Stream of Consciousness Week 22nd June 2020

Stream of consciousness and other personal thoughts garnered throughout the week and which will be added to as the week rolls on. These thoughts are unrefined, unquantified, unverified, and raw. Any of these may be either be edited, deleted or otherwise spawn out into its own separate post…

  • Was good to catch up with some old friends who I haven’t seen in a while (who now live outside of Auckland) and just actually relax this weekend along with visiting some older haunts.

Older Stream of Consciousness thoughts can be found here.

Stream of Consciousness Week 22nd June 2020

Pumping up the Money Supply, the ultimate treatment for financial market ailments?

Disclaimer: Not financial advice (as with anything else in this blog)

With endless money ‘printing’ and liquidity injection, the US Financial Markets have almost completely (if not completely) decoupled from their underlying real economy. Financial markets globally no longer represent the general health of their respective economies by any reasonable measure I feel.

The decoupling I believe started way back in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 when liquidity creation was employed to restart the economies. So far since then, it seems when any sort of crises happens to spook the market, the treatment response has been to pump even more liquidity into the system and it seems to have been surprisingly extremely effective at least at treating any symptoms for the last 12 years.

What the end game is? I don’t know. It goes back to a post I penned back in November 2019 where I asked what would be a trigger to a sustained correction? (Not just short sharp corrections of the types we’ve been having recently)

One potential threat which could end up defeating the effectiveness of such monetary policy would include some sort of catastrophic, devastating and tragic famine by way of insect plague or widespread natural disaster where food security gets impacted and food supply contracts causing food prices to spiral out of control (by way of hyper inflation) where people find themselves being forced to sell assets into a sliding market to feed themselves and their families just to survive. Continue reading “Pumping up the Money Supply, the ultimate treatment for financial market ailments?”

Pumping up the Money Supply, the ultimate treatment for financial market ailments?

No new active COVID-19 cases in NZ

There are officially no more known ‘Active’ COVID-19 cases in New Zealand. We move down in to Alert Level 1 tonight.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/418524/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-reveals-move-to-level-1-from-midnight

Still need to be vigilant obviously.

“We will almost certainly see cases here again. That is not a sign we have failed.”

“If we get one or two cases in the future – which will remain possible for some time to come due to the global situation and nature of the virus – we need to shut down those cases fast. The last thing … we want to do is move up the alert level system again.”

My feeling is though, heading into the Winter seasons in future years, it may still be a good idea to practice some sort of social distancing primarily to protect the more vulnerable in our communities.

No new active COVID-19 cases in NZ

Stream of Consciousness Week 1st June 2020

Stream of conciousness and other personal thoughts garnered throughout the week and which will be added to as the week rolls on. These thoughts are unrefined, unquantified, unverified, and raw. Any of these may be either be edited, deleted or otherwise spawn out into its own separate post…

  • The question of the weekend: Can continually adding financial stimulus keep the economy propped up indefinitely regardless of what happens? Or is there a point where this plan will simply stop working and we end up paying for it dearly? What is the end game here? On that vein, the current rally being a bull trap, as part of a great depression style bear market, is something that has become less likely. Looking more towards a secular side ways market with large up and down gyrations, must like we had from 2000 to 2009.
  • Western sentiment in the last few days appears to have suddenly snapped back to “life is normal” again. More celebrity, pro-sports and entertainment news making the headlines once again. Casinos and entertainment venues around the world reopening.
  • Ticking things off for the sake of ticking them off admittedly isn’t my buzz personally and is not really how I prefer to spend my leisure time.

Older Stream of Conciousness thoughts can be found here.

 

 

Stream of Consciousness Week 1st June 2020