As someone who has been warning heavily about dangerous bubbles in U.S. corporate bonds and stocks, people often ask me how and when I foresee these bubbles bursting. Here’s what I wrote a few months ago:
To put it simply, the U.S. corporate debt bubble will likely burst due to tightening monetary conditions, including rising interest rates. Loose monetary conditions are what created the corporate debt bubble in the first place, so the ending of those conditions will end the corporate debt bubble. Falling corporate bond prices and higher corporate bond yields will cause stock buybacks to come to a screeching halt, which will also pop the stock market bubble, creating a downward spiral. There are extreme consequences from central bank market-meddling and we are about to learn this lesson once again.
Interestingly, Zero Hedge tweeted a chart today of the LQD iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF saying that it was “about to break 7 year support: below it, the buybacks end.” That chart resonated with me, because it echos my warnings from a few months ago. I decided to recreate this chart with my own commentary on it. The 110 to 115 support zone is the key line in the sand to watch. If LQD closes below this zone in a convincing manner, it would likely foreshadow an even more powerful bond and stock market bust ahead.
Thanks to ultra-low corporate bond yields, U.S. corporations have engaged in a borrowing binge since the Global Financial Crisis. Total outstanding non-financial U.S. corporate debt is up by an incredible $2.5 trillion or 40 percent since its 2008 peak, which was already a precariously high level to begin with.
U.S. corporate debt is now at an all-time high of over 45% of GDP, which is even worse than the levels reached during the dot-com bubble and U.S. housing and credit bubble:
Please watch my presentations about the U.S. corporate debt bubble and stock market bubble to learn more:
Billionaire fund manager Jeff Gundlach shares similar concerns as me, saying “The corporate bond market is going to get much worse when the next recession comes. It’s not worth trying to wait for that last ounce of return, or extra yield from the corporate bond market.” Another billionaire investor, Paul Tudor Jones, put out a warning this week, saying “it is in the corporate bond market where the first signs of trouble will emerge.” GE’s terrifying recent credit meltdown may be the initial pinprick for the corporate debt bubble, but make no mistake – it is not an isolated incident. GE may be the equivalent to Bear Stearns in 2007 and 2008 – just one of the first of many casualties.
Anyone who thinks that the Fed can distort the credit markets for so long without terrible consequences is extremely naive and will be taught a lesson in the days to come.
The Fed Will Continue To Tighten Until Everything Breaks
The Fed will continue on its current course no matter the cost, because there is a greater strategy in play. Here are the details…
by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market
Around three years ago, in September 2015, I wrote an article titled ‘The Real Reasons Why The Fed Will Hike Interest Rates‘ in which I predicted that the Federal Reserve, in the face of criticism, would soon pursue a program of interest rate hikes into economic weakness. I argued that this plan would be somewhat similar to what the Fed did in the early 1930’s; an action that prolonged the Great Depression for many more years. So far, my prediction has proven to be correct.
Despite the fact that the Fed keeps raising rates as it tightens the noose around the supposed economic “recovery”, there are still many people out there who refuse to accept that the central bank would deliberately implode the fiscal bubble that it has spent the last ten years inflating. Even today, I still see arguments proclaiming that the Fed will be forced to pull back if stocks fall beyond 15% to 20%. I also see claims that Fed officials like Jerome Powell had “better start looking for another job” because Donald Trump won’t be happy with Fed policies that could cause a crash. This is pure delusion from people who do not understand how the Fed operates.
First and foremost, let’s be clear, the Federal Reserve is an autonomous entity that does not answer to government oversight. It never has and it probably never will. This reality is supported by admissions by former Fed officials like Alan Greenspan, who publicly noted that the Fed answers to no one.
The central bank functions in quite the opposite capacity from what many people assume. As Carroll Quigley, prominent American historian and mentor to Bill Clinton, noted in his book Tragedy And Hope:
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank … sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”
In other words, governments do not assert control over central banks; central banks assert control over governments. That said, there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, an act of Congress can be used to enforce a full audit of Fed activities, something which has never been done.
Fed propaganda asserts the lie that the bank is audited annually by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), but this is NOT an audit of Fed financial actions and policy initiatives. Rather, it is an audit of minor expenditures. Knowing how many pencils and desks the Fed purchases in a year does not help us to understand the bank’s influence over our economic security. All other audits of the Fed are done internally by the Fed’s own Board of Governors. This is hardly transparent or independent.
The only time the public has gained access to even a partial government audit of Fed activities was during the audit of TARP. This alone exposed trillions of dollars in bailouts and overnight loans to various banks and corporations, many of which were foreign.
