The Everything Bubble Has Found Its Pin. The Pin’s Name Is Jerome Powell
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Graham Summers
The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. As such, it is the currency of choice for issuing debt. Entities around the globe will often choose to issue debt denominated in the dollar, even if the dollar is not a currency used in their economy.
When you borrow money in US dollars, you are effectively shorting it. You are betting that the dollar will weaken, making your debt servicing cheaper on a relative basis.
When the dollar strengthens, it becomes more difficult to service your debt. This is true even for the US itself. The $20 trillion it owes in public debt is effectively one gigantic $20 trillion US dollar short.
Enter Jerome Powell. The Powell Fed has decided to embark on the most aggressively hawkish monetary policy in Fed history, and the currency markets have taken note. The dollar is breaking out of downtrends in every single currency.
Assuming Powell doesn’t want to blow up the $60-trillion dollar-denominated debt bubble, the chart included here screams ‘policy error.’
The last time the dollar rallied against every major currency was in 2014. At that time, the entire commodity complex imploded by over 60%, and emerging markets came within a hair’s breadth of systemic collapse.
Within six months of the dollar’s rally in 2014, Brazil’s stock market was down nearly 70%. China’s was down nearly 50%. Emerging markets across the board dropped over 30%. Oil fell from $105 to $30.
So, buckle up. The everything bubble has found its pin, and the pin’s name is Jerome Powell.
Greetings Graham, I didn’t understand something that Dr. Jim Willie (Editor of Hatrick Letter, http://www.goldenjackass.com) said several years ago. He said the USD will rise and rise and rise, and then it will vanish. Now I understand how this happening. With rise of Fed Funds rate the USD is rising plus the USD shortage QT creating, however, as Western banks get into trouble with their EM loans the bubbles will pop at home. Then the Feds will have to do the largest QE in History and USD will be history, and Gold, Silver and other real assets (farm land, art, yachts, etc) will take center stage. The only other option is IMF steps in with their SDR to bail-out the banks, and gets this new global currency into circulation. Hope I am wrong because the next inflation wave will destroy the middle class leading to social chaos and revolutions.
Saeed, yes the next inflation wave will do to the USA what happened to the USSR in the early 1990s. They split apart into different countries consisting of Russia and a bunch of x-stans. And then each of them re-started their own debt Ponzis on the back of their own fake money. IF the world is going to accept fake money as if it were real, you might as well be printing your own fake money.
All of the pain that is coming can be laid on the back of one thing: a massive and global con game to get people work in exchange for fake paper currency that most have to work for but the elite simply print up. It’s a total scam and the people are their own worst enemy. If everyone stopped accepting fake paper money as if it were real, the scam would collapse and within 2 years we would be back on a growth path. But this time, the elite would not be able to print their fine existence up from thin air. They would have to work for what they get like the rest of us. And so they would quickly tumble from their elite status because it takes real labor to keep them in the pink, even if the labor is someone else’s.