Day: February 18, 2016

The Central Banks hate physical cash. So much so they there will likely try to ban it in the near future.

You see, almost all of the “wealth” in the financial system is digital in nature.

• The total currency (actual cash in the form of bills and coins) in the US financial system is a little over $1.36 trillion.

• When you include digital money sitting in short-term accounts and long-term accounts then you’re talking about roughly $10 trillion in “money” in the financial system.
• In contrast, the money in the US stock market (equity shares in publicly traded companies) is over $20 trillion in size.

• The US bond market (money that has been lent to corporations, municipal Governments, State Governments, and the Federal Government) is almost twice this at $38 trillion.

• Total Credit Market Instruments (mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, junk bonds, commercial paper and other digitally-based “money” that is based on debt) is even larger $58.7 trillion.

• Unregulated over the counter derivatives traded between the big banks and corporations is north of $220 trillion.

When looking over these data points, the first thing that jumps out at the viewer is that the vast bulk of “money” in the system is in the form of digital loans or credit (non-physical debt).

Put another way, actual physical money or cash (as in bills or coins you can hold in your hand) comprises less than 1% of the “money” in the financial system.

As far as the Central Banks are concerned, this is a good thing because if investors/depositors were ever to try and convert even a small portion of this “wealth” into actual physical bills, the system would implode (there simply is not enough actual cash).

Remember, the current financial system is based on debt. The benchmark for “risk free” money in this system is not actual cash but US Treasuries.

In this scenario, when the 2008 Crisis hit, one of the biggest problems for the Central Banks was to stop investors from fleeing digital wealth for the comfort of physical cash. Indeed, the actual “thing” that almost caused the financial system to collapse was when depositors attempted to pull $500 billion out of money market funds.

A money market fund takes investors’ cash and plunks it into short-term highly liquid debt and credit securities. These funds are meant to offer investors a return on their cash, while being extremely liquid (meaning investors can pull their money at any time).

This works great in theory… but when $500 billion in money was being pulled (roughly 24% of the entire market) in the span of four weeks, the truth of the financial system was quickly laid bare: that digital money is not in fact safe.

To use a metaphor, when the money market fund and commercial paper markets collapsed, the oil that kept the financial system working dried up. Almost immediately, the gears of the system began to grind to a halt.

When all of this happened, the global Central Banks realized that their worst nightmare could in fact become a reality: that if a significant percentage of investors/ depositors ever tried to convert their “wealth” into cash (particularly physical cash) the whole system would implode.

As a result of this, virtually every monetary action taken by the Fed since this time has been devoted to forcing investors away from cash and into risk assets. The most obvious move was to cut interest rates to 0.25%, rendering the return on cash to almost nothing.

However, in their own ways, the various QE programs and Operation Twist have all had similar aims: to force investors away from cash, particularly physical cash.

After all, if cash returns next to nothing, anyone who doesn’t want to lose their purchasing power is forced to seek higher yields in bonds or stocks.

The Fed’s economic models predicted that by doing this, the US economy would come roaring back. The only problem is that it hasn’t. In fact, by most metrics, the US economy has flat-lined for several years now, despite the Fed having held ZIRP for 5-6 years and engaged in three rounds of QE.

As a result of this… mainstream economists at CitiGroup, the German Council of Economic Experts, and bond managers at M&G have suggested doing away with cash entirely.

If you think this sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory, consider that France has a cash ban on any transaction over €1,000 Euros from using physical cash. Spain has a cash ban on transactions over €2,500. Uruguay has cash bans on transactions over $5,000. And on and on.

A cash ban will be coming to the US in the near future. Already, the big banks (the ones with the closest ties to the Federal Reserve) have begun turning away deposits OR charging them.

State Street Corp. , the Boston bank that manages assets for institutional investors, for the first time has begun charging some customers for large dollar deposits, people familiar with the matter said. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank by assets, has cut unwanted deposits by more than $150 billion this year, in part by charging fees…

And here’s another big “tell”…

“At some point you wonder whether there will be a shortage of financial institutions willing to take on these balances,” said Kelli Moll, head of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s hedge-fund practice in New York, saying that where to hold cash has become an increasing topic of conversation as hedge funds are shown the door by longtime banking counterparties.

So where is the physical cash meant to go?

