Dennis Tubbergen – Page 2 – Dennis Tubbergen

“First Bank Failure of Many?”

As I discuss in my New Retirement Rules Class, ever since 1971, the US Dollar has been debt rather than an asset.

On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon eliminated the link between the US Dollar and gold, making the US Dollar a fiat currency.

Since that date, US Dollars have been loaned into existence. The lower a bank’s reserve requirement and the more borrowing that occurs, the more US Dollars are created. Of course, as longer-term readers of this weekly publication know, after the financial crisis, when interest rates were reduced to zero, lending did not accelerate. It was at that point that the Federal Reserve began a ‘temporary’ program of quantitative easing or currency creation.

Since that time, worldwide debt has increased from about $100 trillion to about $300 trillion.

Since banks have debt as assets, I have been talking about the strong likelihood of banks failing as excessive debt goes unpaid.

This pattern of bank failures as asset price bubbles caused by currency creation has existed for much of history.

It happened during the financial crisis.

Many of you probably remember Henry Paulsen, the Treasury Secretary at the time, getting on television and stating that unless he got $700 billion from congress immediately, the financial system as we knew it would fail.

Congress complied and the banks got their bail out.

From a historical perspective, a bailout is not normal or typical. For most of history, when banks fail, there is a ‘bail-in.’ Banks are bailed out by the bank’s depositors, who lose some or all of the money they have in the bank.

A bail-in was the solution for failed banks in 1933 when President Roosevelt declared a bank holiday, relieving banks of any responsibility to repay depositors.

While it is too early to tell, the most recent bank failure involving Silicon Valley Bank will likely see many depositors lose their deposits. Looks like at least a partial bail-in might be happening.

In case you haven’t yet heard, Silicon Valley Bank, the 18^th largest in the country, failed last week. This from “Zero Hedge”. (Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/record-bank-run-drained-quarter-or-42-billion-svbs-deposits-hours-leaving-it-negative-1bn):

For those who slept through yesterday, here is what you missed and why the US banking system is suffering its worst crisis since 2020. Silicon Valley Bank, aka SIVB, the 18th largest bank in the US with $212 billion in assets of which $120 billion are securities (of which most or $57.7BN are Held to Maturity (HTM) Mortgage Backed Securities and another $10.5BN are CMO, while $26BN are Available for Sale, more on that later )…

… funded by over $173 billion in deposits (of which $151.5 billion are uninsured), has long been viewed as the bank at the heart of the US startup industry due to its singular focus on venture-capital firms. In many ways it echoes the issues we saw at Silvergate, which banked crypto firms almost exclusively.

The big question, of course, is what happened in the past 24 hours to not only snuff the bank’s proposed equity offering, but to push the bank into insolvency.

We got the answer just a few moments after that tweet, when the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation reported that shortly after the Bank announced a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from a sale of investments and was conducting a capital raise (which we now know failed), and despite the bank being in sound financial condition prior to March 9, 2023, “investors and depositors reacted by initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits from the Bank on March 9, 2023, causing a run on the Bank.“

As a result of this furious drain, as of the close of business on Thursday, March 9, “the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately $958 million.”

At this point, despite attempts from the Bank, with the assistance of regulators, “to transfer collateral from various sources, the Bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve. The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the Bank to be incapable of paying its obligations as they come due, and the bank is now insolvent.”

Some context: as a reminder, SIVB had $173 billion in deposits as of Dec 31., which means that in just a few hours a historic bank run drained a quarter of the bank’s funding!

But not everyone got out in time obviously, there is a long line of depositors who are over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit (in fact only somewhere between 3 and 7% of total deposits are insured).

The article goes on, listing MANY companies and organizations that had uninsured deposits in the bank.

Here’s the reality of the fractionalized banking system. Banks are required to maintain minimum reserves that are a percentage of deposits. That minimum reserve requirement currently stands at 10%.

As the article excerpt above points out, the run on Silicon Valley Bank had depositors demanding withdrawals of $42 billion on total approximate assets (as of December 31, 2022) of $173 billion.

That’s a little more than 24% of deposits.

This bank had a relatively high amount of liquidity given the minimum required level of reserves. Yet, despite that relatively high level of liquidity, the bank run consumed all the liquidity and then some, making the bank insolvent.

“Business Insider” tells of the predicament of a winery owner who is dealing with the bank failure. (Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-wine-industry-napa-valley-cade-surprise-2023-3?utm_campaign=tech-sf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook):

Conover said CADE has a “large loan” and mortgage with SVB on four wineries and five vineyards. And as of Saturday, the company’s checking account “is locked up.”

“I’ve never been through this before,” Conover said. The only similar crisis he could recall was during the 2008 recession.

Here is a business owner with debt outstanding to the bank with a checking account that is locked up and not accessible.

While it will take some time to see how this is sorted out, for the time being, this business owner has a problem – outstanding loans requiring payments and a once liquid checking account that is now illiquid.

There are a few lessons here.

One, as noted at the beginning of this piece, if there is too much debt to be paid, it won’t be paid. Since banks have debt as assets, when debt goes unpaid, banks become insolvent.

Two, under the fractionalized banking system, because reserves are only a portion of deposits, nearly any bank that experiences a bank run of large enough magnitude can become insolvent.

Three, it’s probably prudent to know the safety ratings of your bank, keep deposits under the $250,000 insurance threshold (if possible), and diversify holdings among multiple banks.

If you or someone you know could benefit from our educational materials, please have them visit our website at www.RetirementLifestyleAdvocates.com. Our webinars, podcasts, and newsletters can be found there.

Stagflation Imminent?

Last week, I discussed the inevitable outcome of government overspending and central bank overprinting.

This outcome will be as ugly as it will be predictable in my view.

Eventually, inflation will give way to an ugly deflationary environment. In the meantime, we will probably see stagflation – rising consumer prices and falling asset prices. Professor Noriel Roubini has a similar take. This from “Markets Insider” (Source: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nouriel-roubini-economy-recession-inflation-debt-market-crash-dr-doom-2023-3):

A “perfect storm” is brewing, and markets this year are going to get hit with a recession, a debt crisis, and out-of-control inflation, the economist Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini said.

Roubini, one of the first economists to call the 2008 recession, has been warning for months of a stagflationary debt crisis, which would combine the worst aspects of ’70s-style stagflation and the ’08 debt crisis.

“I do believe that a stagflationary crisis is going to emerge this year,” Roubini said Thursday in an interview with Australia’s ABC.

With consumer inflation still sticky at 6.4%, Roubini said he estimated that the Federal Reserve would need to lift benchmark rates “well above” 6% for inflation to fall back to its 2% target.

That could spark a severe recession, a stock-market crash, and an explosion in debt defaults, leaving the Fed with no choice but to back off its inflation fight and let prices spiral out of control, he added. The result would be a steep recession, anyway, followed by more debt and inflation problems.

“Now we’re facing the perfect storm: inflation, stagflation, recession, and a potential debt crisis,” Roubini said.

He has remained ultrabearish on the economy, despite the market’s growing hope that the US could skirt a recession this year.

