Toxic Dollar: Why Nobody Seems to Want US Currency
Traders are warning of a dramatic change in dollar selling. They fear central banks from the Middle East may force their Asian rivals to more aggressively drive the dollar down.
In 10 months, the Dollar Index has lost 14% because the world keeps accumulating dollars it doesn’t want and sells them. Asian central banks are key.
Many Asian central banks have been forced into waging wars to keep their currencies from appreciating because of the influx of investors to emerging markets. They sell waves of their own currencies into the market in an attempt to keep exports competitive.
In return they often receive dollars. But with the Federal Reserve printing dollars and the greenback’s value continually falling, the Asians sell those dollars in order to preserve the value of their reserves.
“Asia Pacific banks are renowned for their strict diversification” says Neil Mellor at BNY Mellon. “They hold a level with China in order to be competitive. Beyond that it’s very strict ratios. They need to swap-out of dollars.”
Euro Benefits When they sell dollars they often buy euros.
“China and Taiwan have tried looking further afield in their diversification, to the Australian and South Korean bond markets” says Mellyor. “But there are only two places that are deep enough to absorb reserves of this magnitude: the Euro Zone and the US. When ever you see emerging markets perform well you will see the euro perform well.”
Three months ago central banks in Latin American joined the Asians as “currency wars” became more widespread.
Euro/Dollar [EUR=X 1.4478 0.0179 (+1.25%) ] is now up 19% in 10 months. In fact there’s a growing realization that the ascent of the euro more to do with Asian bank diversification than anything happening within the Euro Zone.
“Euro/Dollar is trading without reference to the underlying debt markets” says Mellor. “In fact it’s our contention at BNY Mellon that the entire move in the Euro since 2001 have been driven by the Asian central banks need to diversify.”
Importantly however some believe the banks have deliberately sought to control the speed of the dollar’s decline by passively working bids to simply add liquidity on existing moves.
“They have been working bids below the market, relying on the market to come to them, as Europe’s sovereign debt fears and interest rate differentials trigger bouts of temporary dollar strength,” says Douglas Borthwick at Faros Trading.
But Borthwick says the Asians may be forced to abandon that because of fresh, aggressive dollar selling from the Middle East.
Just keep printing more money and running up the debt and the dollar won't be worth the paper it's printed on.
Don't laugh at that because there is actually talks right now to use cheaper forms of currency other than the paper we use to make dollar bills. Cotton which makes up a good amount of the paper we use is at an all time high and that is why they are talking about using coins now instead. This is not a joke either I'm very serious about this.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
Precious metals are moving up very quick lately, silver broke $40 an ounce today and I don't see any major corrections taking place any time soon.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
Henry is right.......gold and silver shot up again today!!! Oil is over $112 a barrel. Interest rates are starting to climb!
Bend over folks and get ready for hyper-inflation.........IT'S HERE!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
The Con is being set up right now, and the outlines are clearly visible. The Con works like this:
1. The Financial Elites/Oligarchy raked in billions in private profit from the orgy of leverage, credit expansion, fraud, embezzlement and misrepresentation of risk that resulted in the Housing Bubble.
2. The losses were transferred to the public (Federal government, i.e. The Central State) or its proxy, the Federal Reserve (i.e. the central bank), via bailouts, backstops, guarantees, the Fed's purchase of taxic assets, and an open window for the financiers to borrow billions at zero interest (ZIRP) for further speculations.
3. The Treasury now borrows $1.6 trillion every year, fully 11% of the nation's GDP, as the Central State has replaced private demand and credit expansion with its own borrowing and spending.
4. Non-U.S. central banks have largely ceased to support this unprecedented scale of borrowing, so the Federal Reserve now buys most of the Treasury's issuance of debt via QE2 (quantitative easing, the direct purchase of $600 billion in Treasury bonds).
5. Unlike Japan, the U.S. cannot self-fund its own government borrowing: while U.S. investors, banks and insurance companies do own a significant chunk of Treasuries, the U.S. savings rate (capital accumulation) is still abysmally low, around 4%, which is half the historical average savings rate.
This is the result of the Keynesian Cult's One Big Idea, which is to pull demand forward and encourage borrowing and spending now by any means necessary, and thus sacrifice capital formation/saving.
So the basic outline of the Con is that private losses from the financialization of the U.S. economy were shifted to the public. Now to keep the Status Quo and Financial Plutocracy from imploding, the public is on the hook for $1.6 trillion in additional borrowing every year until Doomsday (around 2021 or so).
