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If you begin gaming out major bank resolutions and speculative attacks on your currency when it is unspoken common knowledge that your banks are insolvent and your currency too high, then they risk becoming self-fulfilling prophesies.
What we have, seems to me, is ideologically driven learned helplessness. It was learned so as to facilitate looting by the elites and now is retained to justify even vaster looting in the name of "financial stability". But it is not and cannot provide stability. Until and unless that mindset is broken the crises are going to be getting worse and worse and more and more frequent.
As long as fraudster banksters are considered too big to prosecute the con continues to run. The longer it runs the bigger the final toll. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
If you begin gaming out major bank resolutions and speculative attacks on your currency when it is unspoken common knowledge that your banks are insolvent and your currency too high, then they risk becoming self-fulfilling prophesies. This is a rationale for keeping one's head in the sand.
same syndrome as nuclear power! if we cost for all the eventualities it would be obvious why it's suicidally stupid, so it's extend'n'pretend there too.
fuku what? 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
It's just that that's not the financial regulator's job.
But it seems the most basic reason they will not do this is not one of feasibility, but one of where the loyalties lie. In the case of the Fed, it should be taken down, Fed chairmen, past and present, should be prosecuted and the various "cash for trash" repos should be handed back to those from who they came for whatever assets those institutions possess. There would be pain, but there would then be the possibility of healing. All there is now is the likelihood of the host society being killed by the parasitical financial sector.
There is no justification for the continued existence of the Fed in its current form. The con must end and the sooner the better. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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Their currencies can only be "attacked" if they make the mistake of trying to overvalue them ~ which is why the Chinese currency is presently immune to speculative attack and if they make prudent use of the Singapore basket peg, can remain immune to speculative attack. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
If we stay on the present track, its overvalued. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The administration actions regarding the long term value of the dollar are, of course, their actions with respect to promoting or discouraging improved productivity. So the Bush administration would have to be judged an aggressive pursuer of a "weak" dollar, via their pursuit of a banana republic economy, while the Obama administration might be judged as a weak pursuer of a "strong" dollar, but quite easily diverted form that policy. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
``When I was Secretary of the Treasury I was not supposed to say anything but `strong dollar, strong dollar,''' O'Neill said today. ``I argued then and would argue now that the idea of a strong dollar policy is a vacuous notion.'' .... ``The markets actually have control over those relationships. When people say strong dollar, if they don't mean that `we believe intervention can work and we're prepared to intervene,' then `strong dollar' is ridiculous.''
....
``The markets actually have control over those relationships. When people say strong dollar, if they don't mean that `we believe intervention can work and we're prepared to intervene,' then `strong dollar' is ridiculous.''
It may have been O'Neill who defined "Strong Dollar" as "Stocks up, bonds up, dollar up and gold down" and what ever it takes to accomplish that. I think the quote is somewhere in my Gibson's Paradox diary. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Do you remember the "Strong Dollar Policy," as enunciated by President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin? It turns out that this was nothing more than a scheme by which to have the best of all possible worlds: Stock market? UP! Interest rates? DOWN! Bond prices? UP! Dollar? UP! Gold? DOWN! How was this accomplished?
Time will tell. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Greenspan took care of keeping interest rates low. This bred a series of asset bubbles, culminating in the real estate bubble which began deflating in 2007
No, no, no, no.
Relaxation of lending standards and margin requirements make bubbles. Low interest rates have nothing to do with it. You get bubbles at 7 % rates. You get bubbles at 3 % rates. You get bubbles at 0 % rates. Hell, the broker's rate touched 12 % for a while during the spring of 1929. When you have that sort of short-term returns to speculative activity, fiddling with the rediscount rate barely amounts to a rounding error.
Yes, you can kill a debt bubble by jacking up interest rates, in the same way that you can kill inflation by jacking up interest rates: By killing your economy so dead that nobody has the confidence required for price increases or borrowing. That is the stupid way to do it.
The smart way to do it is by jacking up margin requirements, because that leaves interest rates unchanged for viable borrowers and sends them through the roof for Ponzi scams.