Though more bullish commentators are making the case for a healthy rebound in the S&P 500, which fell 20% last year, Roubini has previously said the benchmark stock index could slide another 30% as investors battled extreme macro conditions.

“They will continue to go down,” he said of stocks, pointing to the recent sell-off as investors priced in higher interest rates from the Fed. “The market is already correcting.”

He urged investors to protect themselves by choosing inflation hedges, such as gold, inflation-indexed bonds, and short-term bonds. Those picks are likely to beat stocks and bonds, he said, which could suffer.

I believe Roubini is correct on a couple counts.

Stocks will likely decline further in my view. One only needs to look at the Buffet Indicator to quickly conclude that despite last year’s decline in stock values, stocks remain heavily overvalued.

And, in order to tame inflation, as I have stated previously, real interest rates need to be positive – interest rates need to be higher than the inflation rate.

There are already signs of stagflation emerging. The real estate market is a good example. Wolf Richter, had this to say on real estate (Source: https://wolfstreet.com/2023/03/04/housing-bust-2-has-begun/):

The housing market in the United States has turned down, and in some big markets very dramatically so. Other markets lag a little behind.

That’s how it went during the last Housing Bust, that I now call Housing Bust #1. During Housing Bust #1, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas, etc. were a little ahead; other places, like San Francisco were a little behind. In 2007, people in San Francisco thought they would be spared the housing bust they saw unfolding across the country. And then it came to San Francisco with a vengeance.

This time around, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and the entire San Francisco Bay Area, are at the forefront, along with Boise, Seattle, and some others. In the San Francisco Bay Area, during the first 10 months of this housing bust, Housing Bust #2, the median house price has plunged faster than it did during the first 10 months of Housing Bust #1. That’s what we’re looking at. I’ll get into the details in a moment.

Across the US, home sales have plunged month after month ever since mortgage rates started to rise a year ago. In January, across the US, total home sales plunged by 37% from January last year. Sales plunged in all regions, but they plunged worst in the West, by 42% year-over-year, and the least worst, if I may, in the Midwest, by 33%. This is happening everywhere.

The median price of all types of homes across the US in January fell for the seventh month in a row, down over 13% from the peak in June. Some of the decline is seasonal, and some is not.

This drop whittled down the year-over-year gain to just 1.3%. At this pace, we will see a year-over-year price decline in February or March, which would be the first year-over-year price decline across the US since Housing Bust 1.

Active listings were up by nearly 70% from a year ago, though by historical standards they’re still low. Lots of sellers are sitting on their vacant properties and are holding them off the market, and are putting them on the rental market or are trying to make a go of it as vacation rentals. And they’re all hoping that “this too shall pass.”

“This too shall pass” – that’s the mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate went over 7% late last year, then in January, it dropped, went as low as 6%, and the entire industry was breathing a sigh of relief. This was based on fervent hopes that inflation would just vanish, and that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates soon, and be done with this whole nightmare.

But in early February came the realization that inflation wasn’t just going away. Friday’s inflation data confirmed that inflation is reaccelerating, that it already started the process of reacceleration in December. Some goods prices are down, but inflation in services spiked to a four-decade high. Services is nearly two-thirds of what consumers spend their money on. Inflation is very difficult to dislodge from services. The Federal Reserve is going to have its hands full dealing with this – meaning higher rates for longer.

And mortgage rates jumped again and on Friday were back to about 6.9%, according to the daily measure by Mortgage News Daily. Just a hair below the magic 7%.

And potential sellers are still sitting on their vacant properties, thinking: and this too shall pass.

So how many vacant homes are there? The Census Bureau tracks this. In the fourth quarter last year, there were nearly 15 million vacant housing units – so single-family houses, condos, and rental apartments. That’s over 10% of the total housing stock.

In 2022, the number of total housing units increased by over 1.3 million. If each housing unit is occupied on average by 2.5 people, that’s housing for 3.3 million more people than in the prior year. The US population hasn’t grown nearly that fast in 2022.

Ok, so now here are nearly 15 million vacant housing units. Of them, 11 million were vacant year-round. Some of the 11 million were being remodeled to be rented out, and others were for sale, and that’s the inventory we actually see, and there are other reasons why homes were vacant.

But 6.6 million homes were held off the market, for a variety of reasons, such as that the owners don’t want to sell the property at the moment.

If just 10% of these 6.6 million homes that are held off the market show up on the market, it would double the total number of active listings. If 20% of these homes show up on the market, it would trigger an enormous glut.

This is the shadow inventory. It can emerge at any time. And during Housing Bust 1, this shadow inventory that suddenly emerged created the biggest housing glut ever.

As I noted last week, history teaches us that excessive debt levels lead to deflation.

This time will ultimately be no different.

Deflation will at some point, become the prevalent economic force. In the meantime, expect stagflation.

That will be more bad news for stocks and real estate as well as consumer prices.

The best advice that I can offer is to have some of your assets that will be protected from a prolonged decline in stocks and real estate and other assets that will perform well in an inflationary environment.

An Artificial Economy

The March “You May Not Know Report” discusses how the current economy (since the time of the Great Financial Crisis) is artificial- the result of easy money policies by the Federal Reserve and government stimulus.

History teaches us that when governments overspend and central banks over print, eventually, reality sets in. One of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, told us that we could expect inflation followed by deflation and that is exactly the track on which we now find ourselves.

Inflation has not subsided; the most recent data shows that inflation is accelerating exactly as Jefferson suggested it would. And Americans are suffering as a result. There are now also signs of deflation setting in as well. This from Michael Maharrey writing for Schiff Gold (Source: https://schiffgold.com/commentaries/this-strong-economy-is-a-facade-built-out-of-debt/):

Retail sales surged in January, creating the impression that the economy is humming along nicely. After all, there can’t be a problem if consumers are out there consuming, right?

But a lot of people are ignoring a key question: how are people paying for this shopping spree?

As it turns out, they’re putting a lot of this spending on credit cards.

Even with a big 1.8% decline in retail sales in December, revolving credit, primarily reflecting credit card debt, grew by another $7.2 billion that month, a 7.3% increase.

To put the numbers into perspective, the annual increase in 2019, prior to the pandemic, was 3.6%. It’s pretty clear that Americans are still heavily relying on credit cards to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, household debt rose by $394 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. It was the largest quarter-on-quarter increase in household debt in two decades.

Debt balances have risen $2.7 trillion higher than they were at the beginning of the pandemic.

Clearly, this isn’t a sign of a healthy economy. Americans are spending more on everything thanks to rampant price inflation that doesn’t appear to be waning, and they’re relying on credit cards to do it. Saving has plunged. This isn’t a sound economic foundation, and it isn’t even sustainable. Credit cards have a nasty thing called a limit. And with credit card interest rates at record-high levels, people will reach those limits pretty quickly.

I ran across something the other day that provides an even more striking example of just how reliant the US economy is on debt.

A company called the Wisconsin Cheeseman sells gift packs of cheese, candies and other treats. And you can buy the gifts on their in-house credit plan.

Let this sink in for a moment. A primary pitch from a gift company is that you can buy on credit.

