May 12 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar’s rally is set to end in a “currency crisis,” investor Jim Rogers said, adding that he may bet on a slide in equities after nine weeks of gains.
The advance in the U.S. currency has been driven by investors covering their short sales, Rogers, 66, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore. He may consider adding to his holdings of the yen and prefers the euro to the dollar or the pound, the investor added.
“We’re going to have a currency crisis, probably this fall or the fall of 2010,” Rogers said. “It’s been building up for a long time. We’ve had a huge rally in the dollar, an artificial rally in the dollar, so it’s time for a currency crisis.”
The dollar has climbed against all of the so-called Group of 10 currencies except the yen over the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The U.S. currency was at $1.3592 per euro today from $1.3582.
Rogers joins “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in avoiding the U.S. currency. Taleb told a May 7 conference in Singapore he preferred gold and copper to the dollar and the euro as the global economy faces a “big deflation.”
Gains in U.S. stocks also signal a “correction,” Rogers said. He’s avoiding equities for the next two to three years because prospects haven’t changed, he added.
‘Correction’
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has jumped 34 percent from its March 9 low, erasing its losses for the year. The gauge plunged 38 percent in 2008, its worst year since the Great Depression.
“The market in the U.S. went up very powerfully for nine weeks in a row so of course it’s time for a correction,” Rogers said. “Fundamentals haven’t changed if you ask me. I don’t see the stock market as a great place to be in the next two to three years.”
Rogers said on Feb. 11 he had renewed bets that U.S. stocks including International Business Machines Corp., General Electric Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will drop. The S&P 500 fell 19 percent before reaching its March low.
Equity markets may dip below recent lows as more troubles lay ahead in the financial market, Rogers said in a separate interview on April 13. Rogers is the author of “A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market.”
“Technical indicators suggest the market is overheating and investors are ready to take profit after recent gains,” Toshio Sumitani, a strategist at Tokai Tokyo Securities Co., said today.
Asian Stocks
Asian stocks fell from a seven-month high, led by banks and mining companies, as investors sold shares trading at their most expensive valuations in five years. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 1.3 percent to 97.25 as of 1:47 p.m. in Tokyo, snapping a six-day advance.
Meredith Whitney, the former Oppenheimer & Co. analyst who predicted a slide in U.S. bank shares, said yesterday she wouldn’t advise investors to short-sell the stocks because of the government’s influence. Still, she wouldn’t own these companies because many banks are sitting on “rotting assets,” Whitney added. She advised short-selling retail and consumer discretionary companies as more jobs are cut and consumer spending declines.
Read Entire Article
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Is America Broke?
Scott Burns
NSN Money
May 11, 2009
Prices dropped last year. But we still need to invest to protect ourselves from inflation. That’s why our retirement-plan investing needs an inflation “tilt.” You’ll understand why in a few paragraphs.
How bad will future inflation be? I don’t know. Neither does anyone else. It could be a normal inflation of 3% to 4% a year. It could also be a banana-republic 10% a month.
What we know is that all governments make promises they can’t fulfill. Our government certainly has. Under both political parties, it has taken promise making to a high art. This is not hyperbole. The figures can be found in regularly published government reports.
Much worse than you probably think
The figures exist, but they are ignored. News reports regularly inform us of the growing federal deficit, projected at a stunning $1.75 trillion for fiscal 2009 and $1.17 trillion for 2010. But regularly reported, less visible government obligations have been growing much faster.
In the nearly five years from January 2003 to December 2007, the Medicare trustees reported that the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare grew by a stunning $10.4 trillion. The average annual growth topped $2 trillion.
Read Entire Article
NSN Money
May 11, 2009
Prices dropped last year. But we still need to invest to protect ourselves from inflation. That’s why our retirement-plan investing needs an inflation “tilt.” You’ll understand why in a few paragraphs.
How bad will future inflation be? I don’t know. Neither does anyone else. It could be a normal inflation of 3% to 4% a year. It could also be a banana-republic 10% a month.
What we know is that all governments make promises they can’t fulfill. Our government certainly has. Under both political parties, it has taken promise making to a high art. This is not hyperbole. The figures can be found in regularly published government reports.
Much worse than you probably think
The figures exist, but they are ignored. News reports regularly inform us of the growing federal deficit, projected at a stunning $1.75 trillion for fiscal 2009 and $1.17 trillion for 2010. But regularly reported, less visible government obligations have been growing much faster.
In the nearly five years from January 2003 to December 2007, the Medicare trustees reported that the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare grew by a stunning $10.4 trillion. The average annual growth topped $2 trillion.
