Central Perk

sâmbătă, 26 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Economic Illusions vs. Reality; Helicopter Drop, What Else?

Posted: 26 Dec 2015 05:10 PM PST

Without providing a link, ZeroHedge posted some comments today regarding "Helicopter Drop Theory" by Willem Buiter, Citibank's Chief Economist.

Willem Buiter on Failure of Monetary Policy

We believe that a common factor in the relatively low response of real economic activity to changes in asset prices and yields is probably the fact that the euro area remains highly leveraged. The total debt of households, non-financial enterprises and the general government sector as a share of GDP is higher now than it was at the beginning of the GFC.

The wealth effect of higher stock prices appears to do little to boost private consumer expenditure.

To the extent that monetary policy has had an effect on real activity, and will have some incremental effect on activity, it may not be entirely sustainable. This is because part of the effect has been by bringing forward demand from the future, such as major purchases, including for cars or construction. That suggests that monetary policy, even if and when it has been effective in stimulating activity, will run into diminishing returns even in sustaining the levels of activity it helped to boost.

Economic Illusions vs. Reality

I wholeheartedly agree with every point made above by Buiter. Actually, things are far worse than he stated. The problem is not just in Europe, but everywhere.

With their deflation-fighting tactics, central banks have accomplished five things, none of them any good.

Brought demand forward at the expense of future GDP
Encouraged more leverage
Increased speculation in financial assets
Created bubbles in equities and bonds
Mistook economic activity for what much of it really is: malinvestment

The solution is not more craziness, but rather an admission that central banks are themselves the source of the problem.

Of course Keynesian fools would never admit such a thing. Instead they promote more and more of what common sense and history proves cannot work.

Willem Buiter Proposes Helicopter Drop

"Helicopter money drops (what else?)"

Our conclusion is that, in a financially-challenged economy like the Eurozone, with policy rates close to the ELB, and with excessive leverage in both the public and private sectors, balance sheet expansion by the central bank alone may not be sufficient to boost aggregate demand by enough to achieve the inflation target in a sustained manner.

This is more than an academic curiosity. Japan has failed to achieve a sustained positive rate of inflation since its great financial crash in 1990. The balance sheet expansion of the Bank of Japan since the crisis has been remarkable but ineffective as regards the achievement of sustained positive inflation and, since 2000, the inflation target. The balance sheet of the Swiss National Bank has expanded even more impressively, again with no discernable impact on the inflation rate.

The case for helicopter money is therefore partly to ensure the euro area (and some other advanced economies) reflate powerfully enough to escape the liquidity trap, rather than settle in a lasting rut of low-flation and low growth, with "emergency" levels of asset purchases and interest rates becoming the norm.

If, as seems possible, the ECB will increase, in H1 2016, the scale of its monthly asset purchases from €60bn to, say, €75bn, and if these additional purchases are concentrated on public debt, the euro area will benefit from a 'backdoor' helicopter money drop –something long overdue.

Myth of the Deflation Monster

Buiter wants to slay an imaginary monster, deflation.

He moans "Japan has failed to achieve a sustained positive rate of inflation since its great financial crash in 1990."

Other than the absolute mess Japan has gotten into as a direct result of decades of deflation fighting madness, what problem has a lack of sustained positive rate of inflation caused Japan?

The answer is: None.

The bank of Japan is now the entire market for Japanese debt. What positive result stems from that?

The answer once again is: None.

Nonetheless Buiter wants the ECB to pursue the same inane path.

There will be no benefit. Leverage will rise, not sink. And to top it off, debt purchases of the nature he wants are likely illegal under the Maastricht treaty.

Buiter has learned nothing from history. He ought to look in a mirror, admit he sees failure, and resign.

But economic illiterates don't resign, they just keep promoting policies that both common sense and history show can never work.

Challenge to Keynesians

The simple fact of the mater is "Inflation Benefits the Wealthy" (At the Expense of Everyone Else) .

If Buiter disagrees, he can respond to my Challenge to Keynesians "Prove Rising Prices Provide an Overall Economic Benefit"

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Evolution of Shipping: Amazon Starts Own Air Cargo and Trucking Services

Posted: 26 Dec 2015 03:03 PM PST

Evolution of Shipping

After announcing Amazon Prime, free Two-Day Shipping for eligible purchases, Amazon followed up Air Prime, a future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using drones.

The next logical step is for Amazon to cut out as many air delivery middlemen as it possibly can.

Thus, it cannot be much of a surprise to learn Amazon Starting its Own Air Cargo Operation.

Cargo Facts reported today [December 18] that Amazon is building its own cargo operation and is in talks with Boeing to acquire up to 20 767-freighter jets to help deliver packages to customers around the U.S.

The Seattle Times also reported about Amazon's plans on Thursday, but noted that the company is looking to lease jets, not purchase them, because it does not have an Air Operator's Certificate, among other reasons.

When asked for comment, Amazon.com provided this statement to GeekWire: "We have a longstanding practice of not commenting on rumors and speculation."

