Central Banks Fleeing U.S. Dollar

Banks are fleeing the U.S. dollar at an unprecedented rate as 63 percent of new cash is going into the euro and yen rather than the dollar over the last three months.

A decade ago the U.S. dollar accounted for about 66 percent of investment for the new cash in banks, while today it stands at only 37 percent.

Overall the greenback is only 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks, the lowest level ever that has been recorded, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The obvious reason is it's losing it's value at an unprecedented rate, as it's down 10 percent over the last 90 days alone, generating interest in abandoning the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency and looking at alternatives, although that would take time to happen.

In the short term, money will continue to flow away from the dollar as the extraordinary run of the printing presses of the Federal Reserve and the outrageous Obama administration bailouts continue to hammer the U.S. dollar into the ground.

Government, central banks and investors are getting more concerned about the U.S. dollar going forward, as the almost non-existent return isn't worth the money they've invested in it to cover the growing U.S. government debt.

"He's (Bernanke) in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing."

With the horrific decision by the Obama administration to bail out everything, it has left no viable options on the table, because if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, it'll smother any economic growth and clobber the housing market, which would slump back into a horrid situation it hasn't even escaped at this time.

On the other hand if he keeps things like they are, inflation could go as high as into the triple digits, collapsing the economy into something we would no longer recognize.

As Schiff and others have rightly concluded, "The stimulus is what's toxic -- we're poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it." Unfortunately no one that has power to make monetary decisions has the political and personal will to step in and stop the monetary madness of the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve.

U.S. Dollar | Monetary Policy China

U.S. Dollar Monetary Policy

With the outrageous policies of Barack Hussein Obama who is pretending he can spend money at will and not suffer any consequences, this has rightfully caused American trading partners, especially the Chinese, to be concerned over the eventual collapse in value of the U.S. dollar, which could devastate China because of their continual and misguided buying up of Treasury debt.

It is assumed that China must do this to continue prospering, (and to a slight degree that may be true), but this has went way beyond that, and American consumers aren't spending, so China is extremely exposed to devastating harm if they don't do something about it.

As a result, the U.S. dollar should be the major focus of Chinese-U.S. talks starting in Washington today as China pushes the Obama administration on how it will manage the fiscal deficit and protect the U.S. currency’s value. Of course the answer is they can't, and any student of the markets and honest economist will acknowledge that.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will host two days of meetings talking on topics from the economic crisis to North Korea. The Strategic and Economic Dialogue is the first by the Obama administration with China.

The global recession has underscored the common interests of the economies, ranked first and third largest in the world, as Vice Premier Wang Qishan seeks to preserve the value of the world’s biggest Treasury holdings, while U.S. pushes China to rely more on domestic demand and not exports for growth.

Bizarrely, clueless Timothy Geither and equally clueless Hillary Clinton are pressing the Chinese on becoming even more socialist by providing more social safety in order to combat the wonderful habits of the Chinese for saving rather than spending. These wackos need to step down out of office for even bringing up such rot. They don't belong in a U.S. government position when they seek to export socialism to the Chinese. They're getting wackier and wackier by the moment.

China’s exchange-rate policy will be talked about. The U.S. wants a more flexible yuan, though Geithner has avoided a showdown on the issue, declining to repeat more ignorant comments he made in written communication to lawmakers after his Senate confirmation hearing in January that China was “manipulating” its currency.

Both nations are pumping cash into their economies to revive growth. Though Premier Wen Jiabao said in March he was worried about the safety of the nation’s U.S. assets, China bought $38 billion of U.S. notes and bonds in May, taking its holdings to $801.5 billion. The Chinese should never have done this, and they still be pay in the face of the horrid and inexperience displayed by the Obama administration.

The U.S. deficit could go as high as a record $1.85 trillion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, almost four times the previous fiscal year’s $455 billion shortfall, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will brief Chinese officials about how the U.S. plans to keep inflation in check over the next few years, people advised of the plan said this month. In June, Geithner told China that the U.S. wants to shrink its budget gap as soon as an economic recovery takes hold.

Unfortunately, Ben Bernanke is as clueless about monetary policy as they come, and along with the Federal Reserve, is largely responsible for the continued and lengthening recession, which should have been allowed to work its way out without government interference.

