Global Economic Crisis

With Ben Bernanke  now gone (but not forgotten), Janet Yellen replaces him in the role of being the most important central banker on the planet. However, Ms. Yellen does not begin her role as the first woman to serve as chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve at the most auspicious of times.

In its latest version of quantitative easing, the Fed had been purchasing 85 billion dollars a month of bonds with money it prints at will, seeking to keep the economy afloat and interest rates artificially low. However, even the architect of this program, Bernanke, knew that this avalanche of manufactured liquidity was unsustainable in the long term. Thus, the Fed began a process known as “tapering,” in effect, slowly winding down the bond buying program and hope and pray that the world financial system doesn’t come apart at the seams.

Thus far, the bond purchasing program has been modestly reduced, initially to 75 billion dollars each month, with an announcement of a forthcoming reduction to 65 billion dollars per month. Despite these modest efforts at tapering its vast money printing operation, the Fed’s moves have already initiated global panic, reflected in wild volatility in equity exchanges all across the world. Stock markets, bloated by easy money printed by the Federal Reserve, are showing their fragility even during this initial, early period of monetary tapering.

Even more worrisome than the wild swings on Wall Street and many other stock markets has been the impact of tapering on major emerging markets. At its peak, quantitative easing had the effect of putting into the hands of major investors cheap money, but with virtual zero interest rates at home . The result of all this was to send this horde of cheap  U.S. dollars overseas, where a higher rate of return was offered by riskier emerging markets. However, the onset of tapering points to higher interests rates in the future for the U.S. economy, leading to the start of a process of repatriation of those cheap dollars back to the United States. As the process begins, emerging markets are already feeling the pinch, with nations such as Turkey, Brazil and South Africa beginning to incur fiscal pressure, leading to significant runs on their currencies concomitant with a rise in interest rates.

Fed Chair Yellen will now face the daunting task of unwinding the monetary mess created by her processor, supposedly for the purpose of saving the U.S. economy from the mistakes made by past policymakers, including former Fed Chairman Bernanke. As we are witnessing with the increasing fragility of emerging markets, the future policies of Yellen will have a decisive impact on the entire global economy, for good or ill.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

Hillary Clinton Nude

Hillary Clinton Nude

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

Likely to be contained? No economic forecast has ever been so catastrophically flawed as Ben Bernanke’s utterance before the Joint Economic Committee. And that was by no means the only wrong prediction uttered by Ben Bernanke, as the subprime crisis morphed into a full-blown financial meltdown, leading to the Global Economic Crisis. The track record established by Ben Bernanke in predicting the consequences of an unfolding economic crisis of unprecedented global ferocity has been downright calamitous. Yet this same deficient analyzer of economic phenomena remains as chairman of the Fed, with unchallenged powers to set monetary policy.

As the subprime crisis became something much worse, Bernanke adopted a slightly different tack in his public posture. Rather than rosy forecasts, he boasted about the lavish toolkit that the Fed possessed. “We have many tools in our toolkit,” boasted Bernanke on more than occasion, cheerfully promising to use all the tools he felt were necessary.

The vocabulary that the Fed Chairman has succumbed to I find absolutely fascinating. Massive monetary decisions that are risky in the extreme, and will likely have intergenerational consequences, become mere “tools.” The consequential becomes the ubiquitous.

Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have been in panic mode, as the financial system became unglued. Massive quantitative easing has flooded fiat liquidity into America’s battered economy, buying a short-term respite at best, and at the cost of hyperinflation down the road. Most troubling, and often in total secrecy, the Fed has been bailing out Wall Street, above and beyond the TARP program being managed by the Treasury Department. Since last September and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the Fed’s balance sheet has doubled to more than $2 trillion. Most troubling is the quality of that balance sheet, which has historically been composed primarily of Treasuries. Now, however, at least 75% of the Federal Reserve’s balance is in the form of questionable assets, such as mortgage backed securities. In effect, Ben Bernanke has transformed the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet into the nation’s largest toxic dump. It may be only a matter of time before the Fed approaches Congress-and U.S. taxpayers- for a bailout of its own.

While Bernanke may still inspire confidence from President Obama, he frankly scares the hell out of me. Isn’t it time we took away the toolkit from this disaster-prone Fed Chairman, before it is too late?

There is not even a glimmer of optimism in the IMF forecast, except in the sense that some regions will contract at slower levels than others. Japan is projected to decline by 5.8 %, with lower but still shattering levels of economic contraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and Eurozone. Emerging markets, especially Eastern Europe, are assessed as being particularly vulnerable to the turbulence being unleashed by the Global Economic Crisis. “The risks are largest for emerging countries that rely on cross-border flows to finance current account deficits,” concludes the IMF in reference to the impact the global financial crisis and credit crunch have had on the debt-dependant economies of Eastern Europe.

Reading between the lines of the IMF forecast, it is clear that the contraction ratios would be even more severe, but are in effect being masked to a certain degree by so-called economic stimulus programs. In effect, future tax money is being borrowed to artificially create employment in the near term. However, the IMF report alludes to the challenges to be faced in 2010, when less stimulus spending is projected, especially in Europe. This is already a source of contention between the United States, which is currently projecting a deficit of 12% of her GDP, and the European Union where, in comparison, a much lower ratio is being allocated within the Eurozone. The UK, however, is forecast by the IMF to have attained a fiscal deficit in 2010 that will comprise 11% of her GDP, nearly the same percentage as is the case with the US federal budget.

With deficits soaring and projections of global economic contraction multiplying, the U.S. Federal Reserve has made its own unique contribution to the toxic brew being stirred in the midst of our worldwide economic catastrophe. As I have previously warned in my earlier blog comments regarding Ben Bernanke and quantitative easing, the Fed has now officially announced that it will fire up the printing presses and conjure out of thin air $1.2 trillion of freshly minted fiat currency, which it will utilize for purchasing Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. This is an act of desperation, devoid of any long-term strategic framework. In a panic to achieve a short-term reversal of economic fortunes in the U.S., the all-powerful Federal Reserve has embarked upon an experiment in quantitative easing and government debt-monetization that will inevitably unleash the dangerous prospect of hyperinflation. Defenders of the Fed’s reckless gamble with America’s fiscal and monetary health will argue that currently deflation is a much greater danger than hyperinflation. This is accurate only in a very short-term time horizon. If anything, the Global Economic Crisis has shown how powerful financial and economic currents can be turned around on a dime. Last summer, the price of oil skyrocketed, reaching levels of nearly $150 per barrel, with serious financial analysts projecting a much higher price in the near future. Within a matter of weeks, the world witnessed a radical reversal in the price of oil and other commodities. I mention this as a warning that disastrous policy measures being enacted by the Fed can transform deflation into hyperinflation much more rapidly than can presently be envisioned.

Between news bulletins concerning the IMF and World Bank reports that are forecasting the most severe global economic contraction in 60 years, and the $1.2 trillion in make-believe money being manufactured by the Fed, it is inexplicable why major stock markets are undergoing a rally of sorts. Could this be the calm before the storm?