An article last month ["A Mysterious Air Cargo Operation, Amazon.com?"] noted that a mysterious company, presumably Amazon, was flying four cargo flights per day out of Ohio's Wilmington Air Park, which previously served as a facility for DHL until 2008.

The mystery company used four contracted Boeing 767s that fly to and from four U.S. airports - Allentown, Ontario (CA), Tampa, Oakland - that all have nearby Amazon distribution centers.

Having more control of the entire end-to-end customer experience would also help Amazon avoid issues it has had with third-party delivery companies like UPS during its busy holiday season.

Amazon Branded Trucks

On December 4, Amazon announced Branded Truck Trailers for Inventory Management.

for Amazon, the initiative is the latest sign of the e-commerce giant's increasing interest in taking transportation of its merchandise into its own hands.

The company still relies on traditional mail to deliver most packages, but Amazon has been experimenting with its own methods, including bicycle couriers, Amazon Fresh delivery trucks, drones and an Uber-like crowdsourced delivery system.

The release notes the company has begun rolling out thousands of trailers to "increase capacity for package delivery from fulfillment centers to sort centers."

In other words, the trailers won't be delivering packages to customers' doors.

Amazon Planes

Amazon Trucks

Amazon Drones

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Damn Cool Pics

The 12 Facts of Christmas – Things You Didn’t Know! [Infographic]

Posted: 26 Dec 2015 11:13 AM PST

Mulled wine, mince pies, chocolate and treats – these are all things that we associate with Christmas, but how many of them does poor old Santa consume on his way round the world? 150 billion calories is the answer! It would take him a whopping 166 million hours of running to burn it off, too. These facts, plus a tantalising 11 more of them, are waiting for you in this yuletide infographic from Up Up & Away.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Via upupandaway.co.uk

Seth's Blog : Business ethics, ripples and the work that matters

Business ethics, ripples and the work that matters

The happy theory of business ethics is this: do the right thing and you will also maximize your long-term profit.

After all, the thinking goes, doing the right thing builds your brand, burnishes your reputation, helps you attract better staff and gives back to the community, the very community that will in turn buy from you. Do all of that and of course you'll make more money. Problem solved.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.

If you would like to believe in business ethics, the unhappy theory is a huge problem.

As the world gets more complex, as it's harder to see the long-term given the huge short-term bets that are made, as business gets less transparent ("which company made that, exactly?") and as the web of interactions makes it harder for any one person to stand up and take responsibility, the happy theory begins to fall apart. After all, if the long-term effects of a decision today can't possibly have any impact on the profit of this project (which will end in six weeks), then it's difficult to argue that maximizing profit and doing the right thing are aligned. The local store gets very little long-term profit for its good behavior if it goes out of business before the long-term arrives.

It comes down to this: only people can have ethics. Ethics, as in, doing the right thing for the community even though it might not benefit you or your company financially. Pointing to the numbers (or to the boss) is an easy refuge for someone who would like to duck the issue, but the fork in the road is really clear. You either do work you are proud of, or you work to make the maximum amount of money. (It would be nice if those overlapped every time, but they rarely do).

"I just work here" is the worst sort of ethical excuse. I'd rather work with a company filled with ethical people than try to find a company that's ethical. In fact, companies we think of as ethical got that way because ethical people made it so.

I worry that we absolve ourselves of responsibility when we talk about business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Corporations are collections of people, and we ought to insist that those people (that would be us) do the right thing. Business is too powerful for us to leave our humanity at the door of the office. It's not business, it's personal.

[I learned this lesson from my Dad. Every single day he led by example, building a career and a company based on taking personal responsibility, not on blaming the heartless, profit-focused system.]

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Seth's Blog : Very good results (and an alternative)

Very good results (and an alternative)

Hard work, diligence and focus often lead to very good results. These are the organizations and individuals that consistently show up and work toward their goals.

But exceptional results, hyper-growth and remarkable products and services rarely come from the path that leads to very good results. These are non-linear events, and they don't come from linear effort or linear skill.

It's tempting to adopt the grind-it-out mindset, because that's something we know how to do, it's a method that we can model, it's a sort of work ethic.

But by itself, the grind-it-out mindset isn't going to get us a leap. It's not going to lead to a line out the door or 15% monthly growth. That only comes from giving up.

We need to give up some of the truths that are the foundation of our work, or give up on some of the people we work with, or give up on the conventional wisdom. Mostly, we need to give up on getting approval from our peers.

Of course, we still have to keep showing up and grinding out. But we have to do it with a different rhythm, in service of a different outcome.

More hours in the practice room doesn't turn a pretty good musician into a jazz pioneer. More hours in front of the computer doesn't make your writing breathtaking.

Sure, the work might be just as hard, but it's work of a different sort.

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vineri, 25 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Fed a Creature of Financial Markets; The Draghi PUT; Global Crisis Coming Up

Posted: 25 Dec 2015 12:20 PM PST

Creature of Financial Markets

Stephen Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, blasts the Greenspan Fed, the Bernanke Fed, and the Yellen Fed in his latest post The Perils of Fed Gradualism.

After an extended period of extraordinary monetary accommodation, the US Federal Reserve has begun the long march back to normalization. It has now taken the first step toward returning its benchmark policy interest rate – the federal funds rate – to a level that imparts neither stimulus nor restraint to the US economy.

