Jim Rickards: Here’s Where The Next Financial Crisis Starts

We know that we’re overdue for a financial crisis, and aside from when will it happen, there is the question of where will it start? Here’s where… 

by Jim Rickards via Daily Reckoning

The case for a pending financial collapse is well grounded. Financial crises occur on a regular basis including 1987, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2007-08. That averages out to about once every five years for the past thirty years. There has not been a financial crisis for ten years so the world is overdue. It’s also the case that each crisis is bigger than the one before and requires more intervention by the central banks.

The reason has to do with the system scale. In complex dynamic systems such as capital markets, risk is an exponential function of system scale. Increasing market scale correlates with exponentially larger market collapses.

This means a market panic far larger than the Panic of 2008.

Today, systemic risk is more dangerous than ever because the entire system is larger than before. Due to central bank intervention, total global debt has increased by about $150 trillion over the past 15 years. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, have a larger percentage of the total assets of the banking system and have much larger derivatives books.

Each credit and liquidity crisis starts out differently and ends up the same. Each crisis begins with distress in a particular overborrowed sector and then spreads from sector to sector until the whole world is screaming, “I want my money back!”

First, one asset class has a surprise drop. The leveraged investors sell the sinking asset, but soon the asset is unwanted by anyone. Margin calls roll in. Investors then sell good assets to raise cash to meet the margin calls. This spreads the panic to banks and dealers who were not originally involved with the weak asset.

Soon the contagion spreads to all banks and assets, as everyone wants their money back all at once. Banks begin to fail, panic spreads and finally central banks step in to separate winners and losers and re-liquefy the system for the benefit of the winners.

Typically, small investors (and some bankrupt banks) get hurt the worst while the big banks get bailed out and live to fight another day.

That much panics have in common. What varies in financial panics is not how they end but how they begin. The 1987 crash started with computerized trading. The 1994 panic began in Mexico. The 1997–98 panic started in Asian emerging markets but soon spread to Russia and the big banks. The 2000 crash began with dot-coms. The 2008 panic was triggered by defaults in subprime mortgages.

The problem is that regulators are like generals fighting the last war. In 2008, the global financial crisis started in the U.S. mortgage market and spread quickly to the overleveraged banking sector.

Since then, mortgage lending standards have been tightened considerably and bank capital requirements have been raised steeply. Banks and mortgage lenders may be safer today, but the system is not. Risk has simply shifted.

What will trigger the next panic?

Prominent economist Carmen Reinhart says the place to watch is U.S. high-yield debt, aka “junk bonds.”

I’ve also raised the same argument. We’re facing a devastating wave of junk bond defaults. The next financial collapse will quite possibly come from junk bonds.

Let’s unpack this…

Since the great financial crisis, extremely low interest rates allowed the total number of highly speculative corporate bonds, or “junk bonds,” to rise about 60% — a record high. Many businesses became extremely leveraged as a result. Estimates put the total amount of junk bonds outstanding at about $3.7 trillion.

The danger is that when the next downturn comes, many corporations will be unable to service their debt. Defaults will spread throughout the system like a deadly contagion, and the damage will be enormous.

This is from a report by Mariarosa Verde, Moody’s senior credit officer:

This extended period of benign credit conditions has helped many weak, highly leveraged companies to avoid default… A number of very weak issuers are living on borrowed time while benign conditions last… These companies are poised to default when credit conditions eventually become more difficult… The record number of highly leveraged companies has set the stage for a particularly large wave of defaults when the next period of broad economic stress eventually arrives.

If default rates are only 10% — a conservative assumption — this corporate debt fiasco will be at least six times larger than the subprime losses in 2007-08.

Many investors will be caught completely unprepared. Once the tsunami hits, no one will be spared. The stock market is going to collapse in the face of rising credit losses and tightening credit conditions.

But corporate debt is not the only dagger hanging over the economy. Credit conditions have already begun to affect the real economy. Student loan losses are also skyrocketing. Losses are also soaring on subprime auto loans, which has put a lid on new car sales. As these losses ripple through the economy, mortgages and credit cards will be the next to feel the pinch.

Have we already seen the beginning of the next crisis? No one knows for sure, but the time to prepare is now. Once the market falls apart, it’ll be too late to act.

That’s why the time to buy gold is now, while it’s cheap. When you need it most, once the crisis hits, it’ll cost a fortune.

Both the panics of 1998 and 2008 began over a year before they reached the level of an acute global liquidity crisis.

