Posts Tagged
‘US Dollar’
by Chart School - October 14th, 2010 8:27 pm
Courtesy of Chris Kimble
I have received numerous emails recently, asking questions along this line….We have done very well of late, what could change the recent upward price action/trend? (Good, Bad & the Ugly soundtrack)
A good friend often reminds me a “blizzard starts with a single snowflake that fits on the end of your finger!” Right now positive snowflakes are all over the place…trends are moving higher and breakouts are taking place in key stock index’s!
The key to whether the quality upside move of late will continue, will most likely be determined by what the U.S. Dollar does at line (1).
Will the rising support line hold or not? This support line DOES NOT justify selling International positions (EEM, EWZ, TUR, GXG, THD) or Commodity positions (SLV, GDX, GDXJ, SLV,OIH), yet it should raise awareness that stops should be in place to protect quality gains in every holding you have!!!
Tags: charts, Stock Market, US Dollar
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by ilene - October 9th, 2010 2:01 am
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse
Some top Federal Reserve officials have come up with a really bizarre proposal for stimulating the U.S. economy. As unbelievable as it sounds, what they actually propose to do is to purposely raise the rate of inflation so that Americans will stop saving so much money and will start spending wildly again. The idea behind it is that if inflation rises a couple of percentage points, but consumers are only earning half a percent (or less) on their savings accounts, then there will be an incentive for consumers to spend that money as the value of it deteriorates sitting in the bank.
Yes, that is how bizarre things have gotten. It is not as if U.S. consumers are even saving that much money. Several decades ago, Americans typically saved between 8 and 12 percent of their incomes, but over this past decade the personal saving rate got down near zero a number of times as Americans were living far beyond their means. Once the recession hit, Americans very wisely started saving more money, and so now the personal saving rate has been hovering around the 5 to 7 percent range. This is well below historical levels, but the folks at the Fed apparently are eager for Americans to pull that money out and start spending it again.
In an article entitled "Fed Officials Mull Inflation as a Fix", Wall Street Journal columnist Sudeep Reddy described this bizarre new economic approach that some over at the Federal Reserve are now advocating….
"But as the U.S. economy struggles and flirts with the prospect of deflation, some central bank officials are publicly broaching a controversial idea: lifting inflation above the Fed’s informal target."
Does increasing inflation as a way to stimulate the economy sound like a good idea to any of you?…
Tags: Congress, Currencies, deflation, Federal Reserve, inflation, international trade, Obama, paper money, savings, spending, US Dollar, US economy, wealth
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by Chart School - August 30th, 2010 1:48 pm
US Dollar – UUP
Courtesy of Allan
I continue to like the US Dollar trending models and in particular, the UUP Daily Trend Model:
UUP Daily Trend Model
I’m not going to even pretend to know what global financial currents affect currency trends, but I can recognize a well trending trading vehicle when I see it and this one speaks for itself. Looking at the recent historical performance of this trading model, it appears that about 2 out of 3 trend signals work for gains of between 5-10%, while the losers drop maybe 2% before getting stopped and reversed.
For what it is worth Robert Prechter [of Elliott Wave fame] is very bullish on the US Dollar, suggesting a surge higher in the coming months. The above trend model isn’t so prescient, suggesting only that the trend is up and that should be good enough for now.
It is.
Allan’s “Trend Following Trading Model” is based on his trend-following trading system for buying and selling stocks and ETFs. Most trades last for weeks to months. Allan’s offering PSW readers a special 25% discount. Click here. For more details, read this introductory article.
Tags: chart, US Dollar
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by ilene - August 24th, 2010 6:24 pm
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
As a review or refresher please read: Money Supply A Primer if you need to remind yourself what these money supply figures represent.
Considering the high unemployment and sluggish GDP the fall off in year over year growth in the money supply figures is to be expected, especially after the bubbliciously high growth rates (11% and 16% respectively) just prior to the financial crisis. That is why one should look at both the nominal and the percent year over year charts.
There is certainly price deflation from slack aggregate demand fueled by stagnant wages and high unemployment, and it may get worse as the Fed and the government coddle their unreformed pet Banks, leaving the real economy and most Americans to twist in the wind. But there is no true monetary deflation yet, the kind which is supposed to stiffen the back of the dollar and all that.