Read Entire Article
Monday, May 11, 2009
Gold and Economic Freedom: Reinterpreted for the 21st Century
Seeeking Alpha
I do not profess that the main structural arguments of the following essay are mine. Rather they belong to a rather famous former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve named Alan Greenspan as noted in his rather seminal 1966 essay titled “Gold and Economic Freedom”. However, I have taken the specific arguments of that very prescient essay and modified and reinterpreted them to fit into the contemporary situation of our current global and financial crisis.
It is clear that at some point after his appointment to the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1987, Alan Greenspan turned his back on the very structural beliefs about gold’s inextricable connection to freedom that he championed some twenty years earlier.
However, Greenspan’s failure to uphold the ideals he once championed does not invalidate their keen insight and validity. Today, these very ideals are especially pertinent to the impending economic catastrophe we face today, despite the continued three-ring circus of government, Central Bankers, & corporate executives that continually tell us that the financial crisis has bottomed.
Today, due to the proliferation of fragile and confusing financial instruments called derivatives and the fraudulent nature of our fractional reserve banking system, hundreds of billions, and more likely, trillions of more dollars exist than claims on real assets and goods.
The comparable analogy would be if, as an Apple (AAPL) store owner, I sold the same 100 Apple desktop computers to 10,000 clients. As long as no more than 10 of my customers required delivery in any given year, then my business could operate for many years without this fraudulent scheme ever being exposed. However, the instant my clients collectively decided they wanted to take delivery of all 10,000 computers in the same month, my ruse would be exposed and my business sentenced to a fate of bankruptcy.
Almost all of us would agree that this would be an insane way to run a business, yet we readily accept the fact that all major banks in every modern, developed nation run their businesses in this very manner. However, the development of such a situation would be next to impossible with the institution of a true gold standard and this is why Alan Greenspan once made the timeless statement that economic freedom and gold are inseparable.
A true gold standard would operate as follows. The introduction of any new supplies of money into the global economy would necessitate the equivalent purchase of gold to be stored as reserves to back them. Thus, if the power to print money was returned to the U.S. government as explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, and the U.S. Treasury wished to print $1 trillion new U.S. dollars, such an action would require the purchase of an additional $1 trillion of gold to back the new dollar supply.
Of course there is not enough gold in the world to back all the trillions of dollars that exist in our current monetary supply unless gold were to be revalued somewhere in the vicinity of USD $10,000 an ounce, or perhaps even north of this figure. Or perhaps the standard would have to be a silver standard or a hybrid gold / silver standard. For the sake of a hypothetical argument, however, let’s examine how a gold standard keeps money “honest”. Once a new supply of $1 trillion was printed, every new dollar would be a claim on a portion of the U.S. Treasury’s gold reserves, not just an empty piece of paper backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government, as is the case today.
Because there is a cost to printing new supplies of dollars under a gold standard, the primary driver of monetary supply expansion would consequently become the sustainable expansion of real goods and services, NOT the speculative whims of a few powerful banking families that wish to drive up prices of unsustainable assets such as subprime mortgages, derivatives, dangerously overvalued stock markets, and rigged commodity markets for their own benefit. Inevitably, under our current fraudulent monetary system, such actions occur and lead to what the media erroneously terms as “bubbles” and which financial “experts” misinterpret as natural economic cycles.
In reality, “bubbles” are grossly distorted unsustainable valuations of assets driven by the speculation and the monetary policies of the financial oligarchs that control the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank. This is why “bubbles” always burst. By the purposeful creation of bubbles, the financial oligarchs that create them increase their riches, and then plunder the wealth of their fellow citizens when these bubbles inevitably burst. This accomplishes two important goals for the financial oligarchs.
(1) Since they create every capital market bubble in every major economy, inevitably, they understand exactly how to profit from these markets, and they increase their wealth and power substantially as these bubbles grow;
(2) Since most citizens don’t understand the extreme fragility of the bubbles the financial oligarchs create and instead interpret the bubbles as bull markets that cannot end, when the bubbles inevitably burst, this action conveniently strips wealth and power from the classes that reside below the financial oligarchs and stifles any chance for real opposition and dissent to their power.
It is the perfect con game.
J.S. Kim - Seeking Alpha
Read Entire Article
I do not profess that the main structural arguments of the following essay are mine. Rather they belong to a rather famous former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve named Alan Greenspan as noted in his rather seminal 1966 essay titled “Gold and Economic Freedom”. However, I have taken the specific arguments of that very prescient essay and modified and reinterpreted them to fit into the contemporary situation of our current global and financial crisis.
It is clear that at some point after his appointment to the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1987, Alan Greenspan turned his back on the very structural beliefs about gold’s inextricable connection to freedom that he championed some twenty years earlier.
