Submitted by Daniel Drew via Dark-Bid.com,
Breaking the zero bound has become a rite of passage in the post-2008 world. As Mark Jeftovic noted, "Once a financial market hits the zero bound in interest rates, it's like crossing the event horizon of a black hole - there is no going back." Indeed, the number of government bonds trading at negative yields increases every day.
Earlier today, we highlighted the rather abysmal results reported by Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company.
To the extent the conglomerate is a bellwether for global growth and trade, things are looking pretty grim. Maersk Line - the company's golden goose and the world's largest container operator - racked up $182 million in red ink last quarter and the outlook for 2016 isn't pretty either. The company now sees demand for seaborne container transportation rising a meager 1-3% for the year.
Central Banks are losing control everywhere...
Or put another way...
almost there pic.twitter.com/94ZoVKjZNc
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 10, 2016
We can't stop laughing after reading this note from Bloomberg's Richard Breslow for one simple reason: in under 350 words it summarizes everything we have said since our initial "big" article from April 2009, "The Incredibly Shrinking Market Liquidity, Or The Upcoming Black Swan Of Black Swans" in which we predicted how the onslaught of HFT would make a farce of trading at the micro level, and all our posts since then condemning central bank intervention, making a mockery of fundamental analysis at the macro level.
Just as we detailed last week, and it appears Rep. Hensarling has been reading... To wit:
"There are several potentially substantial legal and practical constraints to implementing a negative IOER rate regime, some of which would be binding at any IOER rate below zero, even a rate just slightly below zero. Most notably, it is not at all clear that the Federal Reserve Act permits negative IOER rates, and more staff analysis would be needed to establish the Federal Reserve’s authority n this area."