The GAO did nothing in terms of regulatory action against the Fed after it was revealed that they were funneling trillions in capital into foreign corporations. All they did was make a ledger of the transactions, and remained silent on the rest.
I remind readers of this history and the conditions surrounding Fed actions because I want to drive the point home that, for now, the Fed and other central banks dictate the rules of the game. Some may say this has changed with the election of Donald Trump, but I disagree. If anything, as long as Trump is in office, the Fed will chase higher interest rates and steeper balance sheet cuts. They will not stop until markets break. And, the only solution (shutting down the Fed entirely) also comes with a set of extreme fiscal consequences.
There is a wall of cognitive dissonance when some in the public are confronted with this notion. They prefer to believe in a set of standard lies rather than accept that the Fed is a saboteur of our financial system. Here are those lies, listed in no particular order…
Lie #1: The Fed Is Unaware Of The Bubbles it Creates
Mainstream economists and Fed officials alike use this lie regularly. Not once has the Board of Governors of the Fed ever been audited or punished in light of an economic crisis they created. When central bank culpability is obvious, they simply claim they had no idea the fiscal bubble was as inflated as it became. The disaster “surprised them”.
The Fed’s creation of easy credit and zero oversight, not to mention its opposition to any regulation of derivatives, fed the bubble prior to 2008. Then they ignored all obvious warning signs that the bubble was about to burst. But what about the current “everything bubble” that the Fed has created through near zero interest rates and endless fiat money manufacturing? Well, Fed officials openly admit to their involvement.
As the former head of the Federal Reserve Dallas branch Richard Fisher admitted in an interview with CNBC, since 2009, the U.S. central bank has made its business the manipulation of the stock market to the upside:
“What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.
It’s sort of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow.
I’m not surprised that almost every index you can look at … was down significantly.” [After the first Fed rate hike]
The Fed knows when it is conjuring a bubble environment; they just won’t admit it as the bubble is deflating and economic pain is everywhere.
Lie #2: The Fed Is Unaware That It’s Tightening Policies Cause Extreme Economic Contraction
So, if the Fed is aware when it causes a bubble, is it aware when it is popping a bubble? Absolutely. As Ben Bernanke admitted in a speech in 2002:
“In short, according to Friedman and Schwartz, because of institutional changes and misguided doctrines, the banking panics of the Great Contraction were much more severe and widespread than would have normally occurred during a downturn.
Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”
Bernanke was referencing Milton Friedman’s assertion that the Fed’s tightening policies in the early 1930’s, after they had made markets dependent on easy credit through the 1920’s, had caused negative feedback in the system at the perfect time, destabilizing any possible recovery for years to come.
The problem is twofold, of course. The Fed was allowed to fuel a fraudulent market bubble in the first place. Then, it was allowed to pop the bubble in the most destructive way through tightening policies (like higher interest rates), which crushed Main Street support. If this sounds familiar, it is, because the same tactic is being used by the Fed today.
In an October 2012 meeting of the Federal Reserve, minutes indicate that Jerome Powell was highly vocal about what would happen if the Fed pulled support from debt addicted markets by raising interest rates and cutting assets:
“My third concern — and others have touched on it as well — is the problems of exiting from a near $4 trillion balance sheet. We’ve got a set of principles from June 2011 and have done some work since then, but it just seems to me that we seem to be way too confident that exit can be managed smoothly. Markets can be much more dynamic than we appear to think.
When you turn and say to the market, “I’ve got $1.2 trillion of these things,” it’s not just $20 billion a month — it’s the sight of the whole thing coming. And I think there is a pretty good chance that you could have quite a dynamic response in the market.
I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause.
Investors really do understand now that we will be there to prevent serious losses. It is not that it is easy for them to make money but that they have every incentive to take more risk, and they are doing so. Meanwhile, we look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that that is our strategy.”
Jerome Powell is now the Fed Chairman, and yet, he is following through with the same tightening actions that he warned about in 2012. He is pretending that the tightening process will be painless even though fundamental economic conditions are just as weak now as they were six years ago. Again, Powell knows the Fed is going to cause a crash, but he is moving forward anyway and he is not warning the public about the danger.
Lie #3: The Fed Is The Center Of Establishment Power, Therefore They Need The U.S. Economy To Thrive
While it is true that the Fed is currently in charge of the dollar as the world reserve currency, the idea that the Fed is somehow indispensable to the global establishment has always bewildered me. Everything the Fed has done since its inception in 1913 has been designed to diminish the U.S. economy and erode the purchasing power of our currency. I ask, at what point has the Fed ever taken an action which did NOT result in a bubble or a bubble collapse? At what point has the U.S. economy ever improved at a fundamental level because of the Fed, rather than diminished in the wake of a fake recovery the Fed conned the public into believing in?