The annual percentage rate will run you a modest 5.75% to a hefty 25.99% depending on the state. (Most states are currently above 20%. But don’t worry. Your payments can be as low as $10 a month.) Just don’t think about the fact that you’ll probably be paying for this cheese for years to come.

There are other companies facilitating borrowing this doesn’t even show up in the official debt figures.

The use of BNLP services such as Affirm, Afterpay and Klarna has exploded in the last couple of years. These services allow consumers to pay off purchases through installment payments, often interest-free. In a December 2021 report, Cardify CEO Derrick Fung said buy now, pay later has rapidly become more mainstream.

“The consumer over the last 12 months has become more compulsive and BNPL products are the result of us being locked up for too long and wanting more instant gratification,” he said.

Buy now, pay later is a convenient way to spread out spending, but there is a dark side. It encourages consumers to spend more. Nearly 46% of those polled said they would spend less if BNPL wasn’t an option.

The rise of buy now pay later (BNPL) is another sign of a deeply dysfunctional economy. Americans are piling up millions of dollars of additional debt using BNPL on top of their credit cards.

So, while the mainstream pundits tell you the economy is strong, they are looking at a facade. It’s a house of cards. And eventually, it will collapse.

American consumers continue to “support the economy” by spending money today despite rising prices. But they’re borrowing to do it. Tomorrow is fast approaching. And with it depleted savings, higher interest rates, and looming credit card limits. This is simply not a sustainable trajectory, no matter how the mainstream press tries to spin it.

Consumers are struggling. That means that the deflation part of the cycle that Jefferson warned us about may be about to emerge in earnest.

As I have stated in the past (and there are many analysts who would disagree with me), I expect that the Federal Reserve will reverse course and begin pursuing easy money policies once again.

Should I be right about this, we will have to wait and see if the Fed can be effective. I have my doubts. Consumers are accumulating too much debt.

The chart below breaks down debt accumulation by age. Alarmingly, those age 60 plus are accumulating more debt on a percentage basis than other age groups. That should serve as a huge red flag and warning sign.

This time will be no different.

Deflation will, at some point, become the prevalent economic force.

That will be more bad news for stocks and real estate.

Stocks are already feeling it, and real estate is now beginning to dramatically unwind in many parts of the country.

Debt Truths

A seldom-discussed topic that has a significant economic impact is private sector debt levels.

Ever since 1971, when the US Dollar became a fiat currency, and new currency has been created by loaning it into existence.

If banks have a 10% reserve requirement, a $100,000 deposit into a bank can be transformed into $1,000,000 if the velocity of money is high enough.

For example, say you deposit $100,000 into your bank. Your banker reserves 10% or $10,000 and loans out the other $90,000. Say the borrower of the $90,000 buys an expensive car and borrows the $90,000 now available from your bank to do so. The car dealer deposits the $90,000 into her bank. That banker reserves 10% or $9,000 and loans out the other $81,000. That process continues up to a maximum of new currency created of $1,000,000.

Historically, when the Federal Reserve wanted to jump-start the economy by increasing the currency supply, the central bank would reduce interest rates to increase the velocity of money, thereby creating more currency.

That worked until the time of the financial crisis when interest rates were reduced to zero, but lending did not follow due to the fact that, collectively speaking, the American public was already deeply in debt.

It was at that point the Federal Reserve made the decision to ‘temporarily’ pursue a program of quantitative easing or currency creation. As we all now know, the program continued long past the time that a reasonable person would say it was temporary.

As I have often stated, it is my belief that this program will once again be revived in earnest, although it will likely be called something other than quantitative easing.

Since the time of the financial crisis, this policy of currency creation has caused debt levels to increase immensely. At the time of the financial crisis, worldwide debt was about $100 trillion. It now stands at $300 trillion – a truly remarkable number.

Presently, debt levels are continuing to increase. The data shows that consumers are increasingly taking on new debt to cope with rising living costs. This from “Zero Hedge” (Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/consumer-debt-soars-394bn-most-20-years-record-169-trillion-young-borrowers-struggle-repay):

While it won’t tell us anything we don’t know – since it is two months delayed and we already get monthly updates from the Fed via the G.19 statement – this morning, the NY Fed published its quarterly Household Debt and Credit report, which showed that total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2022 rose by 2.4% or $394 billion, the largest nominal quarterly increase in twenty years, to a record $16.90 trillion. Balances now stand $2.75 trillion higher than at the end of 2019, before the pandemic recession.

And the same chart broken down by age:

Every type of consumer credit increased in Q4, and here is a detailed breakdown:

Mortgage balances rose by $254 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and stood at $11.92 trillion at the end of December, marking a nearly $1 trillion increase in mortgage balances in 2022.
Home equity lines of credit rose by $14 billion to $340 billion.
Student loan balances now stand at $1.60 trillion, up by $21 billion from the previous quarter. In total, non-housing balances grew by $126 billion.
Auto loan balances increased by $28 billion in the fourth quarter, consistent with the upward trajectory seen since 2011.
Credit card balances increased $61 billion in the fourth quarter to $986 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic high of $927 billion.

There is an eternal truth about excessive debt accumulation – if there is too much debt to be paid, it won’t be paid.

This is true regarding private sector debt and it is true as far as government debt and liabilities are concerned as well.

It is my view, based on simple math, that debt levels are now past the point of no return and are now too high to ever be paid.

The result, at some future point, will be a massive deflationary environment that will, in my view, resemble the 1930’s; or, possibly, worse.

Looking at the first chart above, one can see the combined debt total of mortgage debt, home equity loan debt, auto debt, student loan debt, and credit card debt is now about 1/3^rd higher than at the time of the financial crisis.

Alarmingly, debt levels have grown the most among those over age 60. That, at least in my view, indicates that consumers are increasingly relying on debt to make ends meet in what is a very difficult economy.

And, to add insult to injury, the most recent inflation numbers indicate that inflation is not under control. This was not at all surprising to me. As I have been stating, the Fed isn’t doing enough to get inflation under control.

Inflation will not be controlled until we have real, positive interest rates – something we are a long way away from.

In the meantime, the US economy (and the world economy) is heading for a time of painful stagflation.

What is the Real Story?

For many years I have written about how economic data is often ‘massaged” (or manipulated?) to make the reported numbers look more favorable.

This is true of the reported inflation rate, the reported unemployment rate, and the money supply.

Now, it seems that there is extreme manipulation as far as the jobs report is concerned. This from Michael Snyder (Source: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/dont-be-stupid-the-u-s-economy-actually-lost-2-5-million-jobs-last-month/):

I can’t take it anymore. Fake numbers that are released by the government get turned into fake news by the corporate media, and many Americans don’t even realize that they are being conned. Major news outlets all over the country are breathlessly trumpeting the “blockbuster jobs report” as if it is a sign from heaven that good economic times are ahead. We are being told that the U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs last month, but that isn’t true. Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy actually lost 2.5 million jobs in January. Yes, you read that correctly. So how in the world does a loss of 2.5 million jobs become a “gain” of 517,000 jobs? Every month, government bureaucrats apply “adjustments” to the numbers that they believe are appropriate, and at this point, their “adjustments” have become so absurd that they have turned the monthly employment report into a total farce.

