European Central Banks Are Slowly Preparing For Plan B: Gold

It was long believed in the gold space that Western central banks are against gold, but things have changed, for quite some years now. Instead of discouraging people from buying gold, or convincing them that gold is an irrelevant asset, many of these central banks are increasingly honest about the true properties of this monetary metal. Stating that gold is the ultimate store of value, that it preserves its purchasing power through time and is a global means of payment. Such statements, combined with actions that will be discussed below, reveal that more and more central banks are preparing for plan B.

The Bundesbank (the German central bank) published a book last year named Germany’s Gold. In the introduction, written by the President of the Bundesbank Jens Weidmann, the view of this bank leaves no room for interpretation. Weidmann writes (emphasis mine):

Ask anyone in Germany what they associate with gold and, more often than not, they will say that it is synonymous with enduring value and economic prosperity.

Ask us at the Bundesbank what our gold holdings mean for us and we will tell you that, first and foremost, they make up a very large share of Germany’s reserve assets ... [and they] are a major anchor underpinning confidence in the intrinsic value of the Bundesbank’s balance sheet.

The Bundesbank produced this publication to give a detailed account, the first of its kind, of how gold has grown in importance over the course of history, first as medium of payment, later as the bedrock of stability for the international monetary system.

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"We're Being Robbed" - Central Bank 'Stimulus' Is Really A Huge Redistribution Scheme

When an economy turns from expansion to contraction there is an order of events. The first signs are an unexpected increase in inventories of unsold goods, both accompanied with and followed by business surveys indicating a general softening in demand. For monetarists, this is often confirmed by an inverting yield curve, which tells them that at the margin the short-term rates set by the central bank are becoming too high for business conditions.

That was the position for the US 10-year bond less the 2-year bond very briefly at the end of August, since when this measure, which is often taken to predict recessions, has turned mildly positive again. A generally negative sentiment, fueled mainly by the escalating tariff war between America and China, had earlier alerted investors to an international trade slowdown, expected to undermine the American economy in due course along with all the others. It stands to reason that backward-looking statistics have yet to reflect the global slowdown on the US economy, which is still buoyed up by consumer credit. The German economy, which is driven by production rather than consumption is perhaps a better guide and is already in recession.

After an initial hit, a small recovery in investor sentiment is understandable, with the negative outlook perhaps having got ahead of itself. But we must look beyond that. History shows the combination of a peak in the credit cycle and tariffs can be economically lethal. A brief return to a positive yield curve achieves little more than a sucker rally. It may be enough to put further monetary expansion on pause. But when that is over, and jobs begin to be threatened, there can be no doubt that central banks will ramp up the printing presses.

So reliant have markets become on monetary expansion that the default assumption is that an economy will always be rescued from recession by an easing of monetary policy, and furthermore that monetary inflation will prevent it from being any more than mild and short. We see this in the performance of stock market indices, which reflect perpetual optimism.

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Central Bank Issues Stunning Warning: "If The Entire System Collapses, Gold Will Be Needed To Start Over"

It's not just "tinfoil blogs" who (for the past 11 years) have been warning that a monetary reset is inevitable and the only viable fallback option once trust and faith in fiat is lost, is a gold standard (something which even Mark Carney hinted at recently): central banks are joining the doom parade now too.

An article published by the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), or Dutch Central Bank, has shocked many with its claim that "if the system collapses, the gold stock can serve as a basis to build it up again. Gold bolsters confidence in the stability of the central bank's balance sheet and creates a sense of security."

While gloomy predictions of a monetary reset are hardly new, they have traditionally been relegated to the fringe of mainstream financial thought - after all, as Mario Draghi stated on several occasions in recent years, the mere contemplation of a "doomsday scenario" is enough to create the self-fulfilling prophecy which materializes it. As such, it is stunning to see a mainstream financial institution open up about the superior value of limited supply, non-fiat, sound money assets. It is also hypocritical given the diametrically opposed Keynesian practices regularly engaged in by central banks and official institutions worldwide: after all, just a few months back, the IMF published a paper bashing Germany's adoption of the gold standard in the 1870s as the catalyst for instability in the global monetary system.

