Marc Faber Sees Further Downside

There's plenty of room for the stock market to decline, noted bear Marc Faber said Thursday on CNBC. "Yes, I see further downside," said the editor of "The Gloom Boom & Doom Report."

However, Faber said that there were plenty of reasons for stocks to head lower other than what the Federal Reserve was doing in terms of quantitative easing. "I think the markets are worried about something else," he said on "Fast Money."

Faber noted that interest rates have been rising for a year, pointing to the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond and the 10-year U.S. Treasury note bottoming out in July. "So, we've been in an uptrend in interest rates," he added. But that wasn't the whole bear case. "The Chinese economy is much weaker than the official statistics suggest," Faber said.

"My view would be that at the present time, the Chinese economy is growing at something like 4 percent per annum, and without huge credit expansion there would probably be no growth at all."

Other emerging market economies were also poised for poor growth, he added. The outlook for gold and other metals were not great, either.

"Technically, commodities look horrible," Faber said, adding that for precious metals "some technical factiors would suggest that we're approaching at least an intermediate low." Read more >>

Stock exodus continues as investors yank $5.1 billion out

The stock market keeps going up, and investors keep cashing out. Mutual fund investors pulled $5.1 billion out of U.S. stock mutual funds for the week ended Sept. 26. The prior week, investors removed $4.8 billion from these funds, according to data from the Investment Company Institute.

The exodus from the stock market has picked up speed since the Federal Reserve announced another round of quantitative easing, or QE3. By buying more bonds, the Federal Reserve is hoping to push investors into riskier investments like stocks. This has succeeded on one front by boosting stock prices, but investors continue to flee the stock market.

All three major stock indexes have seen double-digit growth this year, and the S&P 500 (SPX) has gained 16%. The total 2012 outflow from U.S. mutual funds is roughly $93 billion. By comparison, those funds lost around $67 billion during the first nine months of 2010, and $83 billion during the first nine months of 2011. Read more >>

The Trouble with Printing Money

For a while now, I have been expecting a coordinated, global central bank action that would seek to print more money out of thin air, or "QE" (quantitative easing), as it is now called.  Now we have two of the most important central banks, that of the U.S. (the Federal Reserve) and in Europe (the ECB) having committed to open-ended, limitless QE.

In Part I of this report, we analyze the actions themselves, and then in Part II we discuss the implications to individuals and those with responsibilities to manage money.

The most recent announcement came from the Fed, and it had these features:

The creation of $40 billion a month out of thin air to purchase agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

The continuation of Operation Twist, which uses short-term Treasury bills and notes on its books to purchase long-term Treasury paper (that's 10- and 30- year bonds).

When MBS payments come in – the Fed holds over $840 billion dollars of those – they will buy still more MBS paper ('rolling' the payments into new MBS, as it were).

Taken together, the Fed will expand its balance sheet holdings of long-term assets (i.e., "debt") by ~$85 billion per month through the end of the year...but wait!  There's more...

This time, unlike the prior two QE efforts, the actions will be taken without any pre-defined limit.  
QE will continue until the labor market improves "substantially," whatever that means.  But wait...there's even more!

If deemed necessary, the Fed will "purchase additional assets" and "employ other policy tools."

As if all that weren't enough, for good measure, the Fed committed to a six-month extension of the 0.0% to 0.25% target range for the Fed Funds rate until at least mid 2015.

Read more >>

1.3 Million People Fall Off Extended Benefits In Past Year

One month of positive economic surprises since the last FOMC may be all we get, now that a "majority" of FOMC members suddenly need a rapid deterioration in economic data to usher in the NEWER, MORE OPEN-ENDED QE.

Initial claims was happy to comply: after posting several weeks in a row of "beats", claims has finally resumed "missing", as well as rising, posting an increase from last week's upward revised 368K print to 372K this week, worse than the expected improvement to 365K, and to a one month high. And with continuing claims missing too, the real story continues to be the steep fall off in those on extended benefits and EUC, which declined by a total of 48K in the past week, and down by about half a million in the last few months, and lower by 1.3 million in the past year.

This is 1.3 million fewer consumers who can recycle Uncle Sam's dole back into the economy and iGadgets. The question is whether this minimal miss is enough to justify the FOMC doves' fears the much more QE is needed. Read more >>

Central Bank Money-Printing: $6 Trillion and Counting

Many more years of money printing from the world's big four central banks now looks destined to add to the $6 trillion already created since 2008 and may transform the relationship between the once fiercely-independent banks and governments. As rich economies sink deeper into a slough of debt after yet another wave of euro financial and banking stress and U.S. hiring hesitancy, everyone is looking back to the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Japan to stabilize the situation once more.