There is also sufficient room for concern about the US dollar and its sustainability as the world’s reserve currency. This would be familiar to most economists as Triffin’s Dilemma. As the world shifts from the Bretton Woods II compromise to a less dollar specific regime the adjustment could be quite traumatic, especially to the financialization industry. Here is another description of the same phenomenon called the Seigniorage Curse. It is why I have called the US dollar and its associated bonds The Last Bubble.
"The Seigniorage Curse appears to hollow out the economy by the following manner: First, the premium charged to holders of dollars becomes a new source of accrued, aggregate revenue. This extra capital flowing into the economy is initially seen as a global honoring of our economy’s strength, and innovation. But when innovation falters and less value is created, seigniorage is maintained–and thus the unhealthy dynamic begins. From this point forward, whether the US economy either leads in innovation, or lags in innovation, the Dollar advantage grows regardless. It then becomes clear that manufacturing Dollars, rather than manufacturing goods, is a better value proposition. Once that dynamic is in place, then a long cycle of financialization ensues, in which innovation and talent moves from design and manufacturing to the financial sector. The financial sector then becomes rapacious, as it scours what’s left of the economy to monetize. Whereas manufacturing and innovation were once
…
Tags: Banks, Bernanke, demand, Economy, GDP, Money, Money Supply, unemployment, US Dollar
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by ilene - July 21st, 2010 12:57 am
(Video’s back in working order.)
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Organizations, whether it be a club or a profession or a department, too often over time develop a sort of intellectual inertia, a bureaucratic mindset that tends to perpetuate and validate a certain view of the world amongst its members, particularly if they share other elements in background and world view.
This works to its advantage when they are right, and when the scope of the tasks which they must address are limited to largely operational concerns, without significant risk in the classic sense of the term.
But when the situation becomes different, the environment changes, this organizational mindset not only stifles innovation and adaptation, it can literally reach out and strangle it, well beyond its members, using the entrenched power of its tenure. We see this tendency clearly in organizations that have enjoyed long periods of organizational growth under the leadership of strong personalities, such as the FBI under Hoover, and the Federal Reserve under Greenspan.
We can see this same tendency on a micro level in our daily life on chatboards, in clubs, in our company departments, in civic organizations. It is a tribalistic instinct, that urges the adoption of a consensus view, often influenced and promoted by articulate and single minded individuals, which then musters and focuses the energy and vitality of the group in the execution of its mission.
When it is right, it brings success. But when it goes wrong, when it feeds on itself, becomes defensive and inwardly focused, when perpetuation of the group view overtakes all other considerations, when tribal loyalty and sameness is valued over results, it leads to a cult like behaviour, inbred thinking, that may be inimical to the best intentions of the group, and the sort of behavioural anomalies which we have seen in the tragedies of Watergate, the latter stage Hoover FBI, and even Jonestown.
Economics is in the grips of such a period in its development. One of the primary causes of this problem has been the rise of a few well funded think tanks, universities, and of course the Federal Reserve, that have become powerful influencers, and guardians, dogmatisers of the status quo. The petty sniping among the schools notwithstanding, the current debate of stimulus versus austerity serves to show how anemic, how self…
Tags: Federal Reserve, group think, Jim Grant, Monetary Policy, regulators, solutions, US Dollar
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by ilene - July 14th, 2010 8:00 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Jim Grant, one of the most respected voices in the financial industry, joins Zero Hedge and others, who see that the only choice the Federal Reserve has now that the temporary and shallow reprieve from the clutches of the deflationary depression is over, is to print more money in the form of another iteration of QE. Whether this will be another $2.5 trillion, like last time, which was the price of an 18 month delay of the inevitable, or a $5 trillion concerted global effort, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard believes, is irrelevant: the only option the central printers, pardon, bankers, have left is to flood the market with yet more worthless paper (keep an eye out on the doubling in the price of gold the second QE2 is publicly announced, which will also double as the obituary for all fiat paper).
In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Grant says that the first order of business tomorrow when the Fed’s new additions officially join their new groupthink perpetuating employer will be "to try once more to print enough dollars to make something happen in the U.S. economy.” The ever-sarcastic Grant manages to completely skewer Janet Yellen, Steve Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin, to ridicule the Fed’s 100% track record of not only focusing on the wrong thing time after time, but getting the response consistently wrong with 100% precision, and also manages to makes fun of the Fed’s credentialed WSJ lackeys, who courtesy of the Fed’s "editorial" control over the reporting process, get a direct line into leakable Fed strategy.
Grant’s thoughts on new Fed additions:
"I think the first order of business will be to try once more to print enough dollars to make something happen in the U.S. economy.”