Fast forward to today, when the Dutch Central Bank is admitting not only did gold not destabilize the monetary system, but it will be its only savior when everything crashes.

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We Finally Understand How Destructive Negative Interest Rates Actually Are

We are in the midst of a strange economic experiment. Vast quantities of negative-yielding debt are currently sloshing around the global economy. While the amount of negative-yielding bonds has dropped recently from a mind-boggling number in excess of $17 trillion, reinvigorated central bank easing across the globe ensures that this reduction is only temporary.

We are slowly starting to understand how destructive negative interest rates actually are. Central banks control short-term interest rates in an economy by setting the rate banks receive on their deposits, that is, on the reserves they hold at the central bank. A new development is the control central banks now exert over long-term rates through their asset purchase, or “QE” programs.

Banks profit from the interest rate differential between “lending long” but “borrowing short”. Essentially, the difference between lending and deposit rates determine a bank’s profitability. However, with today’s very low interest rates, this difference becomes almost non-existent, and with negative rates, inverts completely.

When a central bank pushes rates to negative, banks need to pay interest on the reserves they hold there. But they are not relieved of the obligation they have to pay interest on customer deposits, who are understandably reluctant to pay interest on money they place at a bank. Consequently, the whole earnings logic of banking goes haywire if banks are required to pay interest on loans and receive interest on deposits. As profit margins of banks are squeezed, profitability falls and lending activities suffer.

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'Vaguely Troubling': BIS Warns Of Financial Disaster Amid $17 Trillion In Negative-Yield Debt

When the central bank for central banks publishes its quarterly review, the world should take note.

Claudio Borio, Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the BIS, published the BIS Quarterly Review, September 2019 on Sunday, revealing how the increasing acceptance of negative interest rates has reached "vaguely troubling" levels. 

The statement comes after the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank (ECB) cut interest rates to flight a global manufacturing slowdown -- Borio said that the effectiveness of monetary policy is severely waning and might not be able to counter the global downturn, in other words, JPMorgan Global Composite PMI might print sub 50 for a considerable period of time. 

"The room for monetary policy maneuver has narrowed further. Should a downturn materialize, monetary policy will need a helping hand, not least from a wise use of fiscal policy in those countries where there is still room for maneuver."

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Exposing The ECB's Beggar-Thy-Trump Strategy

The European Central Bank's decision to cut interest rates still further and launch another round of quantitative easing raises serious concerns about its internal decision-making process. The ECB is pursuing an exchange-rate policy in all but name, thus putting Europe on a collision course with the Trump administration. 

On September 12, the European Central Bank decided to launch yet another asset-purchase program, with plans to buy €20 billion ($22 billion) in new securities per month for an indefinite period of time, using the same structure as it has in the past. The decision was not made unanimously: the German, French, Dutch, Austrian, and Estonian members of the ECB council have all voiced fierce opposition to further quantitative easing (QE).

ECB President Mario Draghi claims that the majority in favor of further loosening was so large that it was unnecessary even to count the votes. Never mind that the countries opposing the decision hold 56% of the ECB’s paid-in equity capital and account for 60% of eurozone output. Counting their compatriots on the ECB Governing Council, however, they have only seven out of 25 potential votes (subject to a rotating limitation). Draghi did have a majority, then, but it represented a very clear minority of the ECB’s liable capital. This raises considerable concerns about the Governing Council’s decision-making process.

Such concerns are all the more justified considering that US President Donald Trump has been complaining loudly about the implied exchange-rate policy stemming from ECB asset purchases. He has a point. Draghi, of course, insists that the ECB does not “target” the exchange rate. While that may be true, it is beside the point. By purchasing long-term securities, eurozone central banks will once again trigger a currency devaluation. Indeed, it is precisely this effect that likely plays the dominant role in stimulating economic activity.icy in all but name, thus putting Europe on a collision course with the Trump administration.

