A Black Swan On The Horizon? The fundamentals for gold are unassailable, the long technical picture is excellent and gold remains very inexpensive when compared to almost every other alternative (most particularly, bonds, treasury bills and bank deposits). With currency debasement assured and some form of hyperinflation probable, gold should trade at several multiples of the current price before this bull market reaches its end. John Embry. Will debt problems, decreasing use of the dollar as the global reserve currency lead to a Black Swan event with the dollar plummeting and US power collapsing? Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Wall Street Journal columnist, laid out just such a scenario in a recent KWN phone interview. Roberts did not think much of the recent settlement about the debt ceiling. He said, They havent solved anything. Theyve just pushed it off until January or February. Roberts argued that another crisis may further erode confidence in the US dollar. So if it happens again, you might finally get the black swan event that brings the whole house of cards down. The general consensus seems to think that interest rates should be going down as the Federal Reserve continues to buy their own government paper to keep short-term interest artificially low. But in fact, since May 2013, interest rates started climbing. This confirms that there are more willing sellers instead of what the Federal Reserve is creating on the buy side, as reflected by the increase in interest rates. In other words, foreign investors are beginning to sense that what the Feds are doing is ultimately destroying the purchasing power of the US dollar and are willing sellers of any type of US government paper or security. The Feds are losing credibility and their balance sheets are making them look insolvent. It is interesting to note that the Feds got rid of most short-term paper to retain only long-term obligations, and as long-term interest rates increase it further reduces the market value of its principal. The numbers seem to indicate that the expected effect has already taken place as the Feds are leveraged 55 times their net worth. You only need a small move against you to wipe out your principal. As we look at the rise in interest rates since May 2013 (prices coming down), there is a strong case that the value of those Treasury securities has declined by more than the Feds net worth. Will the Fed need a bailout? The Fed may not only need a bailout but may throw in the towel. There is a school of thought that the government could potentially forgive the debt owned by the Federal Reserve. From an accounting point of view, you can do that in the asset side. But what do you do in the liability side? If you forgive $3TN (trillion) of debt it also has $3TN in liability. Debt is in basically 2 forms; first, it is the flat currency we carry around in our pockets and second the bank deposits in the Federal Reserve. It would be a huge loss on the banking system if they lost three trillion dollars on deposit on the Federal Reserve balance sheet and would cause the US dollar to collapse. The real problem, Roberts said, is the move away from the use of the dollar. Others are just going to stop using it. He mentioned that China and the Bank of England and the EU have signed currency swap agreements, which no longer require the use of the US dollar. Even what he called lackey puppet states, such as Australia, are now settling their trade balances with China in their own currencies. All of this means that there is less demand for the US dollar, which pushes the price down. The key is that the US can print more and more dollars to buy bonds to shore up the dollar, but it cant print foreign currencies to buy dollars. The real black swan, Roberts said, thats waiting to happen: When does the dollar plummet? When can the Fed not get enough loans or foreign currencies to buy back the dollar, and when that happens, its all over. They lose control, interest rates skyrocket, bonds collapses, stocks collapses, real estate collapses, and the deficit becomes huge, I mean really huge….Theres no thought about it….The whole situation is, to use an old expression, headed to hell in a hand basket (seeking alpha)
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 21:16:40 +0000
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