However, Greenspan’s failure to uphold the ideals he once championed does not invalidate their keen insight and validity. Today, these very ideals are especially pertinent to the impending economic catastrophe we face today, despite the continued three-ring circus of government, Central Bankers, & corporate executives that continually tell us that the financial crisis has bottomed.
Today, due to the proliferation of fragile and confusing financial instruments called derivatives and the fraudulent nature of our fractional reserve banking system, hundreds of billions, and more likely, trillions of more dollars exist than claims on real assets and goods.
The comparable analogy would be if, as an Apple (AAPL) store owner, I sold the same 100 Apple desktop computers to 10,000 clients. As long as no more than 10 of my customers required delivery in any given year, then my business could operate for many years without this fraudulent scheme ever being exposed. However, the instant my clients collectively decided they wanted to take delivery of all 10,000 computers in the same month, my ruse would be exposed and my business sentenced to a fate of bankruptcy.
Almost all of us would agree that this would be an insane way to run a business, yet we readily accept the fact that all major banks in every modern, developed nation run their businesses in this very manner. However, the development of such a situation would be next to impossible with the institution of a true gold standard and this is why Alan Greenspan once made the timeless statement that economic freedom and gold are inseparable.
A true gold standard would operate as follows. The introduction of any new supplies of money into the global economy would necessitate the equivalent purchase of gold to be stored as reserves to back them. Thus, if the power to print money was returned to the U.S. government as explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, and the U.S. Treasury wished to print $1 trillion new U.S. dollars, such an action would require the purchase of an additional $1 trillion of gold to back the new dollar supply.
Of course there is not enough gold in the world to back all the trillions of dollars that exist in our current monetary supply unless gold were to be revalued somewhere in the vicinity of USD $10,000 an ounce, or perhaps even north of this figure. Or perhaps the standard would have to be a silver standard or a hybrid gold / silver standard. For the sake of a hypothetical argument, however, let’s examine how a gold standard keeps money “honest”. Once a new supply of $1 trillion was printed, every new dollar would be a claim on a portion of the U.S. Treasury’s gold reserves, not just an empty piece of paper backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government, as is the case today.
Because there is a cost to printing new supplies of dollars under a gold standard, the primary driver of monetary supply expansion would consequently become the sustainable expansion of real goods and services, NOT the speculative whims of a few powerful banking families that wish to drive up prices of unsustainable assets such as subprime mortgages, derivatives, dangerously overvalued stock markets, and rigged commodity markets for their own benefit. Inevitably, under our current fraudulent monetary system, such actions occur and lead to what the media erroneously terms as “bubbles” and which financial “experts” misinterpret as natural economic cycles.
In reality, “bubbles” are grossly distorted unsustainable valuations of assets driven by the speculation and the monetary policies of the financial oligarchs that control the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank. This is why “bubbles” always burst. By the purposeful creation of bubbles, the financial oligarchs that create them increase their riches, and then plunder the wealth of their fellow citizens when these bubbles inevitably burst. This accomplishes two important goals for the financial oligarchs.
(1) Since they create every capital market bubble in every major economy, inevitably, they understand exactly how to profit from these markets, and they increase their wealth and power substantially as these bubbles grow;
(2) Since most citizens don’t understand the extreme fragility of the bubbles the financial oligarchs create and instead interpret the bubbles as bull markets that cannot end, when the bubbles inevitably burst, this action conveniently strips wealth and power from the classes that reside below the financial oligarchs and stifles any chance for real opposition and dissent to their power.
It is the perfect con game.
J.S. Kim - Seeking Alpha
Read Entire Article
Big US Banks May Be Headed For Extinction—And Soon
CNBC
In the world of banking, too-big-to-fail may be in the process of morphing into too-big-to-exist.
After hundreds of billions in federal aid and even more in lost investment capital, both the government and investors may be ready for a big sea change.
The only question, for some, is how quickly it will happen.
“In the next few months, we’ll see the tacitly nationalized banks—Bank of America, Citigroup [C 4.02 0.21 (+5.51%) ] —sold off rapidly into pieces, turned into much smaller banks,” Sanders Morris Harris Group Chairman George Ball predicted on CNBC Thursday, adding the government wants to send a strong message, to “punish too-big-to-fail banks that have blotted their copy and not exonerate their management.”
“Five years from now, these banks will be broken up,” is how FBR Capital Markets bank analyst Paul J Miller sees it.
From Washington to Wall Street to Main Street, a dramatic change in conventional thinking appears to underway.
“Some institutions are too big to exist, because they are too interconnected,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told CNBC earlier this week. “The regulators can’t regulate them.”
That conclusion became painfully obvious in the two faces of the financial crisis.
Albert Bozzo,
CNBC
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Read Entire Article
In the world of banking, too-big-to-fail may be in the process of morphing into too-big-to-exist.