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EU Bank Bosses Warn Of "Grave Consequences" If ECB Keeps Cutting Rates

The ECB's imposition of negative interest rates have created an "absurd situation" in which banks don't want to hold deposits, rages UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, arguing that this policy is hurting social systems and savings rates.

Ermotti is not alone. As European bank bosses cast their eyes at their share prices, they are fighting back, some have said - biting the hand that feeds, in their attack on ECB policies, warning of severe consequences to asset prices and the broader economy.

As Bloomberg reports, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing warned that more monetary easing by the ECB, as widely expected next week, will have “grave side effects” for a region that has already lived with negative interest rates for half a decade.

“In the long run, negative rates ruin the financial system,” Sewing said at the event, organized by the Handelsblatt newspaper.

Another cut “may make refinancing cheaper for states, but has grave side effects.”

While incoming ECB head Christine Lagarde has claimed that the benefits of deeply negative rates outweigh the costs (stating just this week that “a highly accommodative policy is warranted for a prolonged period of time;" few economists believe another cut at this level would actually help the economy. According to Sewing, all it would achieve is to further divide society by lifting asset prices while punishing Europe’s savers who are already paying 160 billion euros ($176 billion) a year because of negative interest rates.

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Will Central Banks Survive?

Almost all economists and the vast majority of the general population erroneously believe that central banks are, basically, indestructible. And most fail to appreciate that central banks are different from normal commercial banks in just two respects: their ability to earn seigniorage revenue, and to distort accounting rules.

With the current level of liabilities central banks hold those may not be enough. We might be closing in the end of the central banking era.

The income structure of a central bank

Central banks earn seigniorage from the difference between the “printing” costs of the legal tender (monetary base) and its nominal value. In a simplified balance sheet of a central bank, money is visible in the liabilities-side, which also holds the government’s bank account (domestic liabilities) and the reserves of commercial banks and net worth. Net worth includes the capital of the central bank and valuation adjustments for changes in the foreign-exchange rate and investments. A central bank’s assets include securities, foreign-exchange reserves (net foreign assets) and loans (to commercial banks).

Thus, when a central bank buys assets, such as government bonds, it simply either creates money directly or debits the reserves of commercial banks to maintain balance. In the programs of quantitative easing (“QE”, see Q-Review 1/2018), the latter option has been used. The central bank earns income in the form of interest from these holdings. If the liabilities contain required reserves and currency, the central bank has “zero-cost” financing. If the liabilities contain excess reserves and or domestic liabilities, the central bank will need to pay interest.

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By Not Renewing The CBGA, Central Banks In Europe Are Ready To Buy Gold

Last month, a BullionStar article titled “The Fifth Wave: A new Central Bank Gold Agreement?” brought your attention to the fact that the fourth and current round of the Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA) run by a cartel of heavyweight central banks in Europe was about to expire, and that these gold agreements, which have been running in rolling five year periods since September 1999, were not designed for the purposes they claimed to be.

That CBGA1 and CBGA2 from 1999 – 2008, were not intended to help the wider gold market by limiting central bank gold sales, but were really a cover by the central bank syndicate members to account for nearly 4000 tonnes of gold that had already been sold or leased in the 1990s. That CBGA3 was then used to distract the gold market about the secretive ‘gold sales’ that the IMF claimed to have undertaken in 2010, which were really another book squaring exercise for disposed IMF gold.

The heavyweight signatories to the central bank gold agreements (CBGAs) include Eurozone member banks such as the Bundesbank, the Banque de France, Banca Italia, De Nederlandsche Bank, National Bank of Belgium, the European Central Bank (ECB) itself, as well as the non-Eurozone Swedish Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank. In its composition, the consortium replicates the nexus of the 1960s London Gold Pool (Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium) and the nexus of the central banks which met at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in 1979 and the early 1980s to plan a secretive new 1980s gold pool.