The "low interest rates lead to bubbles" narrative is a right-wing narrative. You do not want to push that. The reality-based narrative is "low margin requirements lead to bubbles."
Greenspan fueled the bubble by cheerleading on the bubble, by lobbying against all meaningful regulatory reform, by failing to police the Fed's member banks. He did not fuel the bubble by not killing the American economy completely dead in 2003, any more than convenience store clerks encourage robberies by not having capsules of sarin gas under the counter.
It was not until 2009 that the precious metals markets took off -- after too many people caught on to the manipulation of precious metal prices and the vulnerabilities this created, especially in the silver market, where, allegedly, many times the world total availability of silver bullion has been sold short, setting the stage for a short squeeze.
What is it with the goldbuggery? Who cares about the precious metal market? Precious metals don't have nearly enough industrial applications to be critical to the actual production of goods and services.
Everybody who's been paying attention knows the stock markets and the precious metal markets are being played. But of all the places the compulsive gamblers who missed the Vegas exit and drove on to New York can get their fix, let it be the precious metal markets. They do far less damage there than when they're gambling with ForEx or rice futures.
Just please don't base public policy on their antics.
No, no, no, no. Relaxation of lending standards and margin requirements make bubbles. Low interest rates have nothing to do with it. You get bubbles at 7 % rates. You get bubbles at 3 % rates. You get bubbles at 0 % rates. Hell, the broker's rate touched 12 % for a while during the spring of 1929. When you have that sort of short-term returns to speculative activity, fiddling with the rediscount rate barely amounts to a rounding error.
What is it with the goldbuggery?
Think it comes down to:
Aluminium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although aluminium is the most abundant metallic element in the Earth's crust, it is never found in free, metallic form, and it was once considered a precious metal more valuable than gold. Napoleon III, Emperor of France, is reputed to have given a banquet where the most honoured guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold.[19][20] The Washington Monument was completed, with the 100 ounce (2.8 kg) aluminium capstone being put in place on December 6, 1884, in an elaborate dedication ceremony. It was the largest single piece of aluminium cast at the time, when aluminium was as expensive as silver.[21] Aluminium has been produced in commercial quantities for just over 100 years.
As to goldbuggery, I certainly do not recommend return to a gold standard. That would be a disaster. But I do strongly suspect that the price of precious metals has been strongly manipulated downwards for psychological impact on market participants and that, especially in the silver market, this has gotten out of control. It IS a very small market but, if some of the PM analysts are right about the size of the naked shorts, an unwind could do major damage to JP Morgan.
I missed most of the bull markets in stocks due to believing, not without reason, that the basics were bullshit. I think I have finally found a way to play bullshit to my advantage, especially in silver, where I am approaching a 200% gain since Aug. '09, so indulge me that, ok? There are risks, but doing nothing seems even riskier. After all, "Strong Dollar" doesn't buy much gas these days. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
What US actions, other than the relatively low interest rates, contributed to the Asian and Russian debt crises?
The important US actions were through policy influence on the IMF, the close ties between the latter and the US Treasury, and propaganda bombardment about the superiority of deregulated capitalism as an economic model. Economics is politics by other means
And that was surely an improvement over the drastic rates that prevailed in the early 90s and in the 80s. A case could be made that Greenspan didn't really turn malignant until "W" took office. But with the Clinton Administration running a budget surplus in 2000 a significant tightening by the Fed could reasonably be expected to burst the tech bubble, which may have been the intent. So Greenspan could more likely be accused of keeping policy too tight under Clinton.
Of course there was the ongoing deregulation of the financial sector and the policy direction of supporting sending manufacturing offshore that had been explicit in NAFTA but which showed up more strikingly with China. Perhaps, as you suggest, diplomatic pressure on various financial agreements was more important to the various '90s bubbles. On the home front refusing Brooksly Born the authority to regulate derivatives, for which she had been advocating for some time, which came to a head in May, 1998 and which was strenuously opposed by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, who were joined by in early May by Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the SEC.
Had she gotten the authority in early 1998 that would certainly have been blamed as THE cause of the LTCM collapse later that year and attempts likely would have been made to hang the Russian and Asian crises around her neck as well. Had she gotten the authority earlier, say in 1995, some of these crises may have been averted or mitigated, but we will never know.