Investors has ample time to reduce risky positions, increase cash and gold allocations and move to the sidelines until the crisis abated. At that point there were bargains galore for those with cash.

An investor with cash in 2008 could have preserved wealth during the crisis and nearly quadrupled his money since then by buying the Dow Jones index at 6,550 (even with the recent turmoil, today it’s still around 23,600).

Relatively few investors did this. Instead they suffered from “fear of missing out” as markets rose until the panic began. They persisted in the mistaken belief that they could “get out in time” if markets reversed, not realizing that reversals happen much faster than rallies. They held onto losing positions hoping they would “come back” (they did after 10 years) and so on.

Simple behavioral biases stand in the way of doing the right thing almost every time.

For now, it’s not clear which way things will break next. Volatility is back and markets are still in a precarious position. Fed chairman Jay Powell threw markets a bone last Friday when he basically said all rate hikes are off until further notice and that he’s willing to scale back QT “if needed.” Markets have naturally rallied since Powell’s remarks.

If you still need proof that today’s rigged markets still require support from the Fed, here it is. But it’s far from clear the next crisis can be avoided at this point.

You don’t want to be heavily exposed to these markets. It’s far better to get out too early than too late. You should not be the last to be get ready. Start now to decrease equity allocations and increase your allocations to cash and gold so you can weather the coming storm.

Preparation means 10% percent of your investible assets in gold or silver and another 30% in cash. That allocation will preserve wealth and provide dry powder for bottom-fishing in the crisis to come.

When Will The Everything Bubble Finally Pop?

“No matter how much manipulation exists in the market…If the Fed continues on its current path the next stock crash would begin around…”

by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market

Much like the laws of physics, there are certain laws of economics that remain constant no matter how much manipulation exists in the markets. Expansion inevitably leads to contraction, and that which goes up must eventually come down. Central banks understand this reality very well; they have spent over a century trying to exploit those laws to their own advantage.

A common misconception among people new to alternative economics is the idea that central banks only seek to keep the economy afloat, or keep it expanding forever. In reality, these institutions and the money elites behind them artificially inflate financial bubbles only to deliberately implode them at opportunistic moments.

As I have outlined in numerous articles, every economic bubble and subsequent crash since 1914 can be linked to the policy actions of central bankers. Sometimes they even admit to culpability (to a point), as Ben Bernanke did on the Great Depression and as Alan Greenspan did on the 2008 credit crisis. You can read more about this in my article ‘The Federal Reserve Is A Saboteur – And The “Experts” Are Oblivious.’

Generally, central bankers and international bankers mislead the public into believing that the crashes they are responsible for were caused “by mistake.” They rarely if ever mention the fact that they often use these crises as a means to consolidate control over assets, resources and governments while the masses are distracted by their own financial survival. Centralization is the name of the game. It is certainly no mistake that after every economic implosion the wealth gapbetween the top 0.01% and the rest of humanity widens exponentially.

Yet another crash is being weaponized by the banks, and this time I believe the motivations behind it are rather different. Or at least the goals are supercharged.

The next phase of the financial elite’s plans for centralization involve a complete restructuring of the global monetary climate, something Christine Lagarde of the IMF has often referred to as the great “economic reset.” The term “economic reset” is more likely code for “economic collapse,” one epic enough to facilitate a completely new monetary framework with a new global reserve currency. A historically unprecedented economic reset would require a historically unprecedented financial bubble, which is exactly what we have today.

The ‘Everything Bubble’ as many alternative analysts are calling it is built upon multiple crumbling pillars. Here they are in no particular order:

Central Bank Stimulus

Bailouts and QE measures on the part of central banks have been used as a stopgap since the 2008 crash to prevent market reversals whenever they appear. Most of all, central banks have been particularly obsessed with keeping stocks in a perpetual bull run, which Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan admitted was part of maintaining a certain positive “psychology” within the public. In other words, the purpose of stimulus measures was to give the masses a false sense of security, not heal the real economy.

The other primary initiative behind stimulus was to prop up debt poisoned governments and corporations around the world. However, the intention was not necessarily to help these institutions climb out of the red. No, instead, the goal was to keep them semi-solvent long enough for them to take on EVEN MORE debt, to the point that when they do collapse the aftermath will be so devastating that recovery would be impossible.

