European Central Bank

Not everyone was delighted by Mario Draghi's decision on March 10 begin monetizing corporate bonds: chief among them was Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann whose opposition to unorthodox monetary policies is well known, and whose "Northern Block" was among those voting against the ECB's QE expansion (Weidmann himself was not among those voting last week). Of course, complaining about it does not mean stopping it, and for three years now the "Germans" on the ECB council have complained loudly even as the ECB is on track to double its balance sheet in the next few years.

Earlier this month, a reader noticed something rather disturbing. Piraeus Bank seemed to have added a new line item in one of its reports and that new line item appeared to suggest that the bank was set to charge customers for exchanging €500 notes for smaller bills.

And it wasn’t just Piraeus. Other Greek banks looked to be doing something similar.

It seems like only a blurry, distant memory but February 11 - the day the S&P hit its 2016 lows - was just over 4 weeks ago. In the subsequent 4 weeks, the market has unleashed one of the most furious short covering/record corporate buybacl/central bank easing-driven "risk on" rallies ever, and nowehere is this more obvious than in recent inflows into credit markets (the same bond market which just one week ago the ECB made "risk-free" by announcing it would monetize corporate bonds for the first time ever).

The world’s second-largest reinsurer, German Munich Re which is roughly twice the size of Berkshire Hathaway Re, is boosting its gold reserves and buying gold in the face of the punishing negative interest rates from the European Central Bank, it announced today.

As caught by Mark O'Byrne at GoldCore and reported by Thomson Reuters this afternoon, the world’s largest reinsurer is far from alone in seeking alternative investment strategies to counter the near-zero or negative interest rates that reduce the income insurers require to pay out on policies.

Was that it for the great February/March bear market rally?