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Exposing The Fed's False QE/QT Narrative With Its Own Data

It doesn’t take much calculation to see that the Fed’s position on quantitative tightening (QT) is blatantly inconsistent with its position on quantitative easing (QE). You only need to notice that the excerpts above, taken together, violate the following pair of postulates:

1. When A and B are opposites, the effects of A should be opposite to the effects of B.
2. QT is the opposite of QE.

So financial markets and the economy should respond significantly to both QE and QT—although in opposite directions—or they should respond to neither QE nor QT. To claim otherwise, as in the excerpts above as well as other similar communications, is like arguing that one of the two postulates is wrong in the context of the Fed’s bond portfolio. That seems unlikely, but not impossible. In particular, the first postulate falls short of being an absolute truth, reality sometimes being more complicated than we’d like it to be. Consider that Newtonian physics seemed absolute enough until Einstein came along.

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Countries Around The World Are Bringing Gold Home

European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries. The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members.

Why was Italy singled out? According to the Wall Street Journal, Italian citizens are preparing to take control of Italy’s gold reserves. During the past few years, a multitude of small investors lost billions of dollars due to the failure of several Italian banks. The Bank of Italy is seen as an elitist, inefficient entity indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio is leading the attack against Italy’s central bank, along with the “5 Star Movement” and the nationalist “League,” all of whom blame the countries financial woes on the incompetence of the central bank.

The 5 Star Movement is asking Italy’s Parliament to approve measures that would allow private banks to sell their share in The Bank of Italy at 1930’s prices. Taking it a step further, they are also demanding that ownership of the Bank of Italy’s 2,451.8 tons of gold be taken over by the country’s citizens and spent on populist policies. The current value of these gold reserves is $102 billion.

If these laws are passed, investors would be able to sell gold and greatly deplete the central bank’s reserves. As Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy states, “The gold belongs to the Italians, not the bankers.”

Italy’s lawmakers hold a different view and are warning against any action that will upend the sovereignty of the central bank’s policies. Such expropriation of government gold would not be tolerated.

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JPMorgan: We Are Fast Approaching The Point Where Banks Run Out Of Liquidity

Last week we first noted that something unexpected has been going on in overnight funding markets: ever since March 20, the Effective Fed Funds rate has been trading above the IOER. This was unexpected for the simple reason that it is not supposed to happen by definition.

As a reminder, ever since the financial crisis, in order to push the effective fed funds rate above zero at a time of trillions in excess reserves, the Fed was compelled to create a corridor system for the fed funds rate which was bound on the bottom and top by two specific rates controlled by the Federal Reserve: the corridor "floor" was the overnight reverse repurchase rate (ON-RRP) which usually coincides with the lower bound of the fed funds rate, while on top, the effective fed funds rate is bound by the rate the Fed pays on Excess Reserves (IOER), i.e., the corridor "ceiling."

Or at least that's the theory. In practice, the effective FF tends to occasionally diverge from this corridor, and when it does, it prompts fears that the Fed is losing control over the most important instrument available to it: the price of money, which is set via the fed funds rate. And ever since March 20, this fear is front and center because as shown in the chart below, starting on March 20, the effective Fed Funds rate rose above the IOER first by just 1 basis point, and then, last Friday spiked as much as 4 bps above IOER.

To explain this bizarre phenomenon in which the EFF has been trading well above IOER in defiance of all of the Fed's monetary orthodoxy, we laid out several possible explanations, including that i) money market outflows around the April 15 tax deadline date and elevated GC repo rates; ii) the continued decline in excess reserves, and most ominously iii) another acute dollar shortage  developing across the US banking system.

One day later, PrismFP picked up on this topic and elaborated on the third, and most notable point, concluding that "there has been a dollar funding/shortage issue brewing under our nose for months; it is just coming to fruition now because we are noticing the DXY breaking out higher. In other words, with FHLB’s selling less FF’s, participants are forced to pay a higher rate to find funds, and that drives rate differentials towards the Dollar." Some other notable observations from his latest note which we laid out last week:

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Whalen: Donald Trump Is Right About The Fed

President Donald Trump has been criticizing the Federal Open Market Committee for raising interest rates.  The reaction of the US equity markets is self explanatory.  But while the economist love cult in the Big Media may take umbrage at President Trump’s critique of the central bank, in fact Trump is dead right.

