by ilene - April 26th, 2010 2:14 pm
Courtesy of JOHN RUBINO at Dollar Collapse
Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland was a must-read in the years leading up to the bursting of the housing bubble. Almost alone out there, he got not just the fact that we were heading off a cliff, but the exact mechanism of our demise: “Wall Street alchemy” was creating unlimited amounts of artificial securities that the marketplace was treating like money, which sent the effective global money supply through the roof and fueled a series of ever-bigger bubbles.
Once the crash came, Noland reined it in a bit and his articles fell off my automatic “Best of the Web” list. But now the bubble is back and so is Noland. His latest post dissects the current “recovery” and explains why we’re headed back into interesting times:
Deficits and Private Sector Credit
The bullish contingent is these days increasingly confident that there is much more to the recovery than a mere stimulus-induced “sugar high.” The marketplace now comfortably disregards bearish developments – and becomes further emboldened by “market resiliency”. The market this week brushed aside issues with Greece, China, Goldman and financial reform.
Complacency abounds, in true Bubble fashion. The U.S. stock market dismisses that there could be meaningful ramifications from the unfolding Greek debt crisis. Chinese authorities’ recent determination to restrict mortgage Credit barely garners a headline. And while the Goldman allegations generate great interest and discussion, few believe they will have much general market impact. Financial reform, well, it’s an afterthought when the market is open. Market participants are enamored with the notion that the securities markets and real economy are now conjoined in the initial phase of a big bull cycle.
Count me a subscriber of the “sugar high” thesis. The combination of double-digit (to GDP) deficits, protracted near-zero rates, and the Fed’s unprecedented Trillion-plus monetization has worked wonders. Government stimulus stabilized the Credit system, asset prices, system incomes and economic output. The bulls today believe that a new expansionary cycle has commenced, and fundamentals and prospects couldn’t be much more encouraging from their point of view. Surging stock prices have the optimists disregarding the possibility of a systemic addiction to massive government spending, ultra-low rates, and overabundant marketplace liquidity. Potential issues in the area of risk intermediation are not on the radar screen.
Yet, the sustainability of this recovery will be determined by private
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Tags: China Bubble, Doug Noland, Greek debt crisis, housing bubble, PIGS country default
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by ilene - January 10th, 2010 8:44 pm
Doug Noland writes a great "Credit Bubble Bulletin" column every week. In case you missed it, please read Noland’s Credit Bubble Year In Review. It’s a gem. Here is a nice snip but there is much more in the article.
To an extent never before imagined, economies around the globe could partake in aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus, rapidly expand Credit, reflate markets and economies – and have little worry about currency vulnerability or an outflow of speculative finance (a far cry from the ‘90s). The world had changed, and global asset prices were revalued based on a backdrop of expected ongoing dollar devaluation and newfound resiliencies in Credit systems and financial flows to (“undollar”) “Periphery” economies and non-dollar asset classes.
Chinese equities (Shanghai Composite) ended the year with a gain of 80.0%. While impressive, Chinese stocks finished last in the “bric” sweepstakes. Russian (RTS Index) stocks surged 128.6% in 2009, followed by Brazil’s (Bovespa) 82.7% and India’s (Sensex) 81.0% advances.
But it is China that resides at the very epicenter of global reflationary forces. A $600bn stimulus package and an incredible $1.0 TN first-half expansion of bank lending propelled a remarkable economic turnabout. After slowing modestly to 6.1% annualized in Q1, GDP jumped back to almost 9% by the third quarter. Some are now forecasting a return to double-digit growth in 2010. For the first time, 2009 saw Chinese vehicle sales surpass those of the U.S. Record Credit growth also stoked the reemergence of real estate inflation and rampant asset speculation.
It’s my view that 2009 marked the onset of China’s “terminal phase” of Credit Bubble excess. The China Bubble is enormous and it is historic. It’s poised to make Japan’s late-eighties Bubble era appear rather petite – and to perhaps even rival the scope of the U.S. Credit Bubble. Importantly, “terminal” phases of excess notoriously create acute financial and economic fragilities. They tend to foment perilous asset market distortions; distribute wealth poorly/inequitably; foster systemic malinvestment and structural impairment; and create a financial/economic structure dependent upon unrelenting Credit expansion and speculation. Only determined policymaking – with a willingness to pierce Bubbles and live with the consequences – can stem what evolves into powerful Bubble momentum and an expanding constituency supporting uninterrupted monetary accommodation.
Chinese foreign reserve holdings jumped almost 20% this year
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Tags: CHINA, Credit Bubble Excess, Doug Noland
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by ilene - November 5th, 2009 12:55 pm
By inoculatedinvestor, courtesy of Zero Hedge
Intro: "For a change, this week I decided to only comment on links that suggest that everything in the world is rosy and that the US is already in the middle of an impressively sound V-shaped recovery. Too bad I couldn’t find anyone who argued either of those points credibly. Oh well, guess everyone will have to settle for yet another dose of reality."
Peggy Noonan pulls no punches: In one of her latest missives in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan poses a very simple question. Do today’s leaders of America really care about the future of this country? I often worry that the re-election cycle has gotten so short and the incentive to pass the burden onto future lawmakers is now so pervasive that we can do no better than short-sighted, even foolish near term fixes to current problems. Extend and pretend when it comes to financial companies and kick the can down the road when it comes to the bulging deficit seem to have become the official policies in Washington. Clearly, no one wants to force any more pain on already strained American households. But at what point do the consequences of the actions being taken actually become magnitudes worse than the painful rebalancing and restructuring we could choose to face today? It is within this context that Noonan posits an interesting theory. Her premise is that the current leaders have lived in a period of such US prosperity that they are essentially too arrogant to even contemplate the idea that country could be in the midst of a lasting decline:
When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?
I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really
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Tags: American households, Banks, Bill Gross, current financial crisis, Doug Noland, fiscal deficit, James Surowiecki, japan, leveraging, Mohamed El-Erian, nationalization, New Normal, Peggy Noonan, standard of living, Stock Market, The Newest Abnormal, unrelenting Monetary Disorder
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
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