The ECB negative rate announcement is a cannibalistic non-event

6/22/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

On June 5th, the European Central Bank made modern Central Banking history by providing the world with its first announcement of what they call a negative interest rate. For those who may be scratching their heads at the concept of a negative interest rate, we offer the following layman’s definition:

It is a commission that is charged every month for holding too many Euros in the wrong place.
In the mind of the clever central banker, a negative interest rate provides a simple disincentive to hoard Euros. In his or her mind, the way to invigorate the European economy is to force Euros into circulation by turning them into a sort of hot potato, though at -0.10% the analogy is more akin to a potato emanating scarcely enough heat to melt a pat of butter.

Following the infallible logic of the central banker, the banks will take the money and lend it, as putting 100% of deposits at risk via a loan in a terribly disjointed economic zone is clearly a better alternative that loosing a guaranteed 0.10% annually by parking it overnight at the ECB.

This would be a brilliant solution were the simple hoarding of Euros the only thing ailing the Euro system. Unfortunately for the ECB and indeed, Euro holders in general, the problem with the Euro is that it is dying a strange death at the hands of deflation and strangulating the European economy in the process. Following this set of facts, it would hold that the safer bet for those who find themselves holding excess Euros would be to pay down higher rate liabilities in lieu of holding Euros overnight at the cannibalistic ECB, whose actions, while for the moment are foreseen to be a non-event, will ultimately lead to an implosion of the 15 year-old Euro currency.

What is lost on the European central bank is that they are managing a debt-based currency that looks like money but smells something much different. While charging a commission on bank deposits in hopes of getting currency flowing again may seem a good idea, the dynamics of the debt-based currency make this strategy akin to economic suicide. Fabian for Liberty appears to take a slightly different slant on the subject and arrives at the same conclusion:



Debt is the lifeblood of modern currency, and a large part of what gives debt based currency its allure is the illusion of getting something for nothing in the form of usury. On June 5th, the ECB pierced the veil on interest rates and the illusion of getting something for nothing along with it. This has never been attempted by a modern monetary authority, and once again the ECB has shown that if there are errors to be made in the management of debt based currency, they are willing to make it.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for June 22, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $3.10
Oil Price per Barrel: $106.83
Corn Price per Bushel: $4.53
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.62%
Bitcoin price in US: $599.07
FED Target Rate: 0.10%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,315
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 6.3%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.4%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,947
M1 Monetary Base: $2,728,900,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $11,306,300,000,000

It is Junuary in the Land of Giants

6/1/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

It is Junuary. For readers who have not had the pleasure of living in the Land of Giants, Junuary is the time of year when one looks at their calendar to find it clearly indicates the month of June, yet a look outside at the rain and colder temperatures seems to confirm one’s instinct that it is indeed January.
Fortunately, one way or another, Junuary yields to July, and the summer inevitably arrives in full force in the Pacific Northwest.

The US economy appears to be enjoying a Junuary of its own. In terms of monetary policy, it is January. On one hand, as GDP clocked in at a negative 1% for the first quarter of 2014, which in hindsight is quite natural when an economy that runs on a credit based currency created by fiat absorbs a loss of $40 Billion of anticipated new money flows with more reductions to come.

Yet at the same time, it is June. Our key indicators here at The Mint reflect a situation in which the effects of monetary policy are quite the same as they have been for some time now, from the standpoint of the real economy, Q1 was business as usual in this recovery. {Editor’s Note: Bitcoin, for all its detractors, has weathered the Mt. Gox bankruptcy just fine, and now sits at an astonishing $646 USD per coin. Yet for all its price resilience, economists continue to call for regulation. The point of Bitcoin is that it cannot be regulated, and the position that it can be regulated stems from a wrong understanding of the role of money in general and Bitcoin’s role in the monetary strata on the part of the regulators.}

Further, the FED’s favorite indicators such as Unemployment, which now sits at 6.3%, average hourly earnings, up 1.9% year over year, and headline CPI is up 1.6% with core CPI up 1.4%. Similarly, housing prices continue their meteoric rise and consumer confidence continues to improve.





So what is it? January or June? If you are a financial commentator, it looks like January, with financial disaster just around the corner despite the improved data.

However, if you look beyond the numbers to what is actually occurring, it is June, with a substantial risk of a financial forest fire. The tinder on the ground has been there for nearly 5 years now; the Federal Reserve’s relentless money creation has left fuel in every corner of the forest. The only reason the landscape has not gone up in flames as a result is that consumer have not dared start a fire of their own.