After hundreds of billions in federal aid and even more in lost investment capital, both the government and investors may be ready for a big sea change.
The only question, for some, is how quickly it will happen.
“In the next few months, we’ll see the tacitly nationalized banks—Bank of America, Citigroup [C 4.02 0.21 (+5.51%) ] —sold off rapidly into pieces, turned into much smaller banks,” Sanders Morris Harris Group Chairman George Ball predicted on CNBC Thursday, adding the government wants to send a strong message, to “punish too-big-to-fail banks that have blotted their copy and not exonerate their management.”
“Five years from now, these banks will be broken up,” is how FBR Capital Markets bank analyst Paul J Miller sees it.
From Washington to Wall Street to Main Street, a dramatic change in conventional thinking appears to underway.
“Some institutions are too big to exist, because they are too interconnected,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told CNBC earlier this week. “The regulators can’t regulate them.”
That conclusion became painfully obvious in the two faces of the financial crisis.
Albert Bozzo,
CNBC
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Read Entire Article
Recovery? What Recovery?
Why entrepreneurs aren't so optimistic about the economy.
Don't tell me that the economy is getting better, or has even hit rock bottom. My faith in an imminent recovery deserted me on May 5, when one of our customers, Salyer American Foods, based in Monterey, Calif., suddenly fell into receivership. There had been little to no indication that the company was so close to financial ruin. As it turns out, the company's lenders say Salyer owes them over $34 million, a debt equal to almost half its sales. A company attorney told local media that tight credit markets and the economic recession had pushed Salyer over the edge. If the receiver doesn't find some way to revive the company's fortunes, our bag manufacturing company stands to lose nearly $1.5 million in revenue, about 2 percent of our $60 million in sales.
On the same day my customer fell into receivership, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional committee that he believed the economy was in the process of bottoming out and "would turn up later this year." He's not alone in his optimism. Over the past two weeks or so, it has become a cottage industry among economists and the media to spot the first "green shoots" of a recovery. Certainly shoots there may be. The stock market has rebounded smartly over the past two months, as has consumer confidence. Pending home sales have ticked up, while unemployment claims are easing. And many economists insist a manufacturing revival is in the wings because inventories have fallen so low that restocking must begin soon.
But I haven't found many small-business owners ready to jump on the recovery bandwagon, and for good reason. We're still experiencing the "bottoming out" phase and worry that another bottom remains below this one. Call us pessimists, but we're not sure the green shoots aren't just weeds.
Who can blame us? Take the experience of a friend of mine, who runs a $6 million company that provides promotional material to businesses. His sales are down 20 percent compared with last year. Over dinner last week, he said he certainly wasn't shedding customers at the same pace he had been in the fall, but customers were still defecting. "I can't see any reason why they'd come back soon," he said. So he's getting ready for a second round of layoffs and plans to end spending on marketing until things look more promising.
He's not alone among my friends and colleagues in his sense that bad times may be here to stay. One friend just decided to abandon her two-year-old Web-based gift boutique thanks to declining sales. She has another friend whose promising e-business startup had its venture funding yanked when it failed to meet sales goals. "Two years ago they'd have been given time to work things out," she says. Instead they recently closed. Another friend of mine works for a commercial real-estate company that's instituting 10 percent wage cuts beginning in mid-May. "It's better than people losing their jobs," he said to me, "but I don't expect to be getting the money back any time soon." Given the growing worries about commercial real estate, he's probably right.
By Kevin Kelly - Newsweek
Read Entire Article
Don't tell me that the economy is getting better, or has even hit rock bottom. My faith in an imminent recovery deserted me on May 5, when one of our customers, Salyer American Foods, based in Monterey, Calif., suddenly fell into receivership. There had been little to no indication that the company was so close to financial ruin. As it turns out, the company's lenders say Salyer owes them over $34 million, a debt equal to almost half its sales. A company attorney told local media that tight credit markets and the economic recession had pushed Salyer over the edge. If the receiver doesn't find some way to revive the company's fortunes, our bag manufacturing company stands to lose nearly $1.5 million in revenue, about 2 percent of our $60 million in sales.
On the same day my customer fell into receivership, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional committee that he believed the economy was in the process of bottoming out and "would turn up later this year." He's not alone in his optimism. Over the past two weeks or so, it has become a cottage industry among economists and the media to spot the first "green shoots" of a recovery. Certainly shoots there may be. The stock market has rebounded smartly over the past two months, as has consumer confidence. Pending home sales have ticked up, while unemployment claims are easing. And many economists insist a manufacturing revival is in the wings because inventories have fallen so low that restocking must begin soon.
