Financial Market Commentary

In all seriousness, I propose that Congress modify the Fed’s mandate to include a monetary policy version of the Hippocratic oath: First Do No Harm. Just following that simple precept would lead to an immediate reversal of the ZIRP/NIRP policies that have plagued the global economy since the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen triumvirate unleashed their war on savers and retirees 35 years ago. (The next step is to permanently reduce our reliance on excessive debt, but first things first.)

This morning I received a message from TIAA-CREF informing me, and all plan participants, to begin taking negative yields into account as we consider our future asset allocations. The message is available to the public at the following URL: TIAA-CREF Interest Rate Message.

The main points are summarized in the following screenshots from the web page:

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been predicting continuation of the Fed’s “all talk, no action” strategy for over a year now, with articles such as Deflation is the Main Reason the Fed Will Raise Rates Later Rather than Sooner (Mar. 27, 2015) and The Fed Won’t Raise Rates Until Deflationary Trends Reverse (Oct. 28, 2015). The main reason for the excess chatter and lack of actual rate increases was explained on Dec. 14, 2015: Leading Indicators Suggest U.S. Economic Activity Approaching Stall Speed. Today we received confirmation that the U.S. economic activity is trending toward the rest of the world with an unusually honest headline from CNBC.com:

Although Bloomberg tried to spin this news as positive:

which is truly pathetic. Personally, I have never been able to solve a problem until I address the problem directly. I urge the highly-paid PhDs at the Fed to do the same. Combined with the imminent arrival of negative yields in the U.S. (joining Japan and much of Europe), the exhibit  below completes the story. It’s a graph of the Baltic Dry Index (an index of global shipping activity) over the past 5 years. The blue arrow shows the 2.5-year trend. For the directionally-challenged, it’s DOWN. For the aspiring chartists, the index has made 3 lower highs over the period, and has started to form a fourth.

There’s a global recession and we can’t avoid it. Accept the reality of the situation. The one good thing that can come out of our economic slump is that it’s relatively easy to remove the main cause: central bankers around the world clumsily manipulating free markets and achieving ever-worse outcomes!