Now, consumers are beginning to start their fires, and the trifecta of lower unemployment, wage inflation, and CPI is about to catch the FED completely off guard. Their monetary medicine has a serious side effect, it creates what we refer to as a scorched earth economy, and the dose required to keep the failed system afloat during this last round may take the forest down altogether.

Junuary is here, and July is just around the corner. Inflation is about to become an important part of the economic landscape for the foreseeable future. At first, we may enjoy the pleasant kind, where housing prices and stock rise abnormally with pay bump. However, it will be followed by the unpleasant kind, where coffee and groceries take an outsized bite out of one’s paycheck. The summer will be very interesting indeed.

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for June 1, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $3.14
Oil Price per Barrel: $102.71
Corn Price per Bushel: $4.65
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.48%
Bitcoin price in US: $646.01
FED Target Rate: 0.09%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,251
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 6.3%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.3%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,717
M1 Monetary Base: $2,740,100,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $11,218,600,000,000

A Brief Bitcoin Q&A

We were recently contacted by someone who had seen our volume on Bitcoin, cryptically entitled “Bitcoins: What they are and how to use them” which was written on one of those weekend trysts which economic thinkers are prone to, in which a flurry of ideas flies at one’s mind from all quarters and scream to be put on paper.

Bitcoins: What they are and how to use them

The book, which was literally cobbled together over the span of four days, has been our bestseller recently, which naturally has more to do with Bitcoin than ourselves.

In their inquiry, the reader had three further inquiries which we present below for those who are interested in such matters. Enjoy!

Q: What do you think about the relation between physical and virtual currency?

The Mint: Generally speaking, the relation between physical and virtual currencies can be judged by examining the price for the physical currency expressed in the virtual currency. However, I think it will be helpful to make a distinction, as the concept of virtual currency is simply another extension, or “strata”, as I like to call it, of something I refer to as the “Monetary Premium.” Allow me to explain:

The concept of currency stems from the Monetary Premium that is attached to something, ultimately giving it value in trade. (please read this post for a description of the Monetary Premium concept and its origins: http://davidmint.com/2014/02/08/the-division-of-labor-gives-rise-to-the-monetary-premium/ )

Over time, as the division of labor has increased, the need for credit and, by extension, something by which to exchange the monetary premium (i.e. serve as money) in order to settle the debt, has increased as well to the point that, today, all currency issued by government’s is a credit instrument (a liability of the Central Bank) and has only an indirect relationship to anything physical.

Given this, virtual currency, to the extent that it is accepted in trade, is synonymous with all other forms of currency in that it represents an indirect claim on physical wealth.

What many consider to be hard, or physical currency, such as gold and silver, will then have a relationship to either virtual currencies (such as Bitcoin) or credit based currencies (such as US dollars or Brazilian reais) which is expressed as a ratio, or price. By extension, both virtual and credit based currencies will serve as pricing mechanisms for goods and services.

I hope the above makes sense, as it is getting to a key misconception that many have regarding money in general.

Q: What is the future of Bitcoin? 

The Mint: As with any currency, bitcoin will have value and be traded until people lose confidence in it. That said, bitcoin has two flaws that will make it increasingly difficult to use in trade:

1) By design, there can only be a very limited amount of debt denominated in Bitcoin. While most see this as attractive (indeed, it is what helps support its value), it will severely hinder the expansion of Bitcoin proper in trade as the algorithm ticks closer to the limit of ~21 million Bitcoins (never mind that many Bitcoins that previously circulated are trapped in wallets on hard drives which are in rubbish heaps now, never to be “mined” again!).

2) The limitation on Bitcoin creation will dramatically reduce incentives to support the Bitcoin transaction validation process (known as “mining”) right at the time when it is most necessary. This is where Bitcoin will shoot itself in the foot, and nobody knows what will happen then, but what is certain is that transaction processing will become a paid feature by providers or that it will become so slow that people will gravitate away from Bitcoin to other digital currencies who have no such flaw.

What is likely to occur is that Bitcoin will assume its place as the “gold standard” against which all subsequent virtual currencies will be measured. In the same way that many national currencies are still measured against gold on the open market, so it will be that Bitcoin, given its finite production, will become, as gold has become, little more than an important point of reference for whatever virtual currency is currently predominately used in trade.

Q: What is the effect on the world economy?