A majority of financial market participants applaud this strategy. In fact, it is a dangerous mistake. The Fed is borrowing a page from the script of its last normalization campaign – the incremental rate hikes of 2004-2006 that followed the extraordinary accommodation of 2001-2003. Just as that earlier gradualism set the stage for a devastating financial crisis and a horrific recession in 2008-2009, there is mounting risk of yet another accident on what promises to be an even longer road to normalization.

The problem arises because the Fed, like other major central banks, has now become a creature of financial markets rather than a steward of the real economy. This transformation has been under way since the late 1980s, when monetary discipline broke the back of inflation and the Fed was faced with new challenges.

The challenges of the post-inflation era came to a head during Alan Greenspan's 18-and-a-half-year tenure as Fed Chair. The stock-market crash of October 19, 1987 – occurring only 69 days after Greenspan had been sworn in – provided a hint of what was to come. In response to a one-day 23% plunge in US equity prices, the Fed moved aggressively to support the brokerage system and purchase government securities.

In retrospect, this was the template for what became known as the "Greenspan put" – massive Fed liquidity injections aimed at stemming financial-market disruptions in the aftermath of a crisis. As the markets were battered repeatedly in the years to follow – from the savings-and-loan crisis (late 1980s) and the Gulf War (1990-1991) to the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-1998) and terrorist attacks (September 11, 2001) – the Greenspan put became an essential element of the Fed's market-driven tactics.

The Fed had, in effect, become beholden to the monster it had created. The corollary was that it had also become steadfast in protecting the financial-market-based underpinnings of the US economy.

Largely for that reason, and fearful of "Japan Syndrome" in the aftermath of the collapse of the US equity bubble, the Fed remained overly accommodative during the 2003-2006 period.

Over time, the Fed's dilemma has become increasingly intractable. The crisis and recession of 2008-2009 was far worse than its predecessors, and the aftershocks were far more wrenching. Yet, because the US central bank had repeatedly upped the ante in providing support to the Asset Economy, taking its policy rate to zero, it had run out of traditional ammunition.

Today's Fed inherits the deeply entrenched moral hazard of the Asset Economy. In carefully crafted, highly conditional language, it is signaling much greater gradualism relative to its normalization strategy of a decade ago. The debate in the markets is whether there will be two or three rate hikes of 25 basis points per year – suggesting that it could take as long as four years to return the federal funds rate to a 3% norm.

But, as the experience of 2004-2007 revealed, the excess liquidity spawned by gradual normalization leaves financial markets predisposed to excesses and accidents. With prospects for a much longer normalization, those risks are all the more worrisome.

Only by shortening the normalization timeline can the Fed hope to reduce the build-up of systemic risks. The sooner the Fed takes on the markets, the less likely the markets will be to take on the economy. Yes, a steeper normalization path would produce an outcry. But that would be far preferable to another devastating crisis.

Beholden to Financial Markets

Roach provides a nice historical perspective but he misses the boat in regards to risks.

Not only is the Fed a creature of the Financial markets, it is beholden to the markets. For some treasury durations, the Fed became the market.

Unfortunately, it's not just the Fed.

Global Crisis Coming Up

Global imbalances have never been worse.

The Bank of Japan is the only market for Japanese government debt. And in Europe, government debt trades at preposterously low and sometimes negative yields. The "Draghi PUT" is at least as big as any PUT by Greenspan.

The risk is not that the Fed (central banks in general) will spawn more asset bubbles. It's far too late to raise that concern. Massive bubbles in equities and bonds have already been blown.

Banks that were "too big to fail" are far bigger now than ever before.

Beggar-thy-neighbor competitive currency debasement is the order of the day in China, Europe, and Japan.

Let's not pretend we have a choice that will prevent another devastating financial crisis. We don't. Only the timing is in question.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Merry Christmas!

Posted: 25 Dec 2015 10:15 AM PST

Economic reports will commence in just a bit. First things first. Merry Christmas!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Seth's Blog : Let's build a school

Let's build a school

Consider a last-minute donation to Room to Read. They will facilitate the building of a school in a village that has no school.

Imagine growing up in a place with no school...

And your donation will be matched dollar for dollar. It's difficult to overestimate the long-term impact of literacy. I've been a supporter for years, and it always feel good.

And.. Some of my colleagues have stepped up and started the Compassion Collective, an urgent cause supporting those most in need from the refugee crisis. Please consider adding your support.

Also: If you get some downtime this vacation, you might want to check out two thank you gifts from me:

My course on business models. It's free for the first 2,000 people who take it this week, happy holidays.

And the persistently popular, if a little low-fidelity, Startup School podcast, recorded live a few years ago.

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sâmbătă, 26 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Seth's Blog : Business ethics, ripples and the work that matters

Business ethics, ripples and the work that matters

More Recent Articles

Seth's Blog : Very good results (and an alternative)

Very good results (and an alternative)

More Recent Articles

vineri, 25 decembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Let's build a school

Let's build a school

More Recent Articles

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