What's for sure is that quantitative easing , whereby the "Big Four" central banks have for four years effectively created new money by expanding their balance sheets and buying mostly government bonds from their banks, is back on the agenda for all their upcoming policy meetings. Government credit cards are all but maxed out and commercial banks' persistent instability, existential fears and reluctance to lend means the explosion of newly minted cash has yet to spark the broad money supply growth needed to generate more goods and services.

In other words, electronic money creation to date - whether directly through bond buying in the United States or Britain or in a more oblique form of cheap long-term lending by the ECB - is not even replacing what commercial banks are removing by shoring up their own balance sheets and winding down loan books. Global investors appear convinced more QE is in the pipe. Read more >>

Hyperinflation Watch – Numbers Don’t Lie

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeFor several months I have been warning that hyperinflation of the US dollar is looming. The ominous signs of this impending currency train-wreck are becoming increasingly clear.

For example, crude oil is threatening to break above $90 per barrel. Copper has broken through $4 per pound to a record high price. The prices of many other commodities are also in uptrends. These commodities are not in short supply. There is no shortage of oil or copper. Rather, these high prices are the result of too much money printing, which if not quickly stopped by returning to a sound money policy will ultimately lead to hyperinflation.

Last week another important part of the hyperinflation puzzle fell into place. Long-term interest rates surged, continuing their sharp upward path that began two months ago. The 10-year T-note during this two month period has risen from 2.4% to end last week over 3.2%, a remarkable and therefore telling jump.

This rise in long-term rates lays bare the flawed logic of the Federal Reserve’s newly announced $600 billion so-called “Quantitative Easing” program supposedly designed to help the economy. This new round of money printing is not going to help the economy, which has been hollowed out by years of debt financed consumption along with too little savings and production. This money printing is serving only one purpose. This central bank trickery is providing the federal government with all the dollars it wants to spend.

So despite the fact the Fed will be purchasing $600 billion of US government debt instruments, T-bond and T-note yields are climbing, a clear sign that investors are rushing to sell their US government paper. Why? Because they know the purchasing power of the dollar is being debased by QE, and more importantly, will continue being debased. More...

A Quick Glance At Real World Inflation

The Casey Report provides a useful glance at the real inflation currently ravaging items that are actually purchased by Americans, not those captured by the Fed's BLS statistics: "On average, our basic food costs have increased by an incredible 48% over the last year (measured by wheat, corn, oats, and canola prices). From the price at the pump to heating your stove, energy costs are up 23% on average (heating oil, gasoline, natural gas). A little protein at dinner is now 39% higher (beef and pork), and your morning cup of coffee with a little sugar has risen by 36% since last October." Of course, the ongoing deflation in items purchases requiring leverage will continue to skew the CPI so far south to make all those who bought 5 Year TIPS yesterday at negative yields end up losing money on the transaction. More...

Greece bailout means QE to infinity; Gold to $1650

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Greece will fail and be rescued is all that is discussed in the financial world. Here is the real skinny:

1. Greece getting bailed out means QE (printing of money) to infinity. That means gold would rise from here to $1650 by January of 2011, or as Martin Armstrong said, by June of 2011. The dollar would fall. Equities and commodities would rise.

2. Greece getting flushed means that would enrich the CDS OTC derivative tool. Immediately the next target currencies will be attacked by this tool. Currencies will fall like dominoes. At first the dollar will strengthen, equities will fall and gold will go lower. However, soon the recognition will come that a disaster has occurred that is more serious than the Lehman flushing. Confidence in currencies will fall everywhere. Gold will then rise not to $1650 by the same time in 2011 but to $5000 and perhaps beyond.

Either way both paved the road to a single virtual reserve currency and a single Central Bank (IMF) of Central Banks.

If Greece is bailed out it will take longer for the establishment of the single virtual reserve currency. If Greece is flushed it will happen so fast you will lose your breathe.

Either way I see gold as the only reliable fundamentally correct safe harbor. Gold will play a part at a very high price with the single virtual reserve currency in order to keep gold from being a competitor with it.

Gold’s role will be in the form of the Federal Reserve Gold Certificate Ratio, not tied to the dollar, but rather tied to the single virtual reserve currency in a ratio to a measure of world liquidity. There will be no interest rate automaticity to the new form for gold’s role in a monetary system. It will follow the many articles I have written on the FRGCR but not tied to the dollar but rather the single virtual reserve currency.

Gold will not be fixed or convertible but will trade within a market as a close band of the price gold is trading at when the single virtual reserve currency is created and will lend to this construct some real validity.

I do not favor any of this, but it will occur.

There is no other possibility to this unprecedented calamity at hand.

Respectfully,
Jim