The Mint: While the origins of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies may have been experimental and ideological in nature, their increasing acceptance is owed to the fact that they are filling a void in trade. Namely, mediums of communication facilitated by the Internet have expanded trade exponentially and created needs for mediums of exchange (a way to transmit the monetary premium mentioned above) that national currencies cannot keep pace with. 

The current system of national currencies and banking provide a number of barriers to currency creation which leaves a void that solutions such as Bitcoin are able to fulfill, in the process creating a windfall for those who have successfully speculated in such currencies.

The effect of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin on the world economy, then, has been and will be to further facilitate trade and, by extension, the division of labor in the world economy. This is a very good thing as it will ultimately lead to a more perfect balance of trade, one that is not subject to the whim of a Central banker’s assessment of the need to expand or contract the money supply.

The latter has implications for the current nation-state which I won’t go into, but the people of the world now can, through the Bitcoin and broader virtual currency story, begin to envision a world economy that is not dominated by currencies emitted by National Central banks, what will happen with that vision is something that is likely to play out in our lifetimes.

Yellen and the Senate Banking Committee describe a winter economy

The Honorable Dr. Janet Yellen, Chair of the Federal Reserve, testified before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday in a ceremony that her predecessor, Dr. Bernanke, must have come to dread towards the end of his tenure.

Of course, towards the end, Dr. Bernanke’s tenure had been marked by the largest economic downturn in memory for most and he found himself shouldering much of the blame.  Bodies such as the Senate Banking Committee often took the opportunity to grill Bernanke on the latest financial headlines or the direct complaints from their constituents stemming from various financial debacles that had unfolded during his tenure. Be it Lehman Brothers, MF Global, or the troubled housing market, Bernanke could count on questions ranging from the dangerous to the ridiculous from committee members who were, in many cases, further removed from reality than Dr. Bernanke himself.

So it was that Yellen took the hot seat that her predecessor had dreaded yesterday before a new set of faces in order to explain what she sees in her economic crystal ball.

From what could be gathered from the mostly scripted exchange between the parties, there seems to be a range of lingering worries in the minds of policy holders as to the health of the US economy, which recently clocked in at an underwhelming 0.1% annual growth rate in Q1 of 2014. The worries, which are no doubt rooted in recent history, range from the continued drop in labor force participation rates and what many see as a stalled out recovery in the housing market.

The US Q1 GDP number can be summed up in a phrase that Red Green was fond of, “It is winter.” Housing markets invariably slow down over the winter months, which are generally a drag on GDP as households recover from the Q4 holiday spending binge.

Labor market participation, which surfaced as a primary concern during yesterday’s hearing, is a much more complex problem, for deep down it validates the fears of nearly every thinking economist, that the US is following in the footsteps of Japan’s demographic and economic precedent.

The real problem with the US economy was not addressed directly at this hearing, nor is it likely to ever be addressed in such a forum: The extraordinary measures employed by the Fed back in 2008 in an effort to prop up the international banking system have forever altered the mode of transmitting credit into the economy. This has caused a broad based reset of the banking food chain at a time when the US economy could least afford for such a change to occur.

These extraordinary measures will be with us until the US Dollar hits its breaking point, and the inevitable currency reset begins to pick up steam. When this occurs, Dr. Yellen and the Senate Banking Committee are likely to be the last to know.

A Discussion of the Merits of Short Term Interest Rate Management, Part I

4/28/2014 Portland, Oregon – Pop in your mints…

One of our working hypotheses here at The Mint is that short-term interest rate management, the primary tool employed by the Central Banks of the world to implement monetary policy, is necessarily harmful to the economy by providing incentives for achieving what otherwise would be suboptimal economic outcomes. By extension, we believe that these suboptimal outcomes are not simply a lost opportunity or a generator of wasted efforts and resources, but a primary contributor to the imbalances in the environment which today bears the label “climate change.”

Recently, we were invited to present our hypothesis at a Global Macro Roundtable for discussion. Today and over the next several days, we will present a slightly redacted transcript of the roundtable for the consideration of our fellow taxpayers. Names (with the obvious exception of our own) have been changed to protect both the innocent and guilty.

As you will see, the discussion (which we have color coded in order to help follow the cast through the maze of discussion) takes many twists and turns, and in a way reveals how far-reaching the influence of short-term interest rates has become, as well as the broad misunderstanding of the concept of money that persists to this day.

Enjoy!