First, the Fed’s actions in terms of buying $4 trillion in Treasury debt and mortgage paper has badly crippled the value of the fixed income market as a measure of risk.  The Treasury yield curve no longer accurately describes the term structure of interest rates or risk premiums. This means that the Treasury yield curve is useless as an indicator of or guide for policy.  Nobody at the Federal Reserve Board understands this issue or cares.

Second, Operation Twist further manipulated and distorted the Treasury market.  By selling short-term paper and buying long dated securities, the Fed suppressed long-term interest rates, again making indicators like the 10-year Treasury bond useless as an measure of risk. Without QE 2-3 and Operation Twist, the 10-Year Treasury would be well over 4% by now.  Instead it is 3% and change and will probably rally to test 3% between now and year end.

Third is the real issuing bothering President Trump, even if he cannot find the precise words, namely liquidity.  We have the illusion of liquidity in the financial markets today.  Sell Side firms are prohibited by Dodd-Frank and the Volcker Rule from deploying capital in the cash equity and debt markets.  All bank portfolios are now passive.  No trading, no market making.  There is nobody to catch the falling knife.

The only credit being extended today in the short-term markets is with collateral.  There is no longer any unsecured lending between banks and, especially, non-banks. As we noted in The Institutional Risk Analyst earlier this week, there are scores of nonbank lenders in mortgages, autos and consumer unsecured lending that are ready to go belly up.  Half of the non-bank mortgage lenders in the US are in default on their bank credit lines.  As in 2007, the model builders at the Fed in Washington have no idea nor do they care to hear outside opinions.

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Global Stocks Rise Ahead Of Central Bank Barrage, Inflation Data

Global trade was front and center again, after the Trump administration proposed another round of trade talks with Beijing before slapping China with $200BN in tariffs in the absence of key concessions from Beijing, while traders were on edge ahead of a slew of central bank announcements and critical CPI data in the US.

One day after Apple's latest iPhone unveiling disappointed shareholders who sold AAPL stock and pressured tech stocks, world markets calmed and MSCI’s All World index was set for a fourth straight day of gains with S&P futures slightly higher after Asian shares jumped ending a 10 day losing streak, the longest in 16 years, on renewed hopes of fresh trade negotiations between the US and China.

Shanghai, Tokyo, Jakarta stocks all gained around 1% following Wednesday's sharp drop in the dollar, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng finished up 1.8%, while China’s yuan also edged higher in the currency markets even if the Shanghai Composite barely budged amid ongoing skepticism inside Ground Zero, China, that talk this time will be different.

Initially, Europe also moved higher, led by automakers with gains between 0.2% and 0.6% for German, French, Italian and Spanish shares offsetting a weaker FTSE in London which was hit by weaker oil and tobacco stocks. However, Europe's Stoxx 600 index erased gains of as much as 0.3% as the Turkish lira plunged after country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked the central bank for continuously missing inflation targets and saying the CBRT "should cut this high interest rate", just hours before rate decision.

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Turkish Lira Tumbles As Central Bank Intervention Fails

The Turkey’s lira tumbled as much as 3% against the dollar, making it the worst performing currency in the world, and extending its slump to a third day after the central bank announced it double banks' borrowing limit for overnight transactions at the interbank money market - effectively tightening liquidity by ending the unrestricted funding it has 
offered since Aug. 13 - failed to bolster investor sentiment.

"Banks’ borrowing limits for overnight transactions at the Interbank Money Market established within the CBRT would be twice the limits applicable before Aug. 13", The Turkish central bank said.

However, like many of the measures introduced in recent weeks to contain a slide of more than 40 percent in the lira this year, this one also failed as investors do not see the bank's approach to market pressure as a sustainable way to tackle double-digit inflation and a widening current-account deficit, when what the bank should be doing it raising rates and making the country more attractive for foreign investors.