But I haven't found many small-business owners ready to jump on the recovery bandwagon, and for good reason. We're still experiencing the "bottoming out" phase and worry that another bottom remains below this one. Call us pessimists, but we're not sure the green shoots aren't just weeds.
Who can blame us? Take the experience of a friend of mine, who runs a $6 million company that provides promotional material to businesses. His sales are down 20 percent compared with last year. Over dinner last week, he said he certainly wasn't shedding customers at the same pace he had been in the fall, but customers were still defecting. "I can't see any reason why they'd come back soon," he said. So he's getting ready for a second round of layoffs and plans to end spending on marketing until things look more promising.
He's not alone among my friends and colleagues in his sense that bad times may be here to stay. One friend just decided to abandon her two-year-old Web-based gift boutique thanks to declining sales. She has another friend whose promising e-business startup had its venture funding yanked when it failed to meet sales goals. "Two years ago they'd have been given time to work things out," she says. Instead they recently closed. Another friend of mine works for a commercial real-estate company that's instituting 10 percent wage cuts beginning in mid-May. "It's better than people losing their jobs," he said to me, "but I don't expect to be getting the money back any time soon." Given the growing worries about commercial real estate, he's probably right.
By Kevin Kelly - Newsweek
Read Entire Article
Don't Be Fooled by Inflation
Peter Schiff
Strike up the band, boys, happy days are here again!
Recently released short-term economic data, including unemployment claims, non-farm payrolls, home sales, and business spending, which had been so unambiguously horrific in February and March, are now just garden-variety awful. With the Wicked Witch of Depression now apparently crushed under the house of Obamanomics, the Munchkins of Wall Street have sounded the all clear, pushing the Dow Jones up 25% from its lows. But the premature conclusion of their Lollipop Guild economists, that the crash of 2008/2009 is now a fading memory, is just as delusional as their failure to see it coming in the first place.
Once again, the facts do not support the euphoria. Over the past few months, the government has literally blasted the economy with trillions of new dollars conjured from the ether. The fact that this "stimulus" has blown some air back into our deflating consumer-based bubble economy, and given a boost to an oversold stock market, is hardly evidence that the problems have been solved. It is simply an illusion, and not a very good one at that. By throwing money at the problem, all the government is creating is inflation. Although this can often look like growth, it is no more capable of creating wealth than a hall of mirrors is capable of creating people.
We are currently suffering from an overdose of past stimulus. A larger dose now will only worsen the condition. The Greenspan/Bush stimulus of 2001 prevented a much needed recession and bought us seven years of artificial growth. The multi-trillion dollar tab for that episode of federally-engineered economic bullet-dodging came due in 2008. The 2001 stimulus had kicked off a debt-fueled consumption binge that resulted in economic weakness, not strength. So now, even though the recent stimulus administered a much larger dose, we will likely experience a much smaller bounce. One can only speculate as to how much time this stimulus will buy and what it will cost when the bill arrives.
My guess is that, at most, the Bernanke/Obama stimulus will buy two years before the hangover sets in. However, since this dose is so massive, the comedown will be equally horrific. My fear is that when the drug wears off, we will reach for that monetary syringe one last time. At that point, the dosage may be lethal, and the economy will die of hyperinflation.
As always, the bulls fail to understand that investors can lose wealth even as nominal stock prices rise. As a corollary, the bearish case is not discredited by rising stock prices. While there are some bears that mistakenly cling to the idea that deflation will cause the dollar to rise, those of us in the inflation camp understand that the opposite will occur.
In the meantime, stocks are not rising because the long-term fundamentals of our economy are improving. If anything, the rise in global stock prices is due to investors realizing that cash is even riskier then stocks. The massive inflation that is the source of the stimulus is essentially punishment for those holding cash. To preserve purchasing power, investors must seek alternative stores of value, such as common stock.
It is important to point out that despite an impressive rally, U.S. stocks have substantially underperformed foreign stocks. In the past two months, while the Dow Jones has risen 30%, the Hang Seng and the German DAX have risen by over 50% in U.S. dollars. Commodity prices are also rising, with oil hitting a five-month high. And gold is shining as well, with the HUI index of gold stocks up 30% during the past two months, and 2/3 of those gains occurring in the past month. If this rally really were about improving economic fundamentals, gold stocks would not be among the leaders. Further, during those two months, the U.S. dollar index fell by 7%, with commodity-sensitive currencies such as the Australian and New Zealand dollars surging 20%.
To me, the relative strength of foreign stocks and currencies indicates that perhaps the global economy is not as impaired as many have feared. It has been my view all along that after the initial shock wears off, the world will be better off - once it no longer subsidizes the American economy. The shrinking U.S. current account deficit is evidence of this trend in action. Renewed strength in foreign stocks and weakness in the dollar may indicate that not only is the world decoupling from the U.S., but benefitting as a result.
