The future of banking: losses on ‘investors’ not taxpayers

Keynote speech by Sir Paul Tucker, Chair of the Systemic Risk Council, Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England:

“Solving the too big to fail problem is a necessary precondition to starting to cure the productivity/growth slump that we face.  The stakes are very high.”

Between a rock and a hard place: The future of traditional banking”. Here is a direct video link.

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‘Dumb’ money tsunami cresting

Who bears the greatest downside risk from monetary madness that has swept the world since 2010? Not central bankers. They operate in a world of theories, personal impunity, above-average salaries, guaranteed pensions and benefits. The answer is not the real economy, it has already been suffering through years of stagnant wages and growth.

No, downside risks today are concentrated on financial market participants and we, the tax base.  Central banks have not abolished drawdown cycles or recessions.  They have only delayed and magnified the extent of the next one.

This chart since 1956 tells the story of recurring loss cycles and an increasing correlation between global markets even as central banks were slashing rates by several percentage points and pumping ’emergency’ liquidity.

equity drawdowns
An important distinction this time, is that we enter the next mean reversion cycle with no meaningful monetary stimulants left to deploy. A tsunami of government underwritten credit indiscriminately buying up all financial assets, is a world full of ‘dumb’ money due for a crashing.

huge-tsunamiOr as John Hussman points out today: “The forgotten lesson of the mortgage bubble and global financial collapse is that when every speculation seems safe, nothing is safe”.

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Shilling on deflation and oil

A. Gary Shilling & Co. President Gary Shilling weighs in on the price, production and storage of oil.  Here is a direct video link.

Here is segment two.

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