Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
This week I am addressing themes I see playing out in 2016.
A number of systemic, structural forces are intersecting in 2016. One is the end-game of debt-fueled "growth."
We can summarize the official "solution" to the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008 in one line: borrow and blow trillions--of yen, yuan, dollars, euros, reals, you name it.
When Mario Draghi “disappointed” markets in December by “only” cutting the depo rate by 10 bps and “merely” extending PSPP by six months while electing not to expand monthly asset purchases, the Riksbank, the Nationalbank, the Norges Bank, and the SNB all breathed heavy sighs of relief.
Essentially, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway are beholden to Mario Draghi. When the ECB eases, those countries’ central banks must ease as well or risk falling behind in the global currency wars.
JPM, Citi, UBS, and now one of the Wall Street strategists whose perspective we respect the most, BofA's Michael Harnett, who quite clearly disagrees with the official BofA "straight to CNBC" mouthpiece Savita Subramanian, is out with a note in which he is telling reders to get out of stocks, go into cash expecting a short sharp pullbacks in risk assets (e.g. SPX to 1850-1900), and be long volatility.
From his report:
Canada's Ivey Purchasing Managers Index collapsed from an exuberant and simply unbelievable 63.6 in November to a contractionary 49.9 in December - one of the biggest MoM drops on record and biggest misses on record. On a seasonally-unadjusted basis, this is the weakest print in at least 2 years. From the best data since February 2012 to the worst since February 2015 seems to expose these soft-surveys as practically useless. The huge drop in Inventories suggests a major drag on GDP and an extension of Canada's recession.
Update: China folds - CHINA SUSPENDS STOCK CIRCUIT BREAKER RULE
As we detailed earlier...