So let the Munchkins dance for now.
But remember, the Witch is not dead, only temporarily stunned by an avalanche of fake money.
Read Entire Article
Strike up the band, boys, happy days are here again!
Recently released short-term economic data, including unemployment claims, non-farm payrolls, home sales, and business spending, which had been so unambiguously horrific in February and March, are now just garden-variety awful. With the Wicked Witch of Depression now apparently crushed under the house of Obamanomics, the Munchkins of Wall Street have sounded the all clear, pushing the Dow Jones up 25% from its lows. But the premature conclusion of their Lollipop Guild economists, that the crash of 2008/2009 is now a fading memory, is just as delusional as their failure to see it coming in the first place.
Once again, the facts do not support the euphoria. Over the past few months, the government has literally blasted the economy with trillions of new dollars conjured from the ether. The fact that this "stimulus" has blown some air back into our deflating consumer-based bubble economy, and given a boost to an oversold stock market, is hardly evidence that the problems have been solved. It is simply an illusion, and not a very good one at that. By throwing money at the problem, all the government is creating is inflation. Although this can often look like growth, it is no more capable of creating wealth than a hall of mirrors is capable of creating people.
We are currently suffering from an overdose of past stimulus. A larger dose now will only worsen the condition. The Greenspan/Bush stimulus of 2001 prevented a much needed recession and bought us seven years of artificial growth. The multi-trillion dollar tab for that episode of federally-engineered economic bullet-dodging came due in 2008. The 2001 stimulus had kicked off a debt-fueled consumption binge that resulted in economic weakness, not strength. So now, even though the recent stimulus administered a much larger dose, we will likely experience a much smaller bounce. One can only speculate as to how much time this stimulus will buy and what it will cost when the bill arrives.
My guess is that, at most, the Bernanke/Obama stimulus will buy two years before the hangover sets in. However, since this dose is so massive, the comedown will be equally horrific. My fear is that when the drug wears off, we will reach for that monetary syringe one last time. At that point, the dosage may be lethal, and the economy will die of hyperinflation.
As always, the bulls fail to understand that investors can lose wealth even as nominal stock prices rise. As a corollary, the bearish case is not discredited by rising stock prices. While there are some bears that mistakenly cling to the idea that deflation will cause the dollar to rise, those of us in the inflation camp understand that the opposite will occur.
In the meantime, stocks are not rising because the long-term fundamentals of our economy are improving. If anything, the rise in global stock prices is due to investors realizing that cash is even riskier then stocks. The massive inflation that is the source of the stimulus is essentially punishment for those holding cash. To preserve purchasing power, investors must seek alternative stores of value, such as common stock.
It is important to point out that despite an impressive rally, U.S. stocks have substantially underperformed foreign stocks. In the past two months, while the Dow Jones has risen 30%, the Hang Seng and the German DAX have risen by over 50% in U.S. dollars. Commodity prices are also rising, with oil hitting a five-month high. And gold is shining as well, with the HUI index of gold stocks up 30% during the past two months, and 2/3 of those gains occurring in the past month. If this rally really were about improving economic fundamentals, gold stocks would not be among the leaders. Further, during those two months, the U.S. dollar index fell by 7%, with commodity-sensitive currencies such as the Australian and New Zealand dollars surging 20%.
To me, the relative strength of foreign stocks and currencies indicates that perhaps the global economy is not as impaired as many have feared. It has been my view all along that after the initial shock wears off, the world will be better off - once it no longer subsidizes the American economy. The shrinking U.S. current account deficit is evidence of this trend in action. Renewed strength in foreign stocks and weakness in the dollar may indicate that not only is the world decoupling from the U.S., but benefitting as a result.
So let the Munchkins dance for now.
But remember, the Witch is not dead, only temporarily stunned by an avalanche of fake money.
Read Entire Article
Friday, May 8, 2009
401(k)'s Hit by Withdrawal Freeze
Investors Cry Foul as Some Funds Close Exits; Perils of Distressed Markets
WSJ
Some investors in 401(k) retirement funds who are moving to grab their money are finding they can't.
Even with recent gains in stocks such as Monday's, the months of market turmoil have delivered a blow to some 401(k) participants: freezing their investments in certain plans. In some cases, individual investors can't withdraw money from certain retirement-plan options. In other cases, employers are having trouble getting rid of risky investments in 401(k) plans.
When Ed Dursky was laid off from his job at a manufacturing company in March, he couldn't withdraw $40,000 from his 401(k) retirement account invested in the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account.
That fund, which invests directly in office buildings and other properties, had stopped allowing most investors to make withdrawals last fall as many of its holdings became hard to sell.
Now Mr. Dursky, of Ottumwa, Iowa, is looking for work and losing patience. All he wants, he said, is his money.
