that threatens the stability of the entire EU plan. The refugee crisis has agitated the situation as the Schengen agreement begins to crumble. Furthermore, within Western Europe Eurozone, the cultural differences remain and all the attempts to force the federalization upon them has failed as evidenced by BREXIT impacting separatist movements.

Then we have Central and Eastern Europe who are not one homogeneous culture and they are at a great disparity economically. Average wages in Central and Eastern Europe range between €350 in Bulgaria and about €1100 Slovenia, which is only on par with the poorest countries in Western Europe such as Greece and Portugal. Wages in Bulgaria are about €330, which is even less than the Chinese earn.

Therefore, the entire idea of federalizing Europe has utterly failed. Adopting a single currency becomes highly deflationary because of these great disparities.

Dow Down this Week with Hillary & Rate Hikes


djind-d-9-10-2016

We should see a new low this week in the share markets as concern over a rate hike hits the markets globally coming from the Fed and Hillary they have finally said on Sunday has pneumonia.

We will provide the timing arrays for this week on the Private Blog for client eyes only.