As I have been documenting on my website for weeks, there has been a tremendous wave of layoffs over the last several months.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Lyft, Twitter, Walmart, McDonald’s, FedEx, and countless other large corporations have decided to conduct mass layoffs.

But now the government expects us to believe that the U.S. economy is actually adding jobs at a very brisk pace?

That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Unfortunately, the corporate media is totally buying it. For example, CNBC just posted an article that described the jobs report as “stunningly strong”…

The employment picture started off 2023 on a stunningly strong note, with nonfarm payrolls posting their biggest gain since July 2022.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 517,000 for January, above the Dow Jones estimate of 187,000 and December’s gain of 260,000, according to a Labor Department report Friday.

And a CNN article has quoted one expert as saying that “the labor market is more like a bullet train”…

“With 517,000 new jobs added in January 2023 and the unemployment rate at 3.4%, this is a blockbuster report demonstrating that the labor market is more like a bullet train,” Becky Frankiewicz, president and chief commercial officer of ManpowerGroup, said Friday.

Really?

After all of the layoffs that we have witnessed in recent months, does she really believe that?

Not to be outdone, Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi boldly declared that any concerns about a coming recession “should be completely dashed by these numbers”…

The January jobs report should “dash” concerns of recession, Moody’s chief economist said Friday, but warned that the numbers may overstate job growth.

“Any concern the economy is in recession or close to a recession should be completely dashed by these numbers,” Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi told CNN’s Matt Egan on Friday, adding that it would take “an awful lot” to send the US economy into a downturn.

The U.S. economy did not add 517,000 jobs last month.

That is the “adjusted” number.

The “unadjusted” number actually shows that the U.S. economy lost 2.5 million jobs last month. The following comes from Bloomberg…

For the establishment survey, the government’s updated seasonal factors may have impacted the headline payrolls figure. On an unadjusted basis, payrolls actually fell by 2.5 million last month.

That is actually what was measured.

But if you brazenly add more than 3 million jobs to the report that simply do not exist, it makes it look like the U.S. economy is doing just great.

As we near the end of February, there have been even more layoffs announced. (Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/after-worst-january-job-cuts-great-recession-here-are-12-major-layoffs-have)

#1 Disney has decided to tell approximately 7,000 employees to hit the bricks…

“We will be reducing our workforce by approximately 7,000 jobs,” CEO Bob Iger said during the company’s first quarter earnings call. “While this is necessary to address the challenges we’re facing today, I do not make this decision lightly. I have enormous respect and appreciation for the talent and dedication of our employees worldwide, and I’m mindful of the personal impact of these changes.”

#2 Yahoo has announced that it will be laying off “more than 20% of its workforce”…

Yahoo will lay off more than 20% of its workforce by the end of 2023, eliminating 1,000 positions this week alone, the company said in a statement Thursday.

#3 Ebay was doing quite well, but now they have decided that 4 percent of their workers are no longer needed…

Ebay on Tuesday announced plans to cut 500 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce, according to a filing with the SEC.

#4 Affirm is yet another tech company that has recently made a decision to conduct mass layoffs…

Affirm announced it’s cutting 19% of its workforce Wednesday. The news came as it reported second quarter earnings that fell below analyst estimates on both the top and bottom lines.

#5 As the U.S. housing crash deepens, JPMorgan Chase has concluded that now is the time to “cut hundreds of mortgage employees”…

JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut hundreds of mortgage employees this week, adding to job losses across the industry as home-lending businesses continue to be hurt by elevated interest rates.

#6 GoDaddy just let their workers know that they plan to “reduce the size of our global team by about 8%”…

Today, we are announcing a plan to reduce the size of our global team by about 8%. This will come as difficult news for many valued and respected GoDaddy team members.

#7 Micron is one of the biggest private employers in Idaho, but now it intends to “reduce its global headcount by about 10% over the next year”…

Micron has begun laying off workers, a spokesperson for the company told the Idaho Statesman.

The news marks the beginning of the company’s plan to reduce its global headcount by about 10% over the next year. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra announced during a quarterly conference call with investors in December that the company is taking significant steps to reduce costs and operating expenses as demand for its principal products wanes.

#8 GitHub has become yet another victim of the downsizing trend in the tech industry…

Microsoft-owned GitHub is laying off 10% of its staff, the company confirmed to Fortune.

#9 Nomad Health just laid off approximately 20 percent of their entire corporate workforce…

Nomad Health, a healthcare staffing startup, laid off around 20% of its corporate workforce this week, according to four terminated employees, as the surge in travel nurses and other temporary healthcare workers ignited by the pandemic cools down.

#10 Zoom is giving the axe to approximately 1,300 workers…

Zoom on Tuesday said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, or approximately 15% of its staff, becoming the latest tech company to announce significant job cuts as a pandemic-fueled surge in demand for digital services wanes.

#11 Boeing was supposedly going to be hiring more workers, but instead, the company just announced that thousands of positions in finance and human resources will be eliminated…

“We expect about 2,000 reductions this year primarily in Finance and HR through a combination of attrition and layoffs,” Boeing confirmed Monday.

#12 Do you remember when Dell computers were still popular? Unfortunately, the tide has turned, and now Dell has been forced to get rid of 6,650 workers…

Dell Technologies Inc. is eliminating about 6,650 roles as it faces plummeting demand for personal computers, becoming the latest technology company to announce thousands of job cuts.

Despite reports to the contrary, the labor market is not healthy.

Bubbles and a Stock Forecast

Ever since the time of the Great Financial Crisis, I have written about the topic of bubbles.

Whether the bubble is a price bubble in stocks, bonds, real estate or commodities, there are some ‘bubble characteristics’ that often hold true.

The first characteristic is that bubbles are often symmetrical, taking as long to unwind as they do to build.

The second bubble characteristic is that when a price bubble is graphed, the downside of the bubble is nearly a mirror image of the upside of the bubble.

Charles Hugh Smith wrote a piece on this topic last week that, in my view, does a nice job explaining these bubble characteristics. (Source: https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan23/bubble-symmetry1-23.html) Here is an excerpt from his excellent piece: Should bubble symmetry play out in the S&P 500, we can anticipate a steep 45% drop to pre-bubble levels, followed by another leg down as the speculative frenzy is slowly extinguished.

Bubble symmetry is, well, interesting. The dot-com stock market bubble circa 1995-2003 offers a classic example of bubble symmetry, though there are many others as well. The key feature of bubble symmetry is the entire bubble retraces in roughly the same time frame as it took to soar to absurd heights.

Nobody could see bubble symmetry coming, of course. At the peak and for some time after, bubbles are viewed as the natural order of markets, and so they should continue expanding forever.

Alas, the natural order of markets is mean reversion and the collapse of whatever is unsustainable. This includes speculative manias, credit bubbles, asset bubbles, and projections of endless expansion of margins, profits, sales, consumption, tax revenues, and everything else under the sun.

There’s a well-worn psychological path in the collapse of bubbles. This path more or less tracks the Kubler-Ross phases of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, though the momentum of speculative frenzy demands extended displays of hubris and over-confidence, i.e., the first wobble “must be the bottom.”