Jerome Schneider, head of Pacific Investment Management Co.’s short-term and funding desk, which advises corporate and institutional clients, said that as a result of the bank actions, he and his customers have discussed as cash alternatives boosting investments in U.S. Treasury bonds, ultrashort-duration bond funds and money-market funds.

When it comes to cash, Mr. Schneider said, “Clients have been put on warning.”

      Source: Wall Street Journal.

This is just the beginning. Indeed… we’ve uncovered a secret document outlining how the US Federal Reserve plans to incinerate savings.

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Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

 

 

 

 

Yesterday we outlined that Central Banks’ War on Cash is about to go into Hyperdrive.

Today we’re discussing just the policies Central Banks are already working to implement to eviscerate savings.

Globally, over 50% of Government bonds currently yield 1% or less. These are bonds that are negative in real terms meaning they are trailing well below the rate of inflation.

Even more astounding is the fact that over $7 trillion in debt currently have negative yields in nominal terms, meaning the bond literally has a negative yield when it trades.

This means that when an investor buys these bonds, he or she pays the Government for the right to own. There is NO rate of return; by buying these bonds you are literally incinerating your capital. Large bond funds that are required to own certain types of bonds have no choice but to lose money.

However, this is just the start.

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Back in 1999, the Fed published a paper suggesting the implementation of a “carry tax” or taxing actual physical cash using an expiration date if depositors aren’t willing to spend the money.

The paper, written 16 years ago, suggested that if the Fed were to find that zero interest rates didn’t induce economic growth, it could try one of three things:

1)   Buy assets (QE)

2)   Money transfers (literally HAND OUT money through various vehicles)

3)   A carry tax (meaning tax the value of actual physical cash that is taken out of the system)

We’ve already seen six years of ZIRP and $3 trillion in QE. Next up are outright money transfers and a carry tax on physical cash.

What is a “carry tax”?

The idea here is that since it costs relatively little to store physical cash (the cost of buying a safe), the Fed should be permitted to “tax” physical cash to force cash holders to spend it (put it back into the banking system) or invest it.

The way this would work is that the cash would have some kind of magnetic strip that would record the date that it was withdrawn. Whenever the bill was finally deposited in a bank again, the receiving bank would use this data to deduct a certain percentage of the bill’s value as a “tax” for holding it.

For instance, if the rate was 5% per month and you took out a $100 bill for two months and then deposited it, the receiving bank would only register the bill as being worth $90.25 ($100* 0.95=$95 or the first month, and then $95 *0.95= $90.25 for the second month).

It sounds like absolute insanity, but I can assure you that Central Banks take these sorts of proposals very seriously.  QE sounded completely insane back in 1999 and we’ve already seen three rounds of it amounting to over $3 trillion.

No one would have believed the Fed could get away with printing $3 trillion for QE in 1999, but it has happened already. And given that it has failed to boost consumer spending/ economic growth, I wouldn’t at all surprised to see the Fed float one of the other ideas in the coming months.

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The global Central Banks have declared War on Cash.

Historically, one of the safest things to do when the markets begin to collapse is to move a significant portion of your holdings to cash. As the old adage says, during times of deflation, “cash is king.”

The notion here is that cash is a safe haven. And while earning 1-2% in interest doesn’t do much in terms of growing your wealth, it sure beats losing 20%+ by holding on to stocks or bonds during their respective bear markets

However, in today’s world of fiat-based Central Planning, cash represents a REAL problem for the Central Banks.

The reason for this concerns the actual structure of the financial system. As I’ve outlined previously, that structure is as follows:

• The total currency (actual cash in the form of bills and coins) in the US financial system is a little over $1.36 trillion.

• When you include digital money sitting in short-term accounts and long-term accounts then you’re talking about roughly $10 trillion in “money” in the financial system.
• In contrast, the money in the US stock market (equity shares in publicly traded companies) is over $20 trillion in size.

• The US bond market (money that has been lent to corporations, municipal Governments, State Governments, and the Federal Government) is almost twice this at $38 trillion.

• Total Credit Market Instruments (mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, junk bonds, commercial paper and other digitally-based “money” that is based on debt) is even larger $58.7 trillion.

• Unregulated over the counter derivatives traded between the big banks and corporations is north of $220 trillion.

When looking over these data points, the first thing that jumps out at the viewer is that the vast bulk of “money” in the system is in the form of digital loans or credit (non-physical debt).