The timing of the central bank tapering of QE should be treated as an alarm on the crash of the everything bubble. With the Federal Reserve cutting off QE measures, the Bank of Japan using “stealth tapering,” and the European Central Bank warning of high inflation and the need for tapering, it is clear that the era of easy money is almost over. When the easy money is gone, the crash is near.

Stock Buybacks

Using steady loans from the Federal Reserve as well as Trump’s tax cut, stock markets have been inflated beyond all reason by corporations implementing the equities manipulation scheme of stock buybacks. By artificially reducing the number of stock shares on the market, companies can increase the “value” of the existing shares and fuel a bull market rally. This rally has nothing to do with actual wealth creation, of course. It is a game of phantom wealth and inflated numbers.

Stocks in particular will require ever more debt on the part of corporations along with never-ending near zero interest rates in order to keep the farce going. The central bankers, though, have other plans.

Near Zero Interest Rates

Low interest rates should be considered a part of the stimulus model, but I’m setting them separately because they represent a special kind of market manipulation. The option for corporate entities to borrow from the Fed at almost no cost has done little to improve the effects of the 2008 credit crisis. In fact, corporate debt levels are now near all-time highs not seen since the last crash. This time, however, dependency on low cost loans has conjured a monstrous addiction within the business cycle. Any increase in interest rates will trigger painful withdrawals.

Central banks around the world are now increasing that pain as they hike rates well beyond what many analysts were expecting a few years ago. Corporate debt in particular is highly vulnerable to this new tightening policy. Without low rates, corporations can no longer afford to hold the debts they have, let alone take on more debt in a futile attempt to keep equities propped up.

Central banks argue that “inflation” is the excuse for hiking interest rates at this time. True inflation has been well above Fed targets for years, and the banking elites showed no care whatsoever. I suspect that the real reason is that the next phase of the reset is near, and a little chaos is needed.

For decades, the Fed has kept the neutral rate of interest well below the rate of inflation. For the first time in at least 30 years, the Fed under Jerome Powell is seeking to increase neutral rates to make them equal to the pace of inflation (official inflation). The Fed has approximately two to three more rate hikes (including the September rate hike) to reach the pace of inflation. I believe this is our window on the next crash; the moment at which the Fed completely reverses its past policy of artificial support for the economy.

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

I have written at great length about the correlation between the Fed’s balance sheet and equities and I will not go into great detail here.  Simply put, with each increase in the balance sheet over the past decade, stocks rallied in tandem. As the Fed cuts assets, stocks enter volatility. A divergence has occurred the past two months between the Fed balance sheet and stocks, but I believe this is temporary.

Corporate buybacks are at all-time highs in 2018, and it’s obvious that this is meant to offset the Fed’s waning support for the markets. As interest rates increase and the Trump tax cut dwindles, though, buybacks will die.

If we consider the possibility that the Fed’s assets also include stock shares as many suspect, then the Fed asset dumps would also INCREASE the number of existing shares on the market and sabotage corporate efforts to reduce shares through stock buybacks. I predict stocks will once again converge with the falling Fed balance sheet by the end of this year and that they will continue to drop precipitously through the last quarter of 2018 and the rest of 2019.

Timing Is Everything

Central banks need cover before they can launch their “global reset,” and what better cover than a massive international trade war? Trump’s trade war is an excellent distraction which can be used as a rationale for every negative consequence of the central banks pulling the plug on stimulus life support. Meaning, the disasters the central bankers cause through tightening into a weak economic environment can be blamed on Trump and the trade conflict.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that almost every escalation in the trade war happens to take place at the same time as major central bank announcements on rate hikes and balance sheet cuts. The latest trade war salvo of $200 billion in tariffs against China is leading to a Chinese announcement on retaliation — all of this taking place on the exact week of the Fed’s September meeting which is expected to result in yet another rate hike and expanded balance sheet cuts.

The Fed’s tightening policies have resulted in a severe reaction by emerging markets which are already crashing and have diverged greatly from U.S. markets. American stocks will not escape the same fate.

The Fed’s neutral rate efforts suggest a turning point in late 2018 to early 2019. Balance sheet cuts are expected to increase at this time, which would also expedite a crash in existing market assets. The only question is how long can corporations sustain stock buybacks until their own debt burdens crush their efforts? With such companies highly leveraged, interest rates will determine the length of their resolve. I believe two more hikes will be their limit.

If the Fed continues on its current path the next stock crash would begin around December 2018 into the first quarter of 2019. After that, other sectors of the economy, already highly unstable, will break down through 2019 and 2020.

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