There are also repeated spikes of false hope that “the bottom is in” and the bubble is starting to reflate.

This pattern repeats until the speculative fever finally breaks, and all those betting on a resumption of the bubble mania finally give up.

This process often takes about the same length of time that it took for the bubble mania to become ubiquitous. If it took about 2.5 years for the bubble to expand, it takes about 2.5 years for the bubble to pop and the market to return to its pre-bubble level.

Once again, we hear reasonable-sounding claims being used to support predictions of a never-ending rise in stock valuations.

What hasn’t changed is humans are still running Wetware 1.0, which has default settings for extremes of emotion, particularly manic euphoria, running with the herd (a.k.a. FOMO, fear of missing out), and panic / fear.

Despite all the assurances to the contrary, all bubbles pop because they are based in human emotions. We attempt to rationalize them by invoking the real world, but the reality is speculative manias are manifestations of human emotions and the feedback of running in a herd of social animals.

As I was reading Mr. Smith’s analysis, I thought I would graph stocks using a chart of an exchange-traded fund that tracks the price of the Standard and Poor’s 500:

Note that I have drawn 3 horizontal lines on the price chart.

Should stock prices fall to the most obvious strong area of support as noted by the top horizontal line, there would be a further decline in stock prices of about 40%.

Should prices fall to the second (or middle) horizontal line I’ve drawn on the chart, that would mark a decline of about 54% from these levels.

And, should stock prices fall to the levels noted by the third (or bottom) horizontal line on the chart, that would be about a 62% declines from these levels.

While the ‘buy the dip’ mentality seems to be dominating stock investors’ actions at this point, I expect a lot more downside in stocks before the bottom is finally in. I also believe that may mark a terrific opportunity to invest in stocks.

I am often asked for my ultimate stock forecast. While it’s impossible to predict the future actions of the Federal Reserve, I think that we will see additional downside in stocks of 40% to 60%.

Until we reach that point, I am of the opinion that many investors would be well-served to take a cautious and deliberate approach to managing assets.

Consequences of Debt Excesses and Irresponsible Currency Creation

Debt has consequences. As does currency creation to temporarily mask the economic effects of excessive debt.

While an entire book could be written on how the consequences of debt and high levels of currency creation will manifest in the months and years ahead, in this issue of “Portfolio Watch,” I will examine two of these outcomes.

First, let’s discuss debt, in particular, student loan debt.

While there are many with student loan debt who were hopefully anticipating that their loans would be forgiven, it now seems that is not likely. That said, if you have defaulted on student loan debt, don’t think you are off the hook; that unpaid debt will follow you into retirement. This is from “Insurance News Net”:

While the promise of student loan debt relief seems to slip further out of reach, the prospects of the debt coming back to bite people in their retirement grows.

That is because student loan debt delinquencies can be deducted from Social Security benefits to the tune of thousands of dollars per year. The number of debtors is rising, along with delinquencies, according to a recent study by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research. In fact, student loan delinquency rates have surpassed all other types of consumer debt delinquencies between 2012 and early 2020.

That trend is accelerating, meaning more Americans will see their Social Security benefits shrink. The withholding amount is the lessor of 15% of the Social Security monthly benefit or the amount by which the benefit exceeds $750 per month. The deduction is an average of $2,500 annually, a 4% to 6% decrease in benefits, according to the study.

“While these amounts are relatively small, for households that are just making ends meet, even a small decline in income can have significant consequences,” according to the study. “Putting these numbers into context, the amount of withheld benefits could roughly pay off the average per capita credit card balance. Since delinquency rates are higher among younger borrowers, student loans may pose a bigger risk for this group’s future retirement security.”

While this may not be a huge economic headwind now, as time passes, it will become more of a problem, pulling discretionary income out of the consumer spending dependent US economy.

Currency creation causes the wealth gap to widen. History teaches us this unequivocally. This time around is no exception. This is from CNBC:

Over the last two years, the richest 1% of people have accumulated close to two-thirds of all new wealth created around the world, a new report from Oxfam says.

A total of $42 trillion in new wealth has been created since 2020, with $26 trillion, or 63%, of that being amassed by the top 1% of the ultra-rich, according to the report. The remaining 99% of the global population collected just $16 trillion of new wealth, the global poverty charity says.

“A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent,” the report, released as the World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos, Switzerland, reads.

It suggests that the pace at which wealth is being created has sped up, as the world’s richest 1% amassed around half of all new wealth over the past 10 years.

Oxfam’s report analyzed data on global wealth creation from Credit Suisse, as well figures from the Forbes Billionaire’s List and the Forbes Real-Time Billionaire’s list to assess changes to the wealth of the ultra-rich.

While the Federal Reserve is ostensibly holding the line on more currency creation, as I have often stated in this publication, it will be impossible for the Fed to totally cease currency creation until the Washington politicians balance the Federal budget.

The prospect of this seems highly improbable. Instead, I fully expect that there will be more currency creation in the future. Perhaps this currency creation will not take the form of quantitative easing as it has in the past, but I am forecasting that there will be some scheme put forth by the politicians and central bankers to subsidize the bad fiscal behavior of the collective group of Washington politicians.

One such scheme that has been discussed is the minting of a trillion-dollar coin.

Michael Maharrey, writing for Schiff Gold, recently commented on the scheme.

Policy wonks and government people come up with some really dumb ideas. And a lot of those dumb ideas just won’t go away.

Now that we’re in the early stages of the fake debt ceiling fight, a really dumb idea has been resurrected from the dead – the trillion-dollar coin.

Last week, the federal government ran up against the debt ceiling. That means it either has to come to some kind of agreement to raise the borrowing limit or it will default.

Now, we all know how this will end. After months of political theater and hand-wringing, Congress will raise the debt limit. But that just kicks the can down the road. Because before long, the government will run up against the debt ceiling again, and we’ll have to watch another awful sequel to this awful movie.

The debt ceiling drama completely ignores the real issue — the US government has a spending problem. The current administration is blowing through about half a trillion dollars every single month and running massive budget deficits. The solution is simple. The federal government could stop spending so much money. Or it could raise taxes. Or, why not both?

But these are politically non-viable solutions. Nobody in Washington DC is willing to seriously contemplate spending cuts. Sure, Republicans will talk about it, but that’s nothing but hot air. And nobody in Washington DC is willing to seriously contemplate raising taxes. Sure, Democrats will happily tax “the rich,” but tax increases would have to go much deeper into the poor and middle class to actually address the spending problem. So, Democrats are full of hot air too.

But there are some people out there who think they have a simple, politically viable solution — a panacea if you will. It wouldn’t require raising the debt ceiling. It wouldn’t require spending cuts. And it wouldn’t require raising taxes. (Except that it would — I’ll get to that in a minute.)

All the US Treasury needs to do is mint a $ 1 trillion dollar coin.

Viola! Problem solved!

The government could mint the coin, deposit it at the Federal Reserve, and then it could write checks against that asset.

Now, that may sound a little bit like the government is just creating money out of thin air. And that’s because it is. But hey, it’s legal, they argue. So, why not!

You do realize this is dumb, right?

