Signs Of A Dollar Collapse?

Hyperinflation is a dynamic process – much like a positive feedback loop that, once entered, is almost impossible to exit. The process can go on for years. In the feedback cycle, the more central banks print money and buy bonds, the less other entities want to hold bonds.

Simultaneously, the less others choose to hold bonds, the more the central bank is forced to buy so that the government has enough money to spend.

Deficit Spending

In Bernholz’s “Monetary Regimes and Inflation”, it was found that in a study of 29 cases of hyperinflation, the best predictor of hyperinflation in a country that prints its own money is government debt over 80% of GNP and a deficit over 40% of government spending.

Note that 50% deficit spending would mean spending twice what was collected in taxes.

We are edging closer to this number but not quite there yet. A major war or natural disaster could potentially put us over this mark.

The U.S. is over the debt number and not far from the deficit number, so the danger of hyperinflation is real.

Interest Rates and the Bond Market

What causes bond yields to begin rising?

An unexpected bond market sell off could spark a collapse that would make the fear of lower housing prices look like a walk in the park. The triple threat of a simultaneous equity, housing, and bond sell off cannot be ruled out.

The global bond market is at least $100 trillion dollars. The great majority is being kept alive by a massive race to debase the currencies underlying.

The U.S. is more than 60% of the total. Nothing begets selling like the selling triggered from falling bond prices.

As short term debt matures, new buyers are not coming back. China was the buyer when the FED began its Operation Twist program in September of 2011. They bought debt far out into the long term portion of the curve. They needed to sell the short end. This was done in attempt to stabilize the yields across the spectrum and signal to the markets that they had control over rates.

As China backs away (in essence, letting short-term bonds mature) they are not coming back. In addition, the official announcement from the PBOCcame at the end of 2013 that they would not be buying anymore U.S.debt.

Obviously, this does not mean they are selling debt – it’s just a signal.

Higher yields are not in complete control. Most major market participants have factored that interest rates are under control of the FED into their risk models. They have also surmised that the bond vigilante is dead. The bond vigilante has been temporarily usurped by the same mechanism that has suffocated most every market.

Dollar Alternatives Worldwide

Central banks around the world are increasingly diversifying their currency reserves away from the U.S. dollar.

Even as overall holdings soar to a record $11.4 trillion, the U.S. dollar accounted for 61.44% (down from well over 65% at the peak of the crisis in 2008).

With China outspokenly concerned at the future of the status of the U.S. dollar, we suspect this will only become more ‘diversified’.

It has been widely reported that 58% of the trade transactions were in dollars. Again, that’s down from 67% five years ago.

Bi-lateral currency swaps are being announced worldwide involving the Yuan. Russia and China just signed a huge gas/oil agreement denominated in their currencies.

The United States government’s foreign policy, i.e. Syria and Iran, seem to be pushing the Saudis to seriously reassess their relationship with the U.S. They have announced this publicly on more than one occasion.

The Syrians could become a serious nail in the petrodollar coffin. Then again, there is no shortage of hot spots around the world that could potentially sharpen the focus toward the heart of the matter – currency and debt.

At that point would it be so hard to imagine foreigners not accepting Federal Reserve notes.

Do the Saudis start accepting (or demanding) payment in Yuan, Euros, Yen…gold and silver?

Do the circling (derivative) black swans land in January 2014?

Do Americans eventually wake up to what has happened to their country and the enormous fraud that controls all markets?

The problem, of course, is that all of these potentialities exist in the moment. They are short fuses attached to an explosion that, by definition, is non-linear in nature.