Thanks for forcing me to look at the record regarding interest rates. Somewhere I had gotten a false impression of Greenspan's activities in the '90s. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
A case could be made that Greenspan didn't really turn malignant until "W" took office.
Oh no, 'Bubbles' Greenspan has always been a malignant little toad. Under Ronnie Raygun he pushed for higher payroll taxes and lower marginal taxes. Under Clinton he simultaneously helped block regulation of derivatives and did his best to strangle the recovery with his austerity nonsense. And under Bush the Lesser, he was cheerleading on bubbles and pushing for more deregulation.
He is, bar none, the worst chairman the Fed has ever had. And yes, that includes the Volker chairmanship that killed off half the US manufacturing base.
Which is why it's a little depressing to see him slimed for the one single sound policy decision he has ever made. It's such a target rich environment that there really should be no need for friendly fire.
Well, at least during the first five years of this century Greenspan actively encouraged a relaxation of lending standards in real estate.
Yes. Precisely. Go after him for that, not for his interest rate policy. There is nothing wrong with low interest rates. There is everything wrong with adjustable-rate mortgages and NINJA loans.
The Asian crisis didn't have much of anything to do with US policy - that was driven by the end of the Yen carry trade, a carry trade that had gotten started in the deflationary environment in the early '90s, which was caused by the bursting of the 1980s Japanese bubble, caused in turn by aggressive offshoring hollowing out the real value added by the Japanese economy.
The Russian crisis was caused by Timmy Geithner and the rape-and-run "transition" policies foisted on Russia during the '90s.
The Y2K bubble was certainly also encouraged by direct spending on infrastructure and rationalized as a prophylactic against Y2K bugs.
And the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the deregulation of the futures markets, and the (further) deregulation of mergers and acquisitions, and the lowering of the corporate tax rate.
But thanks for the comments about the feasibility of bubbles even with high interest rates. At this point that is an historical curiosity, living as we do at the lower bound of interest rate policy.
No, it's not, because unless you remember that bubble formation is independent of interest rates, you risk concluding that bubbles require low interest rates, and that high interest rates can kill bubbles before they kill the rest of the economy.
But I do strongly suspect that the price of precious metals has been strongly manipulated
Well, duh. The price of precious metals is nothing but manipulation. The principal commercial use of precious metals is as a component of Veblen goods - goods that are valuable (almost) exclusively because they are expensive. And even that is dwarfed by the transactions that are purely speculative in nature.
The gold bugs are just bitching that central banks are muscling in on their turf and manipulating the price down instead of up. Because that prevents said gold bugs from fleecing the suckers who go "ooh shiny" quite as hard as they could otherwise. Oh, central banks have no proper business playing that game. But of all the things central banks do that they have no business doing, that strikes me as by far the least harmful.
I think I have finally found a way to play bullshit to my advantage, especially in silver, where I am approaching a 200% gain since Aug. '09, so indulge me that, ok?
By all means, if you've found a way to make money in the precious metal markets, then don't let the fact that it's disconnected from any economic fundamentals discourage you. I like you better than the other croupiers at that particular casino, so I don't begrudge you the money or anything. I just don't see what it has to do with macroeconomics or currency policy.
what it has to do with macroeconomics
I think since it is a market where central and big banks play it is important to keep an eye on it. Like CDOs, it is not important in itself but if it gets out of hand you get banks losses, losses transfered to public debt, austerity, etc. By keeping an eye on it now, mounting the argument goes faster if/when it goes down the drain. So while not a gambler I appreciate ARGeezer's reporting. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Precious metals don't have nearly enough industrial applications to be critical to the actual production of goods and services.
I suspect that it is so mainly because they are precious which means that they have only been used where it is cost-effective despite the preciousness. So in another timeline they could have had much more applications.
Gold - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gold produces a deep, intense red color when used as a coloring agent in cranberry glass.
(Another of those little details left out of the orthodox liturgy by the initial assumptions in that box on page 3 that nobody reads.)
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