With central bankers losing credibility left and right, and failing outright to boost the "wealth effect" no matter what they throw at it, the next big question is when will central planners around the world unveil the cashless society which is a necessary and sufficient condition to a regime of global NIRP.
Having seen what monetary-policy failure looks like in Japan.. and in the US, we now turn our attention to the world. Amid NIRP temptations, growth fears, and faltering faith in central banker control, market-implied inflation expectations have collapsed to record lows. Worse still, even The Fed's own survey of consumer's inflation expectations has slumped to record lows.
Inflation expectations are collapsing... (US and Europe at record lows - worse than the lows in the middle of the last crisis)...
Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.
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.
When it comes to government bail outs of insolvent banks few are as qualified to opine as John Mack who was CEO of Morgan Stanley when the bank, along with all other U.S. TBTF banks, was bailed out with a multi-trillion rescue package in the aftermath of the Lehman failure. Which is why it was illuminating, if not surprising, that during an interview with Bloomberg TV discussing the future of Deutsche Bank, John Mack said that "there’s no question in my mind, it is absolutely good for every penny." In other words, "Deutsche Bank is fine."