This is a monetary disaster waiting to happen. It would put inflation on hyperdrive.

We just saw what happens when the Fed prints trillions of dollars out of thin air and injects it into the economy. The price of everything goes up. We’re paying for pandemic stimulus every time we go to the grocery store.

I mentioned earlier that this scheme would raise taxes. This is how. It would jack up the inflation tax even higher. Minting a coin and pretending it is worth $1 trillion doesn’t change the dynamics. When you boil it all down, it would do nothing but increase the money supply. That is, by definition, inflation.

They can call it whatever they want, but currency creation is still currency creation, and inflation is still inflation.

I expect that although the acceleration of inflation has slowed, there is once again more intense inflation in the relatively near future unless the Washington politicians change their spending habits.

Fat chance of that.

That means that there will have to be some kind of currency creation in the future. Whether it is more quantitative easing, a trillion-dollar coin, or some other mechanism, the outcome will be the same.

An even heavier inflation tax and a further widening of the wealth gap.

Are the Saudis Ready to Ditch the Dollar?

For several years now, I have been writing about the ultimate consequences of the considerable devaluation of the US Dollar.

Over the past couple of years or so, every American has felt the effects of this dollar devaluation first-hand as consumer price inflation has driven the price of nearly every necessity higher.

But now, even more serious consequences may be on the horizon.

Ever since the 1970’s, when the US Dollar became a fiat currency, the dollar has retained its status as the world’s reserve currency due to the agreement put in place with Saudi Arabia in the early 1970’s. This agreement had the United States offering Saudi Arabia military protection in exchange for the kingdom pricing oil exports in US Dollars. It was this agreement that established the petro-dollar as any country around the world that wished to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia had to inventory US Dollars in order to do so.

That agreement has served the US well for about 50 years. However, over the past few years, there are ever increasing signs that much of the rest of the world is seeking US Dollar alternatives.

This past week, another major move was made away from the US Dollar as Saudi Arabia publicly announced the kingdom was actively looking to price its oil exports in currencies other than US Dollars. This from “The Gateway Pundit” (Source: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/another-biden-catastrophe-saudi-arabia-announces-readiness-trade-currencies-us-dollar-another-blow-us-economy/):

Saudi officials announced this week they are ready to to trade in currencies other than the US dollar in a huge blow to the American economy.

Saudi Arabia announced the move following a December meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. The kingdom is ready to trade in yuan instead of the dollar in trade exchanges.

Saudi Arabia has also announced its intention to join the BRICS alliance.

Russia Today reported:

Saudi Arabia is ready to discuss trading in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the Kingdom’s finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan, as cited by Bloomberg.

Al-Jadaan’s comments come a month after China’s President Xi Jinping said that Beijing is ready to make energy purchases in yuan instead of the US dollar in trade exchanges with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). China’s leader highlighted the necessity of the shift while speaking at a Chinese-Arab summit hosted by Saudi Arabia earlier this week.

“There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in US dollar, in euro or in Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan said on Tuesday during an interview with Bloomberg in Davos, Switzerland.

The oil-rich kingdom is seeking to deepen its ties with vital trade partners, including China. The readiness for talks on the issue expressed by Riyadh may signal that the world’s biggest oil exporter is open to diversifying away from the US dollar after decades of pricing crude exports in the US currency. The riyal, the Saudi national currency, has been pegged to the greenback, too.

This is simply HUGE news and provides yet another reason for Americans who aspire to a comfortable retirement to diversify out of US Dollars. (One of the best ways to do this, in my view, for many investors is to consider adding precious metals to one’s portfolio.)

While I don’t know the time frame (nor does anyone else in my opinion), I believe that ultimately the US Dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency. Admittedly, this opinion is at odds with the opinions of some very bright guest experts that I interview on my radio program, but in my view, the US Dollar’s devaluation will continue, and the rest of the world will increasingly and urgently look for alternatives.

“Quoth the Raven” is an interesting opinion column. Here are some comments on this recent development involving Saudi Arabia from that column (Source: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/saudi-arabia-just-killed-the-petrodollar):

Put simply, I believe there is a historic divide in the making between the BRICS nations, led by Russia and China, and the West, led by the United States.

I was one of the few outlets last summer to even report on the fact that Russia and China openly announced a “new global reserve currency” (announced in July 2022, predicted by me in February 2022). And of course, Russia and China can’t do it on their own: they are working with nations like Saudi Arabia and India to help put their plans into practice.

Crucial to dethroning the U.S. dollar would be the removal of its use for buying and selling oil – a system that has been in place since the 1970s when the U.S. promised security for the Saudi Kingdom in exchange for the petrodollar system that underpins the dollar’s strength as global reserve currency. It’s a topic that I discussed at length back in September with Andy Schectman on this podcast.

Andy told me back in September 2022: “The dollar hegemony is right about ready to break when you realize that Saudi Arabia is about to join the BRIC nations. Do you think Biden is going to fly there to ask for more oil? He went there to beg them not to join BRIC.”

“The dollar was made reserve currency only because of our protection of the Saudi kingdom,” Andy continued. He then noted astutely that Saudi Arabia had signed new protection agreements with Russia. “All of the Eastern European countries that have repatriated their gold. They’re all part of the EU but they all trade their own currency. They’re all going to break away from the Western system,” he added.

And now it looks like Andy was right: it appears Saudi Arabia has just issued a death knell to the exclusivity of the petrodollar as we once knew it – the first of several dominoes that needs to fall before the U.S. is exposed financially as an emperor with no clothes.

As I have discussed here previously, the BRICS nations (I’ve added an ‘S’ to the BRIC reference to include the country of South Africa) are now developing their own currency, likely commodity-backed, to use in trade. This latest development involving Saudi Arabia may have the Saudi’s looking to use a different currency in oil trade, perhaps this BRICS currency that is being developed.

While this move away from the US Dollar was likely going to happen anyway at some point, recent US policy decisions have motivated the Saudi’s to move more quickly away from the US Dollar. This from “Times of India” (Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/blogthoughts/saudi-arabia-the-foundation-of-brics-currency-47508/):

BRICS is an alliance of the world’s five major developing economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, most people underestimate it since it includes emerging economies as opposed to established economies in the G7. These five countries account for 41 percent of the world’s population and have a combined GDP of over 24.4 trillion U.S dollars. They also have a substantial military capability and an increasing political influence in the global sphere, and by teaming together, this group commands a voice for itself in the global sphere, for example, it helps them to have wiser worries about emerging economies whenever the West implements policies that are explicitly beneficial to itself, and a famous example of this is the carbon tax. The European Union routinely complains about the carbon emissions created by the Indian and Chinese steel industries. Because their industries are adopting to clean energy, they are now going to apply a carbon tax, so that when Indian and Chinese steel enter the global marketplace in 2030, Indian products will be taxed penalties precisely because of more carbon emission than these developed countries. However, developed nations have generated so much carbon during their development phase that they are primarily responsible for climate change, yet they ignore the past and now impose a tax on carbon emission, when developing countries needs economic fuel to thrive.