The U.S. dollar will continue to suffer under these tortuous and horrible monetary policies until the Keynesian way of managment is completely abandoned and recognized as outrageously deficient and unable to work, as decades of failure have already proven.

U.S. Dollar Monetary Policy

Peter Schiff: U.S. Bond Market Bubble about to Burst

Peter Schiff puts forth an excellent argument on not only why the U.S. Treasury bond market is in a bubble, but why that U.S Treasury bond bubble is about to burst. When will the bond bubble burst? We of course can't tell, but the conditions are set for it to happen in the not too distant future.

The underlying cause is the current buyers of US Treasury bonds are primarily speculators. What has brought that about?

According to a recent Federal Reserve announcement, the Fed says it's committed to buying long term Treasury Bonds. What that tells you is other people or governments are getting out of the U.S. dollar and looking at other places to put their money. If that wasn't the case, the Fed wouldn't have made that announcement, as it would have been meaningless if money was flowing in to buy up U.S. debt.

In response to that announcement, speculators are now the ones buying the bonds for the purpose of selling them to the announced spending spree of the Fed. No one is in the market for holding US bonds until maturity now; at least no one that understands even a little bit of what's really going on.

To buy those bonds the Fed will have to print more money to make the acquisitions. Consequently, the more the Fed buys, the less the bonds will be worth. The reason is the more the Federal Reserve prints money, the more the dollar drops and collapses in value.

U.S. Treasury bonds are now a ponzi scheme, because the thing underpinning the success of the US bonds is the dependence on people to continue buying them. If people, funds and countries stop buying bonds, as they are now starting to do, eventually the last buyer comes in and the seller is left with no options but to hold them.

So when people stop loaning money through buying these bonds, the bubble will burst. Schiff believes the bubble is already here, and it's not that far away until the pain comes.

Schiff adds that the Obama stimulus package is a disaster, and will only make things much worse, as the same principle involving the upcoming bond bubble bursting will come about from the continuing debasing of the U.S. dollar by the endless printing of money.

So the illusion that the U.S. dollar is a haven for investors is already starting to burst and collapse, and the bond market bubble about to burst. The collapse of U.S. Treasury bonds isn't going to happen overnight, it'll be gradual and subtle, and we'll have to watch things closely so we're not lulled into thinking they're safe and will hold their value. They definitely aren't going to hold their value in the ongoing U.S Treasury fund bubble.

While it's quite possible the air could come out of bonds very quickly, in all likelihood, it'll be a slow, deflating process rather than a quick burst of the US bond market.

The U.S. dollar is no place to be at this time, and the house and senate are about to pass over $800 billion more in bailouts which will continue to deflate the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury bonds.

The bond bubble will burst and will collapse along with the U.S. dollar. If I was invested in the dollar, I would get out of it as quickly as I could, as once things start to collapse and slide, it'll be like a slow avalanche continually building up momentum until it overtakes anyone on the mountain. Investing in the U.S. Treasury bond market and U.S. dollar are that mountain, and if you continue to ride it you'll find yourself and your money suddenly covered with the snow of a weak dollar and stuck with a bond you thought would be of value in the years ahead.

There's no doubt there's an ongoing bubble in the U.S. Treasury funds market, and nothing will change the disaster about to happen to those holding the bonds in the end. It looks like for the most part it'll be the U.S. government who has foolishly announced it'll buy up the bonds. That has released the plethora of speculators buying Treasuries so they can then resale them to the government at a profit. Don't get caught up in that game.

One final and big piece of the Treasury bond collapse is it's also similar to the forced liquidation which drove down the prices of some commodities like gold, which obviously is the investment of choice in times like these.

Because bonds are one of the easiest to unload investments, being so liquid, we'll start to see, and have already seen, some countries slowing down their investment in the bond, and probably will start to unload them to get access to more cash. When that happens, it's hard to tell how devasted the collapsing bond market will become.

As Peter Schiff says, the US Treasury bond market is in a bubble which is about to burst, don't get caught holding bonds or U.S. dollars when it happens. We don't know when the U.S. bond market will collapse, but we know the conditions are ripe for it to happen. It's not a question of whether the Treasury bonds will collapse, it's only a question of when and how quickly they'll collapse.