"It’s yet more smoke and mirrors from the central bank," said Nigel Rendell, an analyst at Medley Global Advisors LLC in London. "The change in banks’ overnight borrowing limits is aimed at trying to ease pressures on the banking system, rather than tackling Turkey’s underlying problem, which remains persistently high inflation."

The lira plunged 3.0% lower, dropping as much as 6.4786 per dollar. Together with the Argentine peso, it’s the worst-performing emerging-market currency this year. As the selling resume, the yield on 10-year bonds climbed 19 bps to 21.95%, and fast approaching the record set earlier this month.

Separately, on Wednesday the Turkish economic confidence fell to the lowest level since 2009 in August, while the country’s trade deficit widened in July from the previous month.

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China Is Now Left With Just Three Options, And They Are All Equally Bad

Last Friday's forceful intervention by the PBOC, in which the central bank hiked the reserve requirement for FX forwards trading from 0% to 20%, was a warning shot at the gathering yuan shorts who managed to briefly send the Chinese currency below 6.90 against the dollar last week, after losing 4% of its value in the past month, and bringing the cumulative decline against the dollar to 10% since April, a far steeper drop than seen during the 2015 devaluation.

The yuan slide had come amid growing speculation that Chinese authorities are more willing to let their currency weaken along with market forces and an escalating trade war, at least for as long as they felt any capital account leakages are contained and manageable.

And yet, despite China's long overdue intervention - after all, once capital flight begins as new holes in the capital account are uncovered, it would be too late to prevent a repeat of the 2015 scenario - the debate about Chinese currency depreciation and what happens next with Chinese policy gathered pace, with ING last week proposing that this latest attempt to "nuke the shorts" is doomed to failure, just like previous unilateral FX interventions.

Over the weekend, JPMorgan echoed ING's skepticism, writing that despite Friday's PBoC announcement and despite the cumulative depreciation over the past two months, "the pressure on the Chinese renminbi to decline further against the dollar is unlikely to go away if trade tensions with the US escalate further from here."

Meanwhile, in a move that puzzled many China watchers, at the same time that the PBoC announced an increase in the reserve requirement ratio for fx forwards trading, China announced that it would implement tariffs on $60bn of imports in response to a threat by the US earlier this week to raise the tariff rate from 10% to 25% on $200bn of Chinese exports to the US, prompting some to speculate that the FX intervention was merely implemented to prevent a collapse in the yuan beyond 7.00 vs the dollar as the market freaked out about the latest Chinese retaliation.

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BOE Raises Interest Rates In Surprise Unanimous Decision

As expected by the market, the Bank of England raised interest rates only for the second time since the financial crisis, to the highest level since 2009, saying recent data confirmed the bank's view that the first quarter slowdown in UK growth was temporary.

Members of the BOE's Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously for a 25 basis point increase, bringing the BoE’s benchmark rate to 0.75%, the highest since the onset of the global crisis.

While the outcome was widely expected, with the market pricing in the quarter point rate rise fully in the run-up to the meeting well in advance, the surprise was that the decision was unanimous, which adds a hawkish tilt to this decision according to several Wall Street analysts.

The unanimous decision is perplexing because the BOE spent the two years since Brexit to scare the nation just how perilous the economy is. And yet, here they are, with just 8 months left until the final Brexit divorce deadline, to announce how upbeat the central bank is on the country's outlook, and to upgrade its outlook for the coming year.

And it certainly was upbeat: "The MPC continues to judge that the UK economy currently has a very limited degree of slack. Unemployment is low and is projected to fall a little further. In the MPC’s central projection, therefore, a small margin of excess demand emerges by late 2019 and builds thereafter, feeding through into higher growth in domestic costs than has been seen over recent years.”