On San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen:
“Janet Yellen has had 36 opportunities to vote on monetary policy at the Federal Open Market Committee and she has voted ‘Aye, yes’ 36 times. 36 for 36 times. Now, has the Fed been right 36 consecutive times? No. I think that Janet Yellen is a well credentialed, consensus-hugging economist straight out of the Fed HR department. She is ideal from the point of view of the Fed bureaucracy. She will make not one ripple.”
On MIT economist Steve Diamond and Maryland…
Tags: Ben Bernanke, Bloomberg TV, faith based currency, Janet Yellen, Jim Grant, QE 2.0, quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve, US Dollar
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by ilene - June 17th, 2010 7:59 pm
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
On one hand you have BNP revising their mid-term EURUSD forecast to 0.98, on the other you have such pessimists as Jim Rogers saying to buy the Euro. Who to trust anymore? Granted, Rogers’ thesis is only predicated on a a relief rally, pretty much the same as what we suggested when we saw the Goldman downgrade of the EURUSD, and immediately beckoned readers to get right back in. We consider the +50,000 pips picked in the ensuing week a direct gift from god (or at least his favorite worker). At this point the relief rally has likely fizzled, and the direction now is indeed down, at least until the next time the CFTC notes the net EUR shorts have hit a fresh record. Back to Rogers: in the long-term, Jim is just as bearish as always: "The European governments are not getting their act together, not at all. All paper money is flawed, nearly every currency in the world."
Rogers on European credibility: "If Greece went bankrupt it would send the signal to the world, and to the rest of Europe – ok, we’re not going to let people lie about their finance anymore, we are not going to let them spend money they don’t have, we are going to run a tight ship. That means the euro would be an extremely sound currency, it would the old Deutsche Mark." On Keynesianism: "You can’t keep spending money you don’t have because eventually the whole thing collapse in a house of cards." On the transition to reality: "I am not suggesting it is going to be a good time, don’t get me wrong. But if you wait 5 years from now, 10 years from now, when there is nothing you can do, and the whole system collapses, then you have real chaos in the streets, then you have Greece never recovering. In the US we have had states go bankrupt, cities go bankrupt, counties go bankrupt. It didn’t end the US, it didn’t end the US dollar." And on the flaws of our political system, which are just as applicable to our own president: "Greece is just trying to get through the next election, I am trying to figure out what’s good for country, what’s good for the world, what’s good for Europe, what’s good for the financial system."
Tags: Bankruptcy, Currencies, EUR/USD, Euro, Europe, Financial System, Gold, Greece, Jim Rogers, paper money, relief rally, US Dollar
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by ilene - May 17th, 2010 4:16 pm
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
In March I wrote an American version of this post which pointed to the bailout culture in America as a major reason I fear a depressionary relapse. American policy makers have shifted private losses onto the government’s books while propping up bankrupt companies in the private sector in order to forestall yet greater economic pain.
The mindset is fixed on re-engineering some semblance of past economic growth. The result has been a return in the US to the status quo ante of low savings, excess consumption, indebted households, and leveraged financial institutions, but with policy options significantly diminished and greater levels of government debt to boot. Clearly, when stimulus is withdrawn, policy makers should expect more severe economic bloodletting.
In Europe, the same bailout mentality is at work. However, the results are likely to be even more disastrous because of the fundamental misunderstanding of economics and financial sector balances amongst the policy elite in Euroland. The public and private sector cannot simultaneously net save unless the Europeans engineer a competitive currency devaluation. Therefore, the Europeans’ newfound fiscal austerity is at odds with the need of the private sector to reduce debt and will likely lead to a collapse in consumer demand and depression or a trade war. What Europe needs is to allow over-indebted nations to default, reducing the political and economic pressure of austerity.
Intra-Eurozone Trade wars
Let me review how I come to that conclusion. This is a trade issue, first and foremost. The reason the Eurozone exists from an economic standpoint has to do with European interdependence from business trade. The eurozone functions as an internal market much the way the United States does, with the majority of trade occurring inside the region as opposed to externally with non-Eurozone countries.
When the Euro was formed, exchange rates were fixed and a common monetary policy came into being – much as we see for states in the US or provinces in Canada. Of course, monetary policy is not run for specific regions within the zone, but for the zone overall. And this invariably means that the European Central Bank’s monetary policy is geared more to the slow-growth core of Europe than the periphery.
