Eric Janszen: We Are Witnessing The Death Of The Dollar

What do you get when the producer of the world's reserve currency takes on too much debt? Nothing less than the end of the US Treasury-based monetary system. So says Eric Jansen, economic and financial market analyst and proprietor of iTulip.com. In chronicling the decline of the global economy over the past decade, Eric has formulated a framework called the "Ka-POOM" theory, which endeavors to understand how the immense run-up in global debt will be resolved. In short, it looks at the at the credit bubble that began in the early 1980's, started accelerating in 1995, and has now reached epic proportions. The amounts are so staggering at this stage that Eric believes it is too politically undesirable to let natural market adjustments clear them away - the magnitude of the deflationary pain this would create is simply unacceptable for politicians looking to get re-elected. The only other available option left is to service these debts via a dramatically devalued currency. Hence the key role the Fed is playing today. The Fed is at the epicenter of this process, intervening heavily to keep the natural corrective market forces at bay. In this, it has a dual strategy. The first is to keep asset prices high (i.e., fight asset deflation), which it is doing by keeping interest rates historically low. The second is to keep wage and commodity costs under control, which it primarily does via devaluing the currency (maintaining a "weak dollar"). And, of course, through its intervention, the Fed is doing all it can to keep the current financial system in place to perpetuate the process for as long as possible. The end result is a fundamental shift in risk from Wall Street to the taxpayer.

Germany "Raises" €55.5 Billion, or 1% Of Its Debt/GDP Ratio, Thanks To Derivative "Accounting Error"

As usual, the most surreal news of the day, perhaps week, is saved for Friday night, when we learn that Germany has magically raised over a quarter of its total EFSF obligation of €211 billion by way of what is essentially magic. The Telegraph reports that "Germany is €55bn richer than it previously thought because of an accounting error at state-owned bank Hypo Real Estate Holding. The mistake at "bad bank" FMS Wertmanagement, happened because collateral for derivatives wasn't netted between the asset and liability side, an FMS spokesman said. As a result, FMS will only contribute about €161bn to Germany's debt this year, down from €216.5bn in 2010." Another way of representing the error is that it is equal to a ridiculous 1% of the country's debt to GDP ratio. "Germany's 2010 debt-to-GDP ratio also drops, to 83.2% from the previous 84.2%, a finance ministry spokesman said." In other words, the modern world, best characterized by the imploding fiat ponzi, has discovered a way to raise capital (electronic, naturally) courtesy of CDS bookmarking errors. And now, we have seen it all.

Modest Late Day Excitement Tops Quiet Day

FX markets have pretty much trodden water for the last 24 hours with admittedly a small USD bullish bias providing little ammo for any correlation-driven risk-asset moves today. Credit markets did wonder gently up and down but ES was like a Parkinson's patient off his meds as it noisily whipped up and down in a small range generally tracking credit. Into the close HY and ES surged (on nothing except perhaps the EUR futures CoT data) as MF Global's stock price dived but HY managed to hold and close at its highs while ES pulled back modestly. IG didn't play into the late day exuberance and we suspect the HY shift is more index arb as intrinsics actually widened on the day and the index remains cheap. HY is still 'cheap' as a risk asset relative to equities which might explain some of the grab here into the close but with a weekend of uncertainty ahead, why not wait til Monday to add risk? Copper managed to rally from pre-open today as did oil marginally but Silver and Gold were unimpressive as they held gains (much as DXY was holding its losses on the week).

Dollar Bulls are Trapped if the RISK TRADES continue

Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 3 hours ago

Take a look at the following Commitment of Traders chart detailing the huge number of speculators that are positioned on the Long side of the US Dollar. There was a large amount of talk about the Dollar embarking on a Bull market not all that long ago and that combined with the Flight out of the Euro sent huge numbers of these specs rushing into the Dollar. When the Europeans rained on their parade this week, the bottom dropped out of the Greenback as there was no one on the other side of the market to buy the Dollar from these specs who were all frantically selling it at the same t... more » 

 

Weekly Silver Chart

Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 3 hours ago

Silver had a very impressive weekly performance gaining more than $4 for the week and managing to squeak out a close above the 50 week moving average. You will note that it still remains below both the 10 week and the 20 week moving averages which continue heading lower so silver is not out of the woods just yet. One would ideally want to see the metal get above both of these moving averages and see the shorter term 10 week turn higher. That would give us a shift from bearish to bullish on the WEEKLY CHART. Also, note that downsloping line drawn on the chart that comes in very close ... more » 

 

HUI technical chart

Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 3 hours ago

The HUI put on a spectacular showing this week gaining more than 65 points and taking out several overhead resistance levels on its price chart in the process. The catalyst seemed to be the positive response by the broader equity markets to news coming out of Europe regarding their bank recapitalization plan and their funding of the Stability Mechanism. While I am personally repulsed by such actions the facts are that the hedge fund community could not wait for the ink to dry on the press release before they began pouring money back into the Risk Trades. The resultant rally in stock... more » 

Be Honest – The European Debt Deal Was Really A Greek Debt Default

Posted by : ilene

Post date: 10/28/2011 - 19:45

2012 looks like it is going to be an extremely painful year. 

 

 

 

 

Royal Canadian Mint offers its own convertible gold ETF

 

 

 

 

Duh, ya think? Canadian central banker says QE weakens the currency

 

 

 

 

Weekly Bull/Bear Recap: October 24-28

Your one stop, comprehensive summary of the main bullish and bearish events in the past week.

Quote Of The Week

Presented without commentary:

"The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending." -

Larry Summers, source

Sorry Yahoo, Hopefully Third Time Will Be The Charm

Next time Microsoft offers to buy you, you say yes.

• YAHOO SAID TO LEAN TOWARD DIVIDEND, BUYBACK INSTEAD OF SALE
• YAHOO SAID TO CONSIDER SELLING ASIA ASSETS ALONE

 That's right - another "take under." Sorry to anyone who bought this stock on a take out/13F clone play.





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