Having secured the backing of the Central Bank and Central State, the Plutocracy's only problem now is that it needs a risk-free source of high-yield income. Yes, it has a trillion dollars or so sitting in bank reserves, collecting interest from the Federal Reserve; this is certainly risk-free, but the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) keeps the rate of return absurdly low.
Here's where we see the Con taking shape. The ideal setup for risk-free returns is to own Treasurys that pay a high yield. The way to get higher interest rates is to first make the Treasury market supremely dependent on a central bank or single buyer: Done. That buyer is the Federal Reserve.
Next, have that buyer stop buying. Suddenly, interest rates start moving up. If you don't believe this is possible, or part of a larger project, then please explain why PIMCO sold all its Treasuries. Duh--because interest rates are set to rise, and not by a little bit or for a brief span, but by a lot and for years.
That means holders of long-term Treasuries (and other debt) will be cremated as rates rise. (Holders of TIPS will do OK, unless the government fraudulently sets the rate of inflation well below reality. Hmm, isn't that exactly what's it's already doing?)
Once long-term rates have leaped up, then start accumulating the high-yield bonds. Why would rates jump? Supply and demand: as the demand for low-yield Treasuries dries up, the supply keeps rising: every month, the Treasury has to auction tens of billions of dollars of bonds, or even hundreds of billions of dollars. There is no Plan B, the bonds must be sold, and if there are no buyers, then the yield has to rise.
Once rates have been engineered much higher, the Financial Oligarchy accumulates the high yielding bonds.
Here's where "austerity" comes in. Once rates are so high that they're choking the real economy, then voices arise demanding the Federal government stop borrowing and spending so much. Austerity (forced or otherwise) soon reduces the supply of bonds hitting the market and so rates decline, boosting the value of the high-yield debt.
To service the cost of all this Federal borrowing, taxes are raised on what's left of the productive members of society.
To add insult to injury, it will become "patriotic" to "buy bonds."
OK, let's check the setup:
1. Treasury market now dependent on one buyer: check.
2. That buyer stops buying, pushing rates higher: no QE3. Check.
3. "Austerity" is now seen as inevitable--but not just yet: check.
What the true believers of hyperinflation and the destruction of the dollar cannot accept is that debt is an asset to the owner of that debt. In focusing solely on the advantages of inflation to borrowers, they ignore the critical fact that inflation quickly destroys the value of the asset that debt represents to the owner. And debt is a primary asset to pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and indeed the entire financial sector.
So in claiming high inflation is guaranteed, adherents are claiming that the entire financial sector will accept being wiped out, just so Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer won't have to pay interest on the ballooning government debt.
That's exactly backward: the entire point is for Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer to pay high yields on Treasury debt, owned by the Financial sector's Oligarchs. The Con is to stripmine the public coffers, then impose higher rates and "austerity", buy the debt with the cash plundered from the public, and then sit back and enjoy risk-free returns as taxes are raised on the remaining tax donkeys. Inexpensive Bread and Circuses (SNAP food stamps and the political theater of the two parties staging a partisan "fight to the death") will keep the peasantry entertained and complicit.
In essence, the financial Elites would own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out. The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.
In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.
This is the ultimate endgame of the financialization of the U.S. economy and the concentration of wealth and thus political power in the hands of those who skimmed the immense gains from that financialization.
copied from Charles Hugh Smith a pretty smart dude
We didnt come this far to get this far. random 12 year old
A slave is someone that waits for someone else to free him. Ezra Pound
So we know the usd dollar is doomed to be replaced sooner rather than later whit most likely IMF SDR's
We will then be officially a third world country!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
us will no longer be the "reserve" currency, to be replaced sooner rather than later with most likely IMF SDR's or the BRIC may come with one of their ideas. Don't be too quick to sell gold or silver for dollars, that works too when the metals are at all time highs the temptaton is to sell but the value is not real gold has not become more expensive dollar value has shrunk, same with everything else things do not change, things are solid, only the currency has floating value hold metals untill the manufactured currency war is done with.
We didnt come this far to get this far. random 12 year old
A slave is someone that waits for someone else to free him. Ezra Pound
Silver jumped into the 46 area while the USD lowered into 73. The way it's going silver can reach 70 by June or July
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
Dollar drops half a point and metals surge right when Bernanke tries to convince the world the dollar is strong, I guess the world doesn't believe him
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
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