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We have a success rate of 72% meaning we make money on more than seven out of 10 trades.

Even if you include ALL of our losers, we finished 2015 UP 35%

Over the same time period, the S&P 500 was DOWN.

This continues this year. Already we’ve closed out FIVE double digit winners in 2016. Including a 43% gain closed within 24 hours of us opening it!

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Put another way, actual physical money or cash (as in bills or coins you can hold in your hand) comprises less than 1% of the “money” in the financial system.

Here is the financial system in picture form. I’m not including hard assets such as gold, real estate, or the like. We’re only talking about relatively liquid financial assets items that can be sold (turned into cash) quickly.

Of course, Wall Street will argue that the derivatives market is notional in value (meaning very little of this is actually “at risk”). However, even if we remove derivatives from the mix, the system is still very clearly based on credit, with only a small sliver of actual physical cash outstanding:

Put simply, the vast majority of wealth in the US is in fact digital wealth that moves from bank to bank without ever being converted into actual physical cash.

As far as the Central Banks are concerned, this is a good thing because if investors/depositors were ever to try and convert even a small portion of this “wealth” into actual physical bills, the system would implode (there simply is not enough actual cash).

Remember, the current financial system is based on debt. The benchmark for “risk free” money in this system is not actual cash but US Treasuries.

In this scenario, when the 2008 Crisis hit, one of the biggest problems for the Central Banks was to stop investors from fleeing digital wealth for the comfort of physical cash. Indeed, the actual “thing” that almost caused the financial system to collapse was when depositors attempted to pull $500 billion out of money market funds.

A money market fund takes investors’ cash and plunks it into short-term highly liquid debt and credit securities. These funds are meant to offer investors a return on their cash, while being extremely liquid (meaning investors can pull their money at any time).

This works great in theory… but when $500 billion in money was being pulled (roughly 24% of the entire market) in the span of four weeks, the truth of the financial system was quickly laid bare: that digital money is not in fact safe.

To use a metaphor, when the money market fund and commercial paper markets collapsed, the oil that kept the financial system working dried up. Almost immediately, the gears of the system began to grind to a halt.

When all of this happened, the global Central Banks realized that their worst nightmare could in fact become a reality: that if a significant percentage of investors/ depositors ever tried to convert their “wealth” into cash (particularly physical cash) the whole system would implode.

As a result of this, virtually every monetary action taken by the Fed since this time has been devoted to forcing investors away from cash and into risk assets. The most obvious move was to cut interest rates to 0.25%, rendering the return on cash to almost nothing.

However, in their own ways, the various QE programs and Operation Twist have all had similar aims: to force investors away from cash, particularly physical cash.

After all, if cash returns next to nothing, anyone who doesn’t want to lose their purchasing power is forced to seek higher yields in bonds or stocks.

The Fed’s economic models predicted that by doing this, the US economy would come roaring back. The only problem is that it hasn’t. In fact, by most metrics, the US economy has flat-lined for several years now, despite the Fed having held ZIRP for 5-6 years and engaged in three rounds of QE.

Let me put this very bluntly. The Fed and other Central Banks literally took the nuclear option in dealing with the 2008 bust. They have done everything they can to trash cash and force investors/ depositors into risk assets. But these polices have failed to generate growth.

Rather than admit they are completely wrong, Central Banks are reverting to more and more extreme measures to destroy cash and force investors to move into risk against their will.

Over 20% of global GDP is currently sporting NEGATIVE yields on their bonds.

This is just the start of a much larger strategy of declaring War on Cash.

If you’re an investor who wants to increase your wealth dramatically, then you NEED to take out a trial subscription to our paid premium investment newsletter Private Wealth Advisory.

Private Wealth Advisory is a WEEKLY investment newsletter with an incredible track record.

Yesterday we closed out THREE more double digit winners (all of them opened just two weeks ago) bringing our current winning streak to 74 straight winning trades,

And throughout the last 14 months, we’ve not closed a SINGLE loser.

With a track record like this, we’re getting a LOT of attention, so we’re going to be raising the price of a Private Wealth Advisory in the next few weeks.

However, you can try it right now for 30 days for just 98 cents… but you better move fast, because these slots are selling out!!!

To lock in a $0.98, 30-day trial subscription to Private Wealth Advisory…

CLICK HERE NOW!

Best Regards

Graham Summers

Phoenix Capital Research