A Discussion of the Merits of Short Term Interest Rate Management

The hypothesis:

Why Short-Term Interest Rate Management is Harmful to the Economy: The Unseen Funding Dynamic 

While the evidence is clear that centralized planning is a failure, pointing to the reasons why can prove elusive. Recently, a revelation regarding the problem with centralized management of short-term interest rates came upon us. The revelation is the following: Imagine you are a banker who needs to fund a loan. In order to fund this loan, you would presumably need to have the money available with which to fund it. This is simple logic, however, in the real world of banking, the decision of whether or not to fund a loan is completely disconnected from the availability of funds, which is primarily determined by the overnight funding markets which, in turn, are completely reliant upon short-term interest rates.

In a world that followed the rules of financial physics, the short-term interest rates would be completely dependent upon the availability of funds in the system. However, the centralized management of interest rates makes this critical data point, which would otherwise provide a snapshot of the amount of capital in an economic system which is held in liquid form and available for deployment, irrelevant, as the amount of capital available in today’s centrally managed system can be determined on whim.

As such, the ability of the banker to fund the loan is not dependent upon an availability of funds that represents the amount of capital available in the real world, rather, his ability to fund the loan is completely dependent upon the borrower’s ability to pay and the size of the loan in relation to the structure of the bank’s balance sheet.

The three criteria above are important, as any underwriter will tell you, but the invisible fourth criteria, the true availability of the funds for the loan, or funding dynamic, is completely ignored in the following fashion:

When the short-term interest is managed to be low, as is the case currently, any borrower who has the capacity to pay and has a lending need that fits well with a certain bank’s loan mix is extremely likely to get funded, regardless of whether or not the economics system as a whole has the capital available to fund his or her loan. When the short-term interest rate is managed to be high, as it was in the early 1980’s in the US, funding any loan, regardless of the ability to pay and fit within bank’s balance sheet, becomes impossible to fund.

In both cases, both borrower and banker are left completely in the dark as to whether or not there exists the necessary capital stock or productive capacity in the economy for the funds to be deployed in the manner that the borrower envisions, for the short-term interest rate signal has been genetically modified to send a common signal to all participants.

Unfortunately, it is a signal that blinds everyone to the facts of the situation. For many are the hopes, dreams, and ideas of mankind, but it is the funding dynamic which keeps these hopes, dreams, and ideas in harmony with the natural world upon which we all depend.

Right now, we are floating in the clouds, completely disconnected from reality. The landing caused by the next round of high rates, via a natural rebalancing of accounts or further genetic modification of the short-term rates, will be very hard indeed.

The funding dynamic is so delicate that mankind cannot hope to optimize it via genetic modification, for when left alone, it is optimized by definition. Again, by definition, every attempt to modify will bring about sub-optimal results.

As with all complex economic and political systems, dissent is information, and serves to manage the system’s outputs while at the same time increasing the resiliency of the system, making it less susceptible to shocks.

Centralized short-term interest rate management must be abandoned before it is too late, for it is leading the activities of mankind towards a dangerous showdown with the limitations of the natural world.

Discussion

“Contributor A: This brings to mind the Pareto curve reaching a knee limit and catastrophe theory when there is a Quantum state change in the system being considered (the twig will snap, the water will boil as energy (money) is added, etc.). We are expanding the money supply and disregarding that eventually an infinite amount will be needed.

One other point is the Multiplier effect at the Bank who gets $ 1 Million from the fed and uses a low Reserve to make loans greatly exceeding that because the Loans are an asset on their books ; and, as repayments come in multipliers on those. Where does it stop? When the twig snaps and then raging inflation must kick in at an Exponential level with time. Then SNAP!

Contributor B: I have no disagreement with the conclusion, however, the facts leading there need to be adjusted/considered. For example, in the early 80′s, liquidity was not nearly the issue as it was raised in the statement. Not only did my clients acquire funding as required in that period, but I [stupidly] agreed to a mortgage in that period with an interest rate that still gives me nightmares. For the last few years interest rates have been suppressed, but at the same time my middle market clients have complained of there being insufficient liquidity to fund their business loans, meaning that new business ventures were not realised. This has relaxed in the past year or two slightly, but you need to remember one of the issues regarding the vast amount of dollars being held in banks.

