Central Bank Bubble Will Burst and Result In A Recession & Bear Market

…The unwinding of the “Central Bank Bubble” will be worse than either the Dot.Com Bubble or the Housing Bubble. It seems like most investors continue to show apathy even with the warnings by us and quite a few others of the “unintended consequences” of the central banks doing things that have never been done before. Those investors are in good company because it appears to us that the leaders of the major central banks of the world do not have any idea of the “unintended consequences” either.

The comments above and below are excerpts from an article by Comstock Partners (ComstockFunds.com) which has been edited ([ ]) and abridged (…) to provide a faster and easier read.

Think for a moment about exactly what…[chances] the Federal Reserve took in continuing to keep the federal funds rate at zero or close to zero (called ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) for approximately the past 8 years…The Fed, or any of the central banks that followed the Fed’s lead, had…[no] idea of the “unintended consequences” of this policy. However, if you think they took a chance with ZIRP, just think about the chances our Fed took while building their balance sheet up from $800 bn. in 2008 to over $4.5 tn presently. They did this by using three quantitative easing (QE) programs and one “operation twist” program. These programs were designed to increase the Fed’s balance sheet by buying U.S. mortgage bonds and U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. The other major central banks followed the Fed’s lead and grew their balance sheets in similar fashion to the Fed.

…The Federal Reserve is now attempting to unwind these extremely risky policies, while the rest of the world is attempting to copy the same risky policies that wound up painting the Fed into a corner…We believe the Fed’s unwinding (as they continue to try to do things that have never been tried before) will again lead to the “unintended consequences” of a significant bear market and global recession.

They already found out what happens when they stopped each of the QE’s and “operation twist” as the stock market declined sharply. This time they believe they can stop QE 3 and at the same time raise the Fed Funds rate. Again, this has never been tried before and will probably lead to a major bear market once interest rates are normalized. As we have stated time and time again, the only things that U.S. QE’s have stimulated have been financial assets, real estate and certain collectibles. Stock prices have been driven to near all time highs on both and absolute and relative valuation basis while U.S. debt has yields that have been driven to all time lows.

The S&P 500 made its peak level in May of 2015 at 2134 and has subsequently had major declines while the peak has not been penetrated in 10 unsuccessful attempts to exceed it. This has brought us to having to drive through all of the technical resistance brought about from these 10 attempts to break through the 2134 peak. On the downside, we think the “unintended consequences” of this combination of stopping QE and raising rates will drive the S&P 500 substantially lower than the 1810 trough that took place earlier this year. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the market drop at least to the 50% level of the Dot.Com decline in 2000 which would take it to 1067, or the Housing Bubble breaking down by 58% in 2008-2009, which would take the market down to 896. We hope we are wrong, but we believe this is where the market could reach as the result of the aforementioned central bank policies.

The central bankers just can’t seem to understand that the problems of the global economy and stock markets came about from the central bank (especially the Fed’s) mistakes and interference while they just guess at solutions.

• The main reason for the increased debt burden started with the Federal Reserve reducing the Fed Funds Rate to 1% in June of 2003 and keeping it there for a year causing the Housing Bubble.
• They continued to shut their eyes to the obvious sub-prime housing loans that were being sold as if they were valuable. Back then the sub-prime market was only $1.3 tn while now we have negative interest rate sovereign debt of close to $12 tn and all time low yield U.S. debt to the tune of $19 tn.
• The global debt has increased by about $60 tn since 2007 and there is no way to have a smooth and quick recovery after the debt has grown so quickly…

In summary, remember that the root cause of the many worldwide economic problems, especially the slow growth everywhere, is the overwhelming debt incurred by almost every country. As long as the major central banks continue to ignore the persistent debt build-up (even encourage it) we certainly do not see how we can avoid a recession and bear market…

Disclosure: The above article has been edited ([ ]) and abridged (…) by the editorial team at munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!) to provide a fast and easy read.

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