Tag: Panic

Fragility: What Has the Watchers Worried In the US Debt Markets

Guest Post by Jesse

As you know I am on the lookout for a ‘trigger event’ that might spark another financial crisis, given the composition of the economy and the financial markets.

In the last financial crisis 2008, it was the failure of the two Bear Stearns hedge funds that exposed the grossly mispriced risks in mortgage backed financial assets, and the generally flawed nature of the market’s collateralized debt obligations. This led to a cascade of failures in fraudulently priced assets, and resulted in increasingly large institutional failures, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

One can draw some parallels with the financial crisis before that, which was the gross mispricing of risk and inflated values of internet-related tech companies that had grown to obviously epic proportions by 2000. A failure of several key tech bellwethers to make their numbers, and some negative results in the economy, showed the flaws in the underlying assumptions in what was clearly an asset bubble. And once the selling started, it was Katy-bar-the-door.

The failure of two relatively minor hedge funds was not a great event. The failure of a tech bellwether to make its quarterly numbers is not either. But their interconnectedness to the other portions of the world markets through the financial institutions on Wall Street, and more importantly, the fragile nature of the entire pyramid scheme of fraudulently constructed and mispriced risk of financial assets, caused an inherently shaky system to fall apart. What was most shocking was how quickly it happened once the dominos started falling.

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PANIC BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE DOES

For the lazy people who don’t like to slog through Hussman’s entire data laden weekly tome, I’ve picked out the most pertinent sections. For the really lazy, I’ve bolded the most important sentences. When everyone on Wall Street is using the same algorithms in their HFT supercomputers, and John Q. Public isn’t even in the market, who will these supercomputers sell to when they all get the sell signal at the same time? When that time comes, and it won’t be long, I’ll be munching popcorn and watching the festivities unfold. The talking heads, government apparatchiks, and Ivy League educated big swinging dicks on Wall Street will declare a national emergency and demand another bailout. Will we be stupid enough to fall for it again, or will we start hanging bankers? 

The higher the price an investor pays for a given stream of expected cash flows today, the lower the return that an investor should expect over the long-term. As detailed below, investors have responded to zero interest rates by driving stock valuations up to the point where expected market returns over the coming decade are also zero. Given that outcome, one is quite free to say that stocks are reasonably valued “relative” to zero interest rates, but one should still expect zero 10-year returns on stocks.

My impression is that’s not how investors are thinking. Particularly at market peaks, investors seem to believe that regardless of the extent of the preceding advance, future returns remain entirely unaffected. The repeated eagerness of investors to extrapolate returns and ignore the Iron Law of Valuation has been the source of the deepest losses in history.

Current valuations are above the 2007 peak, and are now within about 15% of the 2000 extreme.

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The Day the ATMs Run Out …

Guest Post by

Receding Tide

Please remember this warning when you go to the ATM to get cash… and there is none! While we were thinking about what was really going on with today’s strange new money system, a startling thought occurred to us.

Our financial system could take a surprising and catastrophic twist that almost nobody imagines, let alone anticipates. Do you remember when a lethal tsunami hit the beaches of Southeast Asia, killing thousands of people and causing billions of dollars of damage?

Well, just before the 80-foot wall of water slammed into the coast an odd thing happened: The water disappeared. The tide went out farther than anyone had ever seen before. Local fishermen headed for high ground immediately. They knew what it meant. But the tourists went out onto the beach looking for shells!

 

atm

The same thing could happen to the money supply: Cash could evaporate suddenly and disastrously – just before we drown in it.

Photo via toastmagazine.net

 

Credit Money

Here’s how … and why:

If you look at M2 money supply – which measures coins and notes in circulation as well as bank deposits and money market accounts – America’s money stock amounted to $11.7 trillion as of last month. But there was just $1.3 trillion of physical currency in circulation – about only half of which is in the US. (Nobody knows for sure.)
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QUOTES OF THE DAY – PANIC EDITION

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“In February 1720 an edict was published, which, instead of restoring the credit of the paper, as was intended, destroyed it irrecoverably, and drove the country to the very brink of revolution…”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.”

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“It happens that crashes and panics often are precipitated by the revelation of some misfeasance, malfeasance, or malversation (the corruption of officials) engendered during the mania. It seems clear from the historical record that swindles are a response to the greedy appetite for wealth stimulated by the boom. And as the monetary system gets stretched, institutions lose liquidity, and unsuccessful swindles are about to be revealed, the temptation to take the money and run becomes virtually irresistible.”

Charles Kindleberger