"I hate to be whiny, but it is my money," Mr. Dursky said.
The withdrawal restrictions are limiting investment options for plan participants and employers at a key time in the markets. The timing is inconvenient for the number of workers like Mr. Dursky who are laid off and find their savings inaccessible.
Though 401(k) plans revolutionized the retirement-savings landscape by putting investment decisions in the hands of individuals, the restrictions show that plan participants aren't always in the driver's seat.
Individual investors mightn't even be aware of some behind-the-scenes maneuvers causing liquidity problems in their retirement plans. Many funds offered in 401(k) plans lend their portfolio holdings to other investors, receiving in exchange collateral that they invest in normally safe, liquid holdings.
The aim is often to generate a small but relatively reliable return that can help offset fund expenses. But in recent months, many of the collateral investments have gone haywire, prompting money managers to restrict retirement plans' withdrawals from the lending funds.
Some stable-value funds also are blocking the exits. These funds, available only in tax-deferred savings plans such as 401(k)s, typically invest in bonds and use bank or insurance-company contracts to help smooth returns. But in cases of employer bankruptcy and other events that can cause withdrawals, these funds can lock up investor money for months at a time.
Investors in the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account said they understood the risk of losses, but didn't think their money could be locked up for months or years. Most participants in the 15,000 plans holding the fund haven't been able to make any withdrawals or transfers since late September.
"To sell property at inappropriately low prices in order to generate cash for a few would hurt the majority of investors and violate our fiduciary obligations," said Terri Hale, spokeswoman for Principal Financial Group Inc., the parent of the fund's manager. The fund, which had $4.3 billion in net assets at the end of April, still is making distributions for death, disability, hardship and retirement at normal retirement age.
As of April 28, redemption requests that had yet to be honored totaled nearly $1.1 billion, or roughly 26% of the fund's net assets. Principal doesn't anticipate that it will make any distributions to investors who have requested redemptions until late 2009 or beyond, Ms. Hale said. Meanwhile, the fund continues to fall, declining 25% in the 12 months ending April 30.
Some investors have lost hope of recovering their money. Judith Sterner, a 69-year-old part-time nurse, had more than $12,000 in the fund when she tried to transfer that balance to a money market last fall. But her transfer was denied, and her stake has since declined to less than $10,000.
"This $12,000 represents a year of my retirement money that I don't have," said Ms. Sterner, of Morton Grove, Ill.
Principal still allows new investors into the fund. It categorizes the U.S. Property account as a fixed-income investment, alongside much stodgier funds holding high-quality bonds. New investors are warned of potential withdrawal delays, Ms. Hale said. As for the fixed-income categorization, she said, "a substantial portion of the account return is based on income streams from rents, and its returns have been comparable to fixed-income funds."
While the problems selling real-estate investments are relatively straightforward, withdrawal restrictions related to securities lending stem from far more obscure practices.
Funds often lend out portfolio holdings, through a lending agent, to other investors. These borrowers give the lender collateral, often amounting to about 102% of the value of the securities borrowed. Some of the collateral pools in which funds invest this collateral held Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. debt and other investments that plummeted in value or became hard to trade in the credit crunch.
Though agents who coordinate funds' lending programs share in profits from securities lending, the risk of such collateral-pool losses falls entirely on the funds that have lent the securities and, ultimately, retirement plans and other investors holding those funds.
The problems have limited retirement plans' ability to get out of securities-lending programs, though participants' withdrawals generally haven't been affected.
Retirement plans offered to employees of energy company BP PLC last fall tried to withdraw entirely from four Northern Trust Corp. index funds engaged in securities lending. Certain holdings in Northern's collateral pools had defaulted, been marked down, or become so illiquid that they could only be sold at low values, according to a BP complaint filed in a lawsuit against Northern Trust.
The BP plans halted new participant investments in the funds and asked to withdraw their cash so it could be reinvested in funds that don't lend out securities.
But under restrictions imposed by Northern Trust in September, investors wishing to withdraw entirely from securities-lending activities would have to take their share of both liquid assets and illiquid collateral-pool holdings, according to a Northern Trust court filing. BP rejected that option, and the companies still are trying to resolve the matter in court.
Northern Trust's collateral pools are "conservatively managed" and focus on liquidity over yield, the company said.
By Eleanor Laise
Read Entire Article
WSJ
Some investors in 401(k) retirement funds who are moving to grab their money are finding they can't.
Even with recent gains in stocks such as Monday's, the months of market turmoil have delivered a blow to some 401(k) participants: freezing their investments in certain plans. In some cases, individual investors can't withdraw money from certain retirement-plan options. In other cases, employers are having trouble getting rid of risky investments in 401(k) plans.