Saudi Arabia is one of the most powerful nations in the world, and it has always been the closest ally of the United States of America. However, Saudi Arabia is currently involved in a cold war with the same United States, because Saudi Arabia reduced oil output by 2 million barrels a day as a result the price of oil shot off from 91 dollars a barrel to 94 dollars a barrel, this action was tremendously profitable to OPEC, but it caused mayhem in the West. Further, President Biden warned Saudi Arabia with unclear repercussions and even offered passing the No Pick Bill to challenge Saudi Arabia’s security which begin violating the Petro dollar agreement between the U.S and Saudi. So, in exchange, Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman made a major step that sent shivers down the spines of Americans, and that was his proposal to join members of the BRICS. Previous years data states that Saudi has started making defence deals with both China and Russia firstly, they are not overly reliant on the U.S, secondly the Biden administration wants to relax economic sanctions on Iran, Saudi Arabia’s opponent in the Middle East, and the third reason is the oil consumption of BRICS. Resulting in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer allegedly proposing to join BRICS, by which they will have the backing of China, Brazil and India as the biggest consumers of oil in the world.

If you haven’t yet embraced “Revenue Sourcing” for your planning to help you protect yourself from currency risk, now is a good time to do so.

Depression Parallels?

Depression parallels?

Not a comfortable topic to discuss, to be sure. But as my now oft-quoted history professor used to say, “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.”

The older I get and the more experience I acquire, the smarter my history professor becomes.

Which brings me to this week’s “Portfolio Watch” topic – similarities between the period-of-time preceding the Great Depression and where we find ourselves today.

I address this topic very briefly this week, acknowledging the fact that an entire book could be written on the topic. In this brief narrative, I’ll discuss the wealth gap and consumerism excesses.

For context, it’s important to understand the role that central bank policy played in creating the prosperity illusion of the Roaring Twenties and the prosperity illusion that we’ve more recently experienced.

The central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, was founded in 1913. Shortly after its formation, the central bank reduced the backing of the US Dollar by gold. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the US Dollar was essentially gold; the US Dollar was backed 100% by gold. An ounce of gold was twenty US Dollars.

Shortly after the Fed was set up, the backing of the US Dollar by gold was reduced from 100% backed by gold to 40% backed by gold. A little rudimentary math has us concluding that it increased the currency supply by 250%.

While I am not a trained economist (since the majority of trained economists today are of the Keynesian school of economics, I count my lack of formal training as an attribute rather than a detriment as my common sense has not been compromised), I have learned from my study of history that when currency is created, it always has to find a home.

While there are many eventual adverse outcomes as a result of currency creation, the two on which I will focus this week are income inequality (the wealth gap) and debt accumulation.

Let’s begin with debt accumulation. Here is an excerpt from an article published about consumerism and debt accumulation in the 1920’s (Source: http://athenaandkim.weebly.com/consumerism.html):

Consumerism in the 1920’s was the idea that Americans should continue to buy product and goods in outrageous numbers. These people neither needed or could afford these products, which generally caused them to live pay-check to pay-check. People bought many quantities of products like automobiles, washing machines, sewing machines, and radios. This massive purchasing period led to installment plans. These were plans for people in which they were able to purchase their products and pay for them at a later time in small monthly payments. This was the reason why “80% of Americans during the 1920’s had no savings at all – they were living pay-check to pay-check”. This consumerism later became a contributing factor to the start of the Great Depression because it greatly increased the amount of consumer debt in America.

The Great Depression was largely caused by debt excesses, debt levels in the private sector that were too large to be paid. As a result, many American citizens lived paycheck-to-paycheck.

We are now experiencing the same thing. Almost 2/3^rd’s of American households now live paycheck-to-paycheck.

This from MSNBC (Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/15/amid-high-inflation-63percent-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck.html):

As rising prices continue to weigh on households, more families are feeling stretched too thin.

As of November, 63% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a monthly LendingClub report — up from 60% the previous month and near the 64% historic high hit in March.

Even high-income earners are under pressure, LendingClub found. Of those earning more than six figures, 47% reported living paycheck to paycheck, a jump from the previous month’s 43%.

“Americans are cash-strapped and their everyday spending continues to outpace their income, which is impacting their ability to save and plan,” said Anuj Nayar, LendingClub’s financial health officer.

While inflation, caused by excessive currency creation by the central bank, is a factor in the vast number of Americans currently living paycheck-to-paycheck, another factor is the level of debt that Americans have collectively racked up as a result of easy money policies and artificially low-interest rates. Here is just one example (Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/01/buy-now-pay-later-affirm-afterpay-credit-card-debt/672686)

As familiar as Americans are with the concept of credit, many of us, upon encountering a sandwich that can be financed in four easy payments of $3.49, might think: Yikes, we’re in trouble.

Putting a banh mi on layaway—this is the world that “buy now, pay later” programs have wrought. In a few short years, financial-technology firms such as Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna, which allow consumers to pay for purchases over several interest-free installments, have infiltrated nearly every corner of e-commerce. People are buying cardigans with this kind of financing. They’re buying groceries and OLED TVs. During the summer of 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, they bought enough Peloton products to account for 30 percent of Affirm’s revenue. And though Americans have used layaway programs since the Great Depression, today’s pay-later plans flip the order of operations: Rather than claiming an item and taking it home only after you’ve paid in full, consumers using these modern payment plans can acquire an item for just a small deposit and a cursory credit check.

From 2019 to 2021, the total value of buy-now, pay-later (or BNPL) loans originated in the United States grew more than 1,000 percent, from $2 billion to $24.2 billion. That’s still a small fraction of the amount charged to credit cards, but the fast adoption of BNPL points to its mainstream appeal. The widespread embrace of this kind of lending system says a lot about Americans’ relationship to debt—particularly among the younger borrowers who made BNPL popular (about half of BNPL users are 33 or under). “We found that most of the people that use buy now, pay later either don’t have or don’t use a credit card,” Marco Di Maggio, an economist at Harvard, told me. He said that Gen Z was skeptical of credit cards, possibly because many of them had seen their parents sink into debt.

Credit card debt is also reaching record highs. This from “Zero Hedge” (Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/flashing-red-alert-near-record-surge-credit-card-debt-just-average-rate-hits-all-time-high):

Another month, another glaring reminder that most US consumer spending is funded by credit cards.

The latest consumer credit report was published by the Fed today at 3pm and it showed that in November, total credit increased by $27.962BN to $4.757 trillion, above the $25BN consensus estimate, and a number which would have been bigger than last month’s pre-revision increase of $27.1BN, had it not been revised modestly higher to $29.12BN.

As for the wealth gap, we are now once again seeing what was witnessed in the 1920’s. This from the same article quoted above:

The income gap of the 1920’s was the difference in income between the top 1% of wealthy Americans and the rest of the average earnings. Within this income gap, “60% of Americans earned below the poverty level. The top 1% of wealthy American’s saw their incomes increase by 75% during the 1920’s… the other 99% of Americans saw their income increase by only 9%… not enough to justify the huge expenditures on consumer products that most Americans were making”. This shows that there was a great split between those who earned an average income or less compared to the wealthy who earned a considerably larger amount of money.
Fast forward to today.

The wealth gap or income inequality gap is wider in the United States than in any other G7 country.