When the FED began shipping huge quantities of dollars to friendly banks after the 2008 crash in order to stabilise some very shaky balance sheets, the FED promised to pay interest to the banks on those funds kept in storage with one absolutely unbreakable codicil: under no circumstances could the banks use those funds as part of their asset base in making loans. In other words, none, zero, zip, nada, NONE of those FED funds could be used for loans. Clearly, this move suppressed what would have been an immediately inflationary environment in the US, a highly destructive inflationary environment. But it also left these banks which were otherwise strapped for funds floundering for any money to loan out to their best small business customers. The banks may have stabililsed in the past few years of lean flow of funds, but it is not that much better in the commercial market for small and mid-sized customers.

The Mint: As Contributor A highlights, the entire modern monetary system is extremely fragile and, given its debt base, could quickly disintegrate were a crisis of confidence to emerge or a widespread failure of technology make it inaccessible.

Contributor B (to whom I will defer on funding experiences of the early 80′s) brings up an important point in the form of the “unbreakable codicil” of the FED with regards to funding intended to shore up the Federal Reserve system. While this move made the banks and system technically solvent, the Fed has ignored the fact that the US economy has outgrown the Federal Reserve system, as the economy is starved for money at a time when the Fed’s measurements indicate that quite the opposite is true.

In the 2008 panic, the Federal Reserve deviated significantly from its traditional funding mechanisms to save its system and has altered the normal monetary transmission protocol. I believe that this has created a feedback loop which will result in the Federal Reserve system receding and other mediums of exchange posturing to take its place.

Contributor B: I thoroughly agree that it will be reset, David. However, while you may see market forces and evolved consumer needs driving this reset, I tend to pay attention to the political aggression of states not at all amicable to the interests of the FED and believe the geopolitical transformation we will witness may be the lynchpin upon which the existence of the FED depends. In the long run it will not really matter to the FED whether it is driven by the economic needs of the consumer or the geopolitical ambitions of another nation, but it will matter to the ordinary participants, I suspect. The withering of FED control worn away by alternative exchange mechanisms will provide a much different life at ground level than the sudden repudiation of the USD as the world reserve currency as anticipated (and desired it seems) by the Chinese military (along with a few others who are tired of US economic hegemony). The former is a transformative change more gradual in nature while the latter can be far more sudden in keeping with the rapid shifts in the global market; the former providing the opportunity to adjust more peacefully while the latter is expected to lead to widespread disruptions in service, food, and support delivery at the ground level. Food riots, water riots, just plain riots, and toilet paper riots… sorry, basic staples of urban and 21st century life will be in short supply. I think I’ll find farmland in another country far away.

For ease of transition, I’d vote for alternative exchange mechanisms. Curiously, I saw an article a few weeks ago that noted extreme activity increases in southeast Asia on Bitcoin and the development of alternatives… either opportunity or another front in the attack on the USD. It can be both.
Now, to envision a world without central banks. That takes us back a while in history…

Then again, perhaps this graph {Editor’s Note: Regarding the Longevity of currency reserve status over the past 600 years} tells it all:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/01/20120103_JPM_reserve.png

… and speaking of market competitors, Googlecoin? it is being touted already.

Contributor C:

“Centralized short-term interest rate management must be abandoned before it is too late, for it is leading the activities of mankind towards a dangerous showdown with the limitations of the natural world.”

I like above statement. 

This game of interest rate putting up and down could create a crisis if somebody implemented at the wrong time. I consider interest rate as a weapon of mass of destruction if we manage it recklessly. Interest rate volatility creates problems for investors, homeowners and other savers. What about instruments linked to interest rates? What will happen if we don’t carefully manage or misuse those instruments? Why do we see higher interest rates in some periods and lower interest rates in some periods? Can’t we find solution to fix interest rates without creating volatility?”

The discussion, which is about to take many an unforeseen turn, continues tomorrow…things are about to get lively (at least lively as far as short-term interest rates discussions go) indeed!

Stay tuned and Trust Jesus.

Stay Fresh!

David Mint

Key Indicators for April 28, 2014

Copper Price per Lb: $3.07
Oil Price per Barrel: $100.93
Corn Price per Bushel: $5.07
10 Yr US Treasury Bond: 2.68%
Bitcoin price in US: $431.71
FED Target Rate: 0.10%
Gold Price Per Ounce: $1,303
MINT Perceived Target Rate*: 0.25%
Unemployment Rate: 6.7%
Inflation Rate (CPI): 0.2%
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 16,361
M1 Monetary Base: $2,721,500,000,000
M2 Monetary Base: $11,353,000,000,000