Bill Bonner :"Too Early for “Inflation Bets”?"

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Bill Bonner now asks :"Too Early for “Inflation Bets”?"
"After 35 years of waiting… so many false signals… so often deceived… so often disappointed… bond bears gathered on rooftops as though awaiting the Second Coming.

Many times, investors have said to themselves, “This is it! This is the end of the Great Bull Market in Bonds!”

And then, at the appointed hour, expecting the rapture… they took the leap of faith… only to come crashing down on the rocks below.

The Trump Trade

In 2008, in 2012, in 2014… Each time, the market made fools of them.Now, weary… wary… and nearly broke… they make their bets as though they were setting an explosive charge at a federal building........"

http://bonnerandpartners.com/too-early-for-inflation-bets/
Onebornfree commentary:

Of course, if those "weary… wary… and nearly broke" persons had only made their bets on inflation with money they could realistically afford to lose, and kept the money they could not afford to lose in a long term savings plan similar to this one:

http://onebornfreesfinancialsafetyrepor ... pdate.html

..... then they would not be now so "weary… wary… and nearly broke", but perhaps ready to try yet another bet on the return of inflation, using, of course, money they could afford to lose [assuming they had any].

Regards, onebornfreeatyahoo

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The Fed Can’t Raise Rates, But Must Pretend It Will

[ Financial Safety Services commentary: I don't care  what the Fed does/does not do, nor whether, according to Mr or Ms. highly esteemed  investment advisor or economist with a claimed "near perfect prediction record" [insert  name of choice here ] , we are supposedly in for more recession, depression, deflation, hyper inflation, a stock market boom, or whatever . 

Because, regardless of what happens to the economy, my extremely simple, entirely self-managed, fully diversified, once per year adjusted long term savings plan will be safely protected, and will , 9 times out of 10, grow at an average of 8% per annum over and above the prevailing inflation rate, year in, year out, as it has since 1986 when I started using it.
  Savings plan results 1972-2011:  Regards,onebornfree ]

The Fed Can’t Raise Rates, But Must Pretend It Will 

by Thorsten Polleit

Waiting for Godot is a play written by the Irish novelist Samuel B. Beckett in the late 1940s in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, keep waiting endlessly and in vain for the coming of someone named Godot. The storyline bears some resemblance to the Federal Reserve’s talk about raising interest rates.

Since spring 2013, the Fed has been playing with the idea of raising rates, which it had suppressed to basically zero percent in December 2008. So far, however, it has not taken any action. Upon closer inspection, the reason is obvious. With its policy of extremely low interest rates, the Fed is fueling an artificial economic expansion and inflating asset prices.


Raising short-term rates would be like taking away the punch bowl just as the party gets going. As rates rise, the economy’s production and employment structure couldn’t be upheld. Neither could inflated bond, equity, and housing prices. If the economy slows down, let alone falls back into recession, the Fed’s fiat money pipe dream would run into serious trouble.

This is the reason why the Fed would like to keep rates at the current suppressed levels. A delicate obstacle to such a policy remains, though: If savers and investors expect that interest rates will remain at rock bottom forever, they would presumably turn their backs on the credit market. The ensuing decline in the supply of credit would spell trouble for the fiat money system.

To prevent this from happening, the Fed must achieve two things. First, it needs to uphold the expectation in financial markets that current low interest rates will be increased again at some point in the future. If savers and investors buy this story, they will hold onto their bank deposits, money market funds, bonds, and other fixed income products despite minuscule yields.

Second, the Fed must succeed in continuing to postpone rate hikes into the future without breaking peoples’ expectation that rates will rise at some point. It has to send out the message that rates will be increased at, say, the forthcoming FOMC meeting. But, as the meeting approaches, the Fed would have to repeat its trickery, pushing the possible date for a rate hike still further out.


If the Fed gets away with this “Waiting for Godot” strategy, savings will keep flowing into credit markets. Borrowers can refinance their maturing debt with new loans and also increase total borrowing at suppressed interest rates. The economy’s debt load can continue to build up, with the day of reckoning being postponed for yet again.

However, there is the famous saying: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” What if savers and investors eventually become aware that the Fed will not bring interest rates back to “normal” but keep them at basically zero, or even push them into negative territory?.........."

Rest of article here

Regards, onebornfree

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