According to “World Population Review,” the top 1% of earners in the United States have an average earned income of $1,018,700 annually.

The bottom 50% have an average income of $14,500 annually.

If one peels out the top 10%, the average annual earnings are $246,800.

This is what currency creation and artificial markets do.

But artificial markets don’t last forever. History teaches us that this will end badly.

If you haven’t yet taken steps to protect yourself, now is the time.

Welcome to 2023 and the US Dollar Losing Favor

This week, I want to highlight some of the currency shifts that are taking place presently. Not surprisingly, the Chinese Yuan is gaining favor around the world at the expense of the US Dollar.

This from Alex Kimani (Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-We-Shouldnt-Underestimate-Chinas-Petro-Yuan-Ambitions.html):

The de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in a treacherous mission creep phase. Things like this don’t happen quickly, but determinedly and gradually, not exactly fitting into today’s media headline game that only considers instant developments. But it is happening and the tide will not be turned based on current and near and medium-term geopolitical developments. Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar recently warned clients, in essence, that the de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in full swing–even if we can’t see the final end game from here.

And it’s all about China, of course. Pozsar does the OPEC math for us.

Some 40% of proven oil reserves belonging to OPEC+ members is owned by Russia, Iran and Venezuela–all of whom are selling to China at major discounts, and all of whom are on board with Beijing’s petro-yuan plan.

The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)–most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE–account for another 40% of proven oil reserves, and they are increasingly cozying up to China.

The remaining 20% is also accessible to China, and China is already the largest importer of crude in the world.

What it all means is that de-dollarization is marching to the beat of a fairly steady drum. In terms of global trade, the yuan accounts for around 2.7% of settlements, while the dollar accounts for 41%. These are the numbers that prompt the new trend of instant gratification to suggest this is not an imminent threat to the dollar. They are wrong. The biggest threats take a significant amount of time to develop. From here on out, the pace will pick up momentum.

China and the GCC

As Oilprice.com reported earlier in December, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals, suggesting at a summit in the Saudi capital that the GCC countries should make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange to carry out its trade settlements in yuan.

The year we just exited should be considered the year in which the petro-yuan really took hold, as China forges a path of increasingly oil and gas purchases from places that are petro-yuan friendly. Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Western sanctions response has only acted as a further catalyst.

In a note to clients carried by the Irish Times, Pozsar warns: “China wants to rewrite the rules of the global energy market”, and it will do it by first removing the dollar from the orbit of the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that have been affected by the “weaponization” of dollar foreign exchange reserves meant to punish Russia and keep Putin from filling his wartime coffers.

What’s happened here is a window of enormous opportunity for Beijing, which has now told the Gulf countries that they are absolutely guaranteed buyers for oil and gas, for payment in yuan, with Xi promising to “import crude oil [and natural gas] in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC”.

Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia in early December was precisely about the yuan. This was the defining moment for the petro-yuan. It was an invitation, and it was well-received. China and Saudi Arabia signed over $30 billion in trade deals during the visit. That’s $30 billion in leverage that will only help further promote the petro-yuan plan.

More than 25% of China’s crude imports come from Saudi Arabia, and it seems inevitable that the GCC will gradually adopt the petro-yuan, even if there will be a lot of roadblocks along the way due to their exposure to Western financing.

What Western minds are banking on–quite literally–is the fact that China alone has $1T in U.S. Treasury bonds. And as for the Saudis, they are truly tied to the Western financial system and the petrodollar. De-pegging the riyal from the dollar, though it has been discussed very quietly (only from a purely research perspective), would be a rather dramatic shock for the Kingdom–one the Crown Prince won’t likely be willing to risk for a very long time. But he will actively discuss oil deals with China in yuan.

The Chinese goal is much more patient than any Western mind can fathom. It’s about slowly chipping away at the dollar’s throne in oil and commodities markets, and as the reserve currency of choice. That is what Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is all about.

And with every geopolitical upset on the level of Russia-Ukraine, and with every tightening of the sanctions screws by the West, Beijing gets a little further with its petro-yuan goals.

There won’t be any announcement. There won’t be any loud noise. It will happen gradually. It will happen very slowly. And the West will struggle to find its footing when a new global energy order emerges in the longer-term future.

I have been writing about this for several years.

The Chinese Yuan is quickly gaining favor around the world. Check out this recent development regarding the Russian sovereign wealth fund. (Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-12-31/what-russia-doubling-its-gold-and-yuan-holdings-really-means)

On Friday, Russia’s Finance minister announced their National Wealth Fund (NWF) is now permitted to allocate up to 60% of its holdings in Chinese Yuan and up to 40% of its holdings in Gold Bullion. This is a doubling in permitted allocation percentages up from 30% and 20%.

Simultaneously the fund reduced its holdings of the British Pound and the Japanese Yen to zero.

Reuters reports from Moscow:

Russia’s finance ministry on Friday said the maximum possible share of Chinese yuan in its National Wealth Fund (NWF) had been doubled to 60% as it restructures its rainy-day fund to reduce dependency on currencies from so-called “unfriendly” nations. Source

The NWF had been recently used to finance the widening budget deficit in 2022 due in no small part to sanctions by the G7. The Fund stands at $186.5 billion according to Reuters.

The official statement out of the ministry read in part like this:

“The Russian finance ministry is continuing its consistent reduction of the share of currencies of ‘unfriendly’ states in the structure of the National Wealth Fund’s assets.”

The news agency notes these measures are in no small part a counter to the sanctions by western nations.

We would strenuously add that while this “counter” explanation is true, the circumstances creating the situation are not likely to reverse even if sanctions are lifted and Ukraine magically healed itself.

The world, in our opinion is very different. The trust is broken. Nations are countering existential threats (in their view), with increasingly mercantilist policies that fragment trade irreparably.

Would you trust currency of a country that confiscated your assets?

Stealing in Russia’s Eyes

You cannot confiscate (as opposed to just freezing) the assets of a nation as held at the IMF or other “safe” institutions as was done by the West, and expect that nation to continue to carry assets in your currency. This is not spite-work by Russia, it is economic survival. While this is a horrendous development, in their (Russia’s) eyes it is the lesser evil now.

People can debate if this is justified or not all they want. But it is happening, and there are global consequences that will manifest locally for everyone.

Establishing the Golden Yuan and PetroYuan

Reuters also goes on to add that Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the trend will continue next year when Russia resumes growing that fund by allocating oil and Nat Gas revenues to this rainy day fund.

We would note again as a second-order knock-on effect: If sanctions do not work, and Russia is making money to be held in Bullion and Yuan; then the west must move from Financial sanctions to Commodity action. That means somehow they must get Oil lower to kill Russian revenues , as some suspect they have been doing with rehypothecation in WTI.

As Russia buys gold with oil revenues, it attempts to create a defacto Gold and Yuan peg. Our point is, law follows economic practice. If enough people use something, it becomes the standard. The announcement is made after the broad acceptance, not before.

While 2023 may not be the year that the big shift from the US Dollar occurs, I expect there will be movement in that direction. If you are holding all your wealth in US Dollar based assets, you may want to consider adding some precious metals to your portfolio.