During any business cycle then, current…
Tags: bailouts, Bankruptcy, California, currency, debt, default, deficits, economic losses, Economy, Euro, Europe, Eurozone, exchange rates, financial balance, Financial System, fiscal austerity, government, liquidity crisis, panic, Trade War, US Dollar
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by ilene - January 20th, 2010 11:54 am
Courtesy of Mish
The Business Insider has a fantastic Interview With Hayman Capital Founder Kyle Bass. Bass testified at the crisis hearings in Washington, about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, bank capital, bank leverage and derivatives. He discussed those issues with CNBC’s David Faber along with his forecast for Japan.
Here is a partial transcript.
Kyle Bass: …. China and Japan own a lot of Fannie and Freddie Debt. I think we are more sensitive to them losing money than we are to the US taxpayer losing money and I think that has to change. … Fannie and Freddie have paid $200 million into campaigns of 354 politicians over the last 10 years. This is an organization created by the lawmakers. Why are they paying the lawmakers? Let’s get rid of this structure and just have the government make mortgage loans. …
David Faber: Let’s talk briefly about some other things you are doing at Hayman. … We saw the mini-blowup in Dubai, we have heard a lot about Greece, when you look at the totality of sovereign risk, where are you focused?
Kyle Bass: I think the big canary in the coalmine is Japan. When you see how Japan has lost 20 years of their prosperity from 1990 to today, you see what happens when a government steps in and runs giant deficits to make up for the private market place pulling back and attempting to deleverage.
So what we’ve seen around the globe in the developed world, bad private assets are moving onto public balance sheets. Sovereign balance sheets have expanded 86% from pre-crisis levels of debt. If you extrapolate that from the beginning levels of debt, many of these countries around the world won’t be able to service their debt. So I think in the next 2-3-4 years you start to see
significant defaults.
David Faber: Do you believe Japan is in a position where it might default and/or devalue its currency as well, in the next 3-4 years?
Kyle Bass: I do not think Japan has a way out of this.
David Faber: Why Not?
Kyle Bass: You have a secular decline in population, and you have a huge funding structure at below market rates. So Japan’s weighted cost of capital is only 1.4% and their sovereign balance sheet is much worse
…
Tags: bank capital, bank leverage, David Faber, derivatives, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Hayman Capital, japan, Kyle Bass, US Dollar
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by ilene - January 6th, 2010 5:14 pm
The Biggest Financial Deception of the Decade
Courtesy of Jeff Clark, Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report
Enron? Bear Stearns? Bernie Madoff? They’re all big stories about big losses and have hurt a lot of employees and investors. But none come close to getting my vote for the decade’s most dastardly deception…
First came Enron, with $65.5 billion in assets, going belly-up and becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time. Chairman Kenneth Lay said that Enron’s decision to file bankruptcy would “stabilize the company,” but over the next five years the company was completely liquidated. The stock went from a high of $84.63 in December 2000 to a whopping 26¢ one year later.
And what had we been told by the media? Fortune magazine dubbed Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. A well-intentioned friend wanted to give me a gift subscription to the magazine for Christmas; I choked on my cocktail and luckily he assumed my drink was too strong. In the end, you can thank Enron for bringing us the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a ghastly financial reporting regulation for which compliance is grossly expensive, and – stop the presses! – hasn’t prevented similar repeats.
Next came WorldCom filing for bankruptcy in 2002, their assets of $103.9 billion dwarfing Enron’s. “We will use this time under reorganization to regain our financial health and focus, while operating with the highest integrity,” assured CEO John Sidgmore. Was his eggnog spiked? Today, WorldCom stock certificates have been spotted as doilies under pancake house coffee mugs signifying it’s decaf.
Tyco, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems… it’s a crowded field around this time. But their stories of fraud and greed and mismanagement get boring after awhile. Just watch the closing credits from the movie Fun with Dick and Jane and you’ll see what I mean.
Bear Stearns set us all up for the Big Meltdown of 2008. It was B.S. (no, I mean Bear Stearns) that pioneered the asset-backed securities markets, and we all know how that turned out. Later we learned that as losses mounted in 2006 and 2007, the company was actually adding to its exposure of mortgage-backed assets, gearing itself up to 35:1. With net equity of $11.1 billion supporting $395 billion in assets, B.S. carried more leverage than a streetwalker’s push-up bra.
And during it all, Bear…
Tags: Ben Bernanke, deception, Economy, Enron, financial fraud, inflation, the Federal Reserve, US Dollar, worldcom
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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
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site
