Author Archives
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Doug Noland: The New Massive
We’re drifting ever deeper into dangerous territory. The economy sopped up last year’s $3.1 TN federal deficit like water into a dry sponge. The conventional narrative holds that the pre-COVID economy was robust and healthy. It was neither.
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Doug Noland’s: Moral Hazard Pinnacle (infinite money printing announced)
At an event sponsored by the Institute of International Finance, Randal Quarles offered an admission: “It may be that there is a simple macro fact that the Treasury market, being so much larger than it was even a few years ago, much larger than it was a decade ago, and now really much larger than it was even a few years ago, that the sheer volume there may have outpaced the ability of the private-market infrastructure to kind of support stress of any sort there. …Will there be some indefinite need for the Fed to provide — not as a way of supporting the issuance of Treasuries, but as a way of supporting a functioning market in Treasuries — to participate as a purchaser for some period of time.”
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Doug Noland: Weird
The President is diagnosed with COVID-19, with rapidly worsening symptoms prompting a Friday evening Marine One flight to Walter Reed Medical Center. By Monday, he is back to the White House apparently feeling spryer than when he was a man… Read More ›
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TSP Smart: The Stock Market’s Tinderbox
The November 3rd election could be the most heavily hedged-against event in market history. Moreover, the most hedged event comes in the most speculative of market backdrops – which follows history’s greatest expansion of central bank liquidity. Tinderbox.
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TSP Smart: “The numbers are just monstrous”
The numbers are just monstrous. The Fed’s own data illuminate the historic Monetary Disorder that today runs wild. In short, finance has completely run amuck, with the data corroborating the super cycle “end game” thesis.
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Doug Noland: Revisiting “Coin in the Fuse Box”
It’s reasonable to ask, “Where does it all end?” – with an equally reasonable answer, “with market dislocation and a crash”. All those Coins in the Fuse Box in 1929 contributed directly to the house collapsing in flames.
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Doug Noland: State-Directed Credit Splurge
With 2020 GDP estimates in the 2.0 to 3.0% range, the divergence between Chinese Credit and economic output is unprecedented. China’s “Terminal Phase” excess – including rapid acceleration of late-cycle loans of deteriorating quality – is unparalleled in terms of both degree and duration.
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Doug Noland: Summer of 2020
QE fundamentally changed finance. What commenced at the Federal Reserve with a post-mortgage finance Bubble, $1 TN Treasury buying operation morphed into open-ended purchases of Treasuries, MBS, corporate bonds and even corporate ETFs holding high-yield “junk” bonds. Markets assume it’s only a matter of time before the Federal Reserve adds equities to its buy list.
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Doug Noland: It’s About Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Why is it reasonable to believe that monetary policy specifically aiming to inflate securities markets will somehow simultaneously ensure a corresponding modest increase in consumer prices? It’s not.
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Doug Noland: The Short History of Extreme Monetary Policy
“Consider the internet frenzy 20 years ago. Back then, large speculators, mostly hedge funds, were net short on S&P 500 futures in all but five weeks in 1998 and 1999. Those mostly losing bets were completely squeezed out in 2000. That’s when the crash came.”