When Ed Dursky was laid off from his job at a manufacturing company in March, he couldn't withdraw $40,000 from his 401(k) retirement account invested in the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account.
That fund, which invests directly in office buildings and other properties, had stopped allowing most investors to make withdrawals last fall as many of its holdings became hard to sell.
Now Mr. Dursky, of Ottumwa, Iowa, is looking for work and losing patience. All he wants, he said, is his money.
"I hate to be whiny, but it is my money," Mr. Dursky said.
The withdrawal restrictions are limiting investment options for plan participants and employers at a key time in the markets. The timing is inconvenient for the number of workers like Mr. Dursky who are laid off and find their savings inaccessible.
Though 401(k) plans revolutionized the retirement-savings landscape by putting investment decisions in the hands of individuals, the restrictions show that plan participants aren't always in the driver's seat.
Individual investors mightn't even be aware of some behind-the-scenes maneuvers causing liquidity problems in their retirement plans. Many funds offered in 401(k) plans lend their portfolio holdings to other investors, receiving in exchange collateral that they invest in normally safe, liquid holdings.
The aim is often to generate a small but relatively reliable return that can help offset fund expenses. But in recent months, many of the collateral investments have gone haywire, prompting money managers to restrict retirement plans' withdrawals from the lending funds.
Some stable-value funds also are blocking the exits. These funds, available only in tax-deferred savings plans such as 401(k)s, typically invest in bonds and use bank or insurance-company contracts to help smooth returns. But in cases of employer bankruptcy and other events that can cause withdrawals, these funds can lock up investor money for months at a time.
Investors in the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account said they understood the risk of losses, but didn't think their money could be locked up for months or years. Most participants in the 15,000 plans holding the fund haven't been able to make any withdrawals or transfers since late September.
"To sell property at inappropriately low prices in order to generate cash for a few would hurt the majority of investors and violate our fiduciary obligations," said Terri Hale, spokeswoman for Principal Financial Group Inc., the parent of the fund's manager. The fund, which had $4.3 billion in net assets at the end of April, still is making distributions for death, disability, hardship and retirement at normal retirement age.
As of April 28, redemption requests that had yet to be honored totaled nearly $1.1 billion, or roughly 26% of the fund's net assets. Principal doesn't anticipate that it will make any distributions to investors who have requested redemptions until late 2009 or beyond, Ms. Hale said. Meanwhile, the fund continues to fall, declining 25% in the 12 months ending April 30.
Some investors have lost hope of recovering their money. Judith Sterner, a 69-year-old part-time nurse, had more than $12,000 in the fund when she tried to transfer that balance to a money market last fall. But her transfer was denied, and her stake has since declined to less than $10,000.
"This $12,000 represents a year of my retirement money that I don't have," said Ms. Sterner, of Morton Grove, Ill.
Principal still allows new investors into the fund. It categorizes the U.S. Property account as a fixed-income investment, alongside much stodgier funds holding high-quality bonds. New investors are warned of potential withdrawal delays, Ms. Hale said. As for the fixed-income categorization, she said, "a substantial portion of the account return is based on income streams from rents, and its returns have been comparable to fixed-income funds."
While the problems selling real-estate investments are relatively straightforward, withdrawal restrictions related to securities lending stem from far more obscure practices.
Funds often lend out portfolio holdings, through a lending agent, to other investors. These borrowers give the lender collateral, often amounting to about 102% of the value of the securities borrowed. Some of the collateral pools in which funds invest this collateral held Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. debt and other investments that plummeted in value or became hard to trade in the credit crunch.
Though agents who coordinate funds' lending programs share in profits from securities lending, the risk of such collateral-pool losses falls entirely on the funds that have lent the securities and, ultimately, retirement plans and other investors holding those funds.
The problems have limited retirement plans' ability to get out of securities-lending programs, though participants' withdrawals generally haven't been affected.
Retirement plans offered to employees of energy company BP PLC last fall tried to withdraw entirely from four Northern Trust Corp. index funds engaged in securities lending. Certain holdings in Northern's collateral pools had defaulted, been marked down, or become so illiquid that they could only be sold at low values, according to a BP complaint filed in a lawsuit against Northern Trust.
The BP plans halted new participant investments in the funds and asked to withdraw their cash so it could be reinvested in funds that don't lend out securities.
But under restrictions imposed by Northern Trust in September, investors wishing to withdraw entirely from securities-lending activities would have to take their share of both liquid assets and illiquid collateral-pool holdings, according to a Northern Trust court filing. BP rejected that option, and the companies still are trying to resolve the matter in court.
Northern Trust's collateral pools are "conservatively managed" and focus on liquidity over yield, the company said.
By Eleanor Laise
Read Entire Article