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EU Parliament Study: Central Bank Digital Currencies "Will Reshape Competition" In Crypto Market

A study on issues of competition in fintech, commissioned by the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON), was published July 20. It found that central bank-issued digital currencies could be a “remedy” for a lack of competition policy in the crypto sector:

“The arrival of permissioned cryptocurrencies promoted by banks, even by central banks, will reshape the current competition level in the cryptocurrency market, broadening the number of competitors.”

The study mentions cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as “technological and operational paradigms that are a source of disruption for the entire sector, including monetary policy and financial stability.” Other “disruptive and innovative applications” of new technologies include “AI, cloud computing, biometrics, digital identity, blockchain, cybersecurity, RegTech, internet of things (IoT), augmented reality.”

Private digital currencies are defined separately from central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDC), noting that the CBDCs differ by being based on a “conventional bilateral settlement with a trusted central party.”

According to the study, since closed cryptocurrency systems require a supervisory authority, central banks could be considering using “permissioned cryptocurrency systems” to “complement or substitute” the currencies already used.

The study claims that CBDCs “will reshape the current competition level in the inter-cryptocurrency market” by adding to the pool of competitors:

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Deutsche: "This Is The Most Dangerous Development The Fed Wants To Avoid"

In the first week of February, in the trading session just before the February 5 VIX termination, the market tumbled as a result of a January average hourly earnings number that surged (even though as we explained at the time, the market had wildly misinterpreted the print), prompting speculation that the Fed was dangerously behind the curve and would need to accelerate its tightening, potentially hiking rates more than just 4 times in 2018, leading to an accelerating liquidation of risk assets which eventually culminated in the record VIX spike.

Since then, inflation fears moderated following several downward revisions (as expected) and more tame hourly earnings prints, with market concerns instead shifting to trader wars, the return of populism to Europe, the tech bubble, and the sustainability of record margins and net income.

But according to a recent analysis by Deutsche Bank's Aleksandar Kocic, traders are ignoring the risk of an imminent, "phase shift" spike in wages at their own risk. Specifically, Kocic looks at the current locus of the Philips curve - which many economists have left for dead due to its seeming failure to explain how the plunge in unemployment to record low levels has failed to boost wages - and notes that as the economy approaches the full employment, "wages tend to become more responsive." This, to the Deutsche Bank analyst, "is the inflection point that the Fed is monitoring."

Looking at the Phillips curve over the past 4 economic cycles, Kocic compares it to the Cheshire cat's smile from Alice in Wonderland, which is present even when the actual cat body is no longer there: "In each cycle, it falls apart, but after every annihilation, it re-composes itself and continues to play an important role."

Specifically, what Kocic highlights, is the sudden phase transitions between the end of one cycle and the start of another, in which one observes a "near vertical" spike in inflation to the smallest favorable change in underlying conditions. In the DB chart below, each cycle has a different color which implicitly marks their beginning and end.

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Warsh, Druckenmiller Buy "Basis" - The Central-Bank-Inspired "Stable" Cryptocurrency

On Wednesday, the New Jersey-based cryptocurrency startup 'Basis' announced it had raised $133 million in a round backed by venture capital firms including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Bain Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sky Capital.

Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and Kevin Warsh, the former governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, also bought in.

Basis co-founder and CEO Nader Al-Naji writes:

"...we are building a cryptocurrency with an algorithmic central bank that we believe will make cryptocurrency stable and usable around the world.

we believe the price volatility of cryptocurrencies is one of their biggest barriers to widespread adoption. Unlike the currencies we use today, most cryptocurrencies do not have a mechanism to keep purchasing power stable. This means that sporadic swings in demand can cause huge changes in price.

This is bad. Imagine you’re paid a salary of 1 Bitcoin per month. If the price of Bitcoin drops, you might not be able to make rent. If it rises, your employer won’t be able to afford your salary. It’s simply not a reliable means of payment.

A currency needs to be stable in order for people to use it. Central banks apply monetary policy to mitigate currency volatility. Until now, there’s been no way to create a cryptocurrency with comparable benefits. And no way for cryptocurrencies to become true currencies."

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