What else does the Fed do besides sabotage?
I believe the truth is that the Fed does not care about the U.S. economy, or even the survival of the dollar, as is obvious in their actions. The Fed is merely a puppet entity of larger institutions like the Bank for International Settlements or the International Monetary Fund. These institutions seek centralization at a global level, with a global currency system and global economic authority, as they have openly admitted to in their own publications. The U.S. economy as we know it today, and the Fed by extension, are expendable in this pursuit.
The Fed will continue on its current course no matter the cost, because there is a greater strategy in play. In fact, some elites may even welcome a shutdown of the Fed at this time because this opens the path for the death of the dollar as the world reserve currency and the introduction of a new world monetary system, while all the consequences surrounding the shift can be blamed on political chaos and coincidence.
To drive the point home, I leave readers with a revealing quote from Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, as she outlines why crisis in national economies is actually good for the IMF:
“When the world around the IMF goes downhill, we thrive. We become extremely active because we lend money, we earn interest and charges and all the rest of it, and the institution does well. When the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise.”
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Ever since the central banks became serial bubble blowers twenty years ago, household wealth has mostly been driven by asset price inflation:
But this has been a quixotic pursuit. Created by pulling tomorrow's prosperity into today, these asset price bubbles are unsustainable, and invariably suffer violent corrections at their end.
So far, the central banks have responded to these corrections by simply doing more of the same, just at greater and greater intensity. To keep the current Everything Bubble going, the world's central banks have not only had to more than quintuple their collective balance sheets, but have recently had to resort to the extreme (desperate?) measure of injecting the greatest amount of liquidity ever in 2016 and 2017.
History has shown us that the height an asset bubble reaches is proportional to the damage it wreaks when it bursts. Applying this logic, the coming pop of the Everything Bubble will be devastating.
So devastating that analysts like John Hussman forecast a 0% (or worse) total market return over the next twelve years:
Moreover, the primary driver and supporter of asset price appreciation over the past seven years, central bank easing, is now gone. For the first time since the GFC, the collective central bank liquidity injection rate (the solid black line in the below chart) is now net zero.
And plans to tighten much further from here have been clearly committed and communicated to the world:
As a consequence, we fully expect yesterday's capital gains to become tomorrow's capital losses. What goes up on thin-air money comes down with its removal.
And while this is going on, interest rates are suddenly exploding higher around the world after spending a decade at all-time historic lows:
We've detailed in depth the math behind the depressive effect this must have on asset prices in our recent report The Weighted Average Cost Of Capital. And as we look to the long term future (i.e., next several decades), compared to the past secular 30-year decline of interest rates down to 0%, rates have only one direction to go from here: Up.
All this taken together means that the era of amassing financial wealth from swiftly-rising capital gains is over.
It was a "shooting fish in a barrel" bonanza for most investors because no critical thought was required to make money; with the central banks hell-bent on creating a universal wealth-effect, the price of nearly every asset was on a one-way elevator ride. All one had to do was buy blindly -- "buy the dip" and "buy the all-time high" -- and watch one's "wealth" increase.
But after three destructive bubbles in just two decades, the Fed and its brethren will not be able to blow a fourth. The system won't be able to withstand it.
Our slowing global economy will require decades of recovery to heal itself from the massive over-leveraging and malinvestment binge we've been on.
So the existential question facing investors is: What will drive wealth accumulation in the coming era?
Investors are going to soon realize that without dependable gains, income becomes paramount. Specifically, income that will retain its purchasing power as inflation and interest rates rise.
As we look to the future and see anemic gains, slowing economic growth/return to recession, and a rising cost of living, those who own passive income streams will find themselves much better positioned for a sustainable retirement. Or for simply remaining afloat financially.
What If The Central Banks Print Like Crazy?
Yes, the central banks may attempt to flood the world with liquidity during the next recession. But the amounts required to reverse the growing deflationary pressures will be truly gargantuan -- very likely several multiples of the easing we've seen since 2009.
At those levels, extreme/hyper-inflation becomes the concern. Prices of everything will shoot the moon. But especially those of assets with income streams that adjust with the inflation rate (rents, dividends, etc).
Income-producing investments, which are generally backed by real assets (real estate, oil & gas wells, factories, etc) should keep up their relative purchasing power better than today's high-flying and often profitless securities.
And if it all ends in hyperinflationary currency collapse, income investors usually have more senior ownership claims on those underlying real assets. Those assets will still have intrinsic value, which will be priced in whatever new currency succeeds the old.
Submitted by Adam Taggart of Peak Prosperity
