Business

With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game.

Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly powerless to boost the global economy, even if they still have sway over capital markets. What is far more insidious to the Fed's waning credibility is when former economists affiliated with the Fed start repeating mantras that until recently were only a prominent feature in the so-called fringe media.

Back in October 2014, just after the BOJ drastically expanded its QE operation, we warned that the biggest risk facing the BOJ (and the ECB, and the Fed, and all other central banks actively soaking up securities from the open market) was a lack of monetizable supply. We cited Takuji Okubo, chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors in Tokyo, who said that at the scale of its current debt monetization, the BOJ could end up owning half of the JGB market by as early as in 2018.

Having correctly predicting the yen’s advance beyond 115 and then 110 per dollar, former Japanese Finance Minister Eisuke Sakakibara now says Japan’s currency may strengthen to 100 by year-end.

As Bloomberg reports, having been in charge of currency intervention in Japan, Sakakibura was dubbed Mr. Yen for his ability to influence the exchange rate in the 1990s, seems to suggest - uinlike Suga overnight - that intervention is unlikely (or unlikley to be successful).

Submitted by Bill Bonner of Bonner & Partners (annotated by Acting-Man.com's Pater Tenebrarum),

The Hard Rocks of Real Life

The Dow dropped 174 points on Thursday, the biggest fall in six weeks. Not the end of the world. Maybe not even the end of this year’s bounce-back bull run. As you’ll recall, stocks sold off at the beginning of the year, too. Then, investors were buoyed up after central banks got to work – jimmying the credit market on their behalf.

"smooth sailing", right?

Something is going on beneath the covers...