Tag: Richard Fischer

Richard Fischer, one of the few relatively honest Federal Reserve governors, stated on Friday that QE would be no more by October of this year. Without the $85 billion per month of monetary heroine being pumped into its veins, how will Wall Street continue to levitate the stock market? It won’t. It is already beginning to experience the shakes as the heroine dose is being lessened. John Hussman’s Weekly Letter has some excellent quotes that accurately reflect the current environment and reflect the reality of a coming stock market crash. Enjoy.

“After the tech bubble broke, the Fed jumped in to save the markets and economy with a period of extraordinarily low interest rates, which then led to the gross malinvestment in the housing sector (another bubble) and the misallocation of capital in the credit markets. The housing bubble imploded first, and the credit markets followed, leading to one of the worst financial crises in US history in 2008. Once again, the Fed stepped in to save the markets and the economy, this time with really free money (0% short-term interest rates for almost six years and counting) as well as trillions of dollars in outright money printing. Every time the Fed steps in… money gets misallocated and trouble follows.” – Fred Hickey

“Some of the misallocations noted by Hickey include the Fed-enabled runup in the national debt to $17.57 trillion, the surge in global debt issuance to $100 trillion, up from $70 trillion at the mid-2007 peak, the suspension of any need to address unfunded entitlement liabilities, a doubling of the student loan burden, record highs in subprime auto lending, soaring corporate borrowing – partly to buy back stock at inflated valuations (notes Hickey, “as they always tend to do at market tops”) and partly to prop up sagging per-share earnings, a record $465.7 billion in margin debt, more initial public offerings in Q1 than at any point since the 2000 bubble peak, and a litany of other speculative outcomes.” – John Hussman

“Through financial engineering, we have helped bolster a roaring bull market for equities… Alongside these signs of rebound have been some developments that give rise to caution. I have spoken of these in recent speeches, echoing concerns I have raised in FOMC discussions: The [cyclically adjusted] price-to-earnings (PE) ratio of stocks is among the highest decile of reported values since 1881. .. the market capitalization of the U.S. stock market as a percentage of the country’s economic output has more than doubled to 145 percent—the highest reading since the record was set in March 2000… Margin debt has been setting historic highs for several months running and, according to data released by the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, now stands at $466 billion… Junk-bond yields have declined below 5.5 percent, nearing record lows… Covenant-lite lending is becoming more widespread. In my Federal Reserve District, 96 percent of which is the booming economy of Texas, bankers are reporting that money center banks are lending on terms that are increasingly imprudent. The former funds manager in me sees these as yellow lights. The central banker in me is reminded of the mandate to safeguard financial stability.” – Richard Fischer

“The financial markets are at a transition that reflects tension between two realities. The first is that the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing has driven the stock market to valuations associated with the most extreme speculative peaks on record, coupled with a fresh boom in initial public offerings – with companies having zero or negative earnings accounting for three-quarters of new issuance – and record issuance of “covenant lite” leveraged loans (loans to already highly indebted borrowers, lacking normal protections that mitigate losses in the event of default). The other reality is that unconventional monetary policy has done little to push real economic activity or employment past the border that has historically distinguished expansions from recessions (about 1.8% year-over-year growth in both real final sales and non-farm payroll employment).

The good news is that despite the long-term cost of diverting hundreds of billions to speculative pursuits instead of productive investment, a substantial retreat in the stock market and accompanying losses in illusory “wealth” is likely to compound this damage only weakly and temporarily – provided that the Fed is diligent in its oversight responsibilities and actively looks to minimize any systemic fallout from the portion of margin debt and leveraged loans that will inevitably go bad.” – John Hussman