The IMF Fears Political Rage Will Block
Rescue By Fed In Next Crisis
The Trump administration might ask why it
should “bail out” the Europeans who have been less than friendly to this White
House. Here’s more…The International Monetary
Fund has warned that the system of global cooperation that saved world finance
in the 2008 crisis may break down if there is another major shock or a deep
recession.
David Lipton, the
IMF’s second-highest official, said it is unclear whether the US Federal
Reserve would again be able to extend $1 trillion of dollar “swap lines” to
fellow central banks — the critical measure that halted a dangerous
chain-reaction after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG.
“I fear that if at any
time we have a worse than garden variety recession there will be anger and
limitations in the way governments can respond,” he told a group at the World
Economic Forum in Davos today.
“If there is a
substantial crisis we may need central banks to act again in an extraordinary
way. For the Fed this requires a fiscal backstop from the US Treasury, and at
the beginning there may be some reluctance. I wonder whether they will be so
willing to extend the swap lines,” Mr Lipton said.
It is a polite way of
saying that the Trump administration might ask why it should “bail out” the
Europeans who have been less than friendly to this White House, and why they
should rescue the rest of the world. By the time the explosive consequences
became clear it would be too late.
“So we have got to be
very careful. There must not be unforced errors. We must ensure that the next
recession when it comes is a garden variety,” said Mr Lipton, a leading figure
in regulatory circles.
The lines are vitally
needed because the world has built up $12.8 trillion of offshore dollar debt
outside the Fed’s jurisdiction.
European, Japanese,
and Canadian banks, among others, borrow on the capital markets at short-term
maturities for worldwide lending in dollars. These markets can freeze up suddenly,
as they discovered in October 2008.
Their own central
banks are unable to print dollars and mostly have insufficient dollar reserves
to provide emergency liquidity and stabilize the financial system in such
circumstances. Only the Fed can act as the ultimate lender-of-last resort to
the globalised dollar economy.
Mr Lipton said there
was deep residual anger from the 2008 crisis. “People are hurt and they are
less impressed than we that we did a clean-up afterwards,” he said.
He fears a nasty
cocktail in the next downturn because much of the damage is likely to come from
hidden leverage in asset management companies, with asset slumps hitting
household wealth directly.
Mark Carney, the
governor of the Bank of England, said at a separate Davos session that banks
were now much safer than a decade ago, but risks of potentially systemic scale
were building up elsewhere.
He raised a red flag
over the money that has flooded into asset management, driven by a hunger for
high yields after quantitative easing and low interest rates made it hard to
generate returns.
The Achilles’ heel is
the buildup of $30 trillion of assets held in funds, which are supposed to
offer daily liquidity to investors but are invested heavily in underlying
assets that not liquid. These assets are hard to sell “even in good times and
very illiquid in bad times,” Mr Carney warned.
It is a classic
example of borrowing short to invest long — the perennial cause of crises over
the ages. There may also be further icebergs hidden from view. “Is there
additional leverage in these entities that may add to the dynamics? That’s one
of the big issues in global finance at the moment,”
Economic Slowdown: Tesla Announces 2nd Round
of Mass Layoffs & Reduced Production
Did Elon’s recent email just signal the
beginning of the end for Tesla? The email was not positive. Not one bit. Here
are the details…Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk sent an email to
all employees at 1:20 in the morning and it could very well be the signal of
the end times for the company. The email was not positive in tone and things
are not looking good for Tesla.
After highlighting Tesla’s numerous accomplishments over the
past year in the email, Musk got down and dirty, announcing another round of job cuts. This
time reducing the number of full-time employees by about 7 percent. According to The Washington Post,those thousands of job
cuts come only seven months after Tesla laid off another 9 percent of its
workforce.
Musk says that the jobs cuts are necessary in order to help the
company meet the unique challenges it faces. Challenges like “making
our cars, batteries, and solar products cost-competitive with fossil fuels,”
products that Musk admits “are still too expensive for most people.”
Musk also acknowledges that since Tesla is competing “against massive,
entrenched competitors…[employees] must work much harder than other
manufacturers to survive.” According to INC, all
of this hard work is worth it, Musk says, to support the “mission of
accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy, which is important
for all life on Earth.”
Musk’s email continued saying:
“There
are many companies that can offer a better work-life balance, because they are
larger and more mature or in industries that are not so voraciously
competitive. Attempting to build affordable clean energy products at scale
necessarily requires extreme effort and relentless creativity, but succeeding
in our mission is essential to ensure that the future is good, so we must do
everything we can to advance the cause.”
And in order to advance the cause of cleaner vehicles, Musk will
be terminating more employees and slowing production of cars which could help
reduce emissions.
Washington Post further
reported that Tesla earned a record quarterly profit last year. However,
Musk warned this month that its most recent quarter would “with great
difficulty, effort, and some luck” likely only show “a tiny profit.” The company
will offer more detail when it reveals its newest quarterly financial report
next week, a spokesman said.
Tesla is just one company that has sounded the alarm of profit
loss signaling a slowing or stagnant economic situation.
The Fed Is Desperate! – This WILL NOT End
Well!
The Fed is showing obvious signs of
desperation, but the dollar crisis it is only a matter of time away. ALL fiat
currencies fail. Always…Josh Sigurdson talks with
author and economic analyst John Sneisen about the most recent moves by the
Federal Reserve to desperately prop up the US economy as it reaches its
inevitable end.
Janet Yellen, former chair of the Fed said recently that it’s very likely that the Fed has made its last interest rate hike of this cycle. Interestingly, in 2017 she claimed we wouldn’t see another financial crisis in our lifetime and then followed that up in 2018 by saying we may be able to see another financial crisis. Now it appears she’s just covering herself for the inevitable crash of the USD as it loses faith and countries around the world swap out of it.
Team this with the inverting yield curve, the everything bubble world wide, the bankrupt banking system and more, it looks like we are seeing the beginning signs of the greatest crash in world history as the dominoes start to fall.
Janet Yellen, former chair of the Fed said recently that it’s very likely that the Fed has made its last interest rate hike of this cycle. Interestingly, in 2017 she claimed we wouldn’t see another financial crisis in our lifetime and then followed that up in 2018 by saying we may be able to see another financial crisis. Now it appears she’s just covering herself for the inevitable crash of the USD as it loses faith and countries around the world swap out of it.
Team this with the inverting yield curve, the everything bubble world wide, the bankrupt banking system and more, it looks like we are seeing the beginning signs of the greatest crash in world history as the dominoes start to fall.
Jerome Powell has also
been all over the map and the Federal Reserve is showing obvious signs of
desperation. It’s only a matter of time. The longer it’s put off, the worse it
will be. All fiat currencies eventually fail. They always have, they always
will.
What we can do is
simply decentralize everything, be self sustainable, financially responsible.
We need to be educated and we need to rule ourselves!
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