Monday, November 21, 2011

old money: buy assets on the cheap when there's blood in the streets...,


Video - Theophilus Beckford Back Biter

BusinessInsider | We are entering a period of profound political disunity as the interests of various Elites that were recently convergent are now diverging.

I have no "proof" of this conjecture, but there is increasingly abundant evidence that the interests of various global Elites are diverging. Like many other observers, I have tended to lump Power Elites into one class of convergent if not identical interests. But reality is looking more complicated now as the global financial system that has enabled and enriched all the various global Power Elites has fractured. As a result, convergence has reversed into divergence.

There are few neat delineations in this divergence, but we can draw some preliminary, speculative conclusions from the fracturing that is underway. Up through 2009 or so, the global Power Elites shared the common goal of reinflating the financial system with low interest rates, massive Central State stimulus, the purchase of depreciating private assets by Central Banks and abundant liquidity provided by the loyal apparatchiks in the Central Banks.

This was the shared goal of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed), the European Central Bank (ECB) and various ancillary central states and banks controlled or influenced by the Power Elites.

The destruction of the U.S. dollar by the Fed was perhaps the first wedge that caused the interests of the U.S. Elites and China's Elites to diverge. Since the renminbi is pegged to the dollar, then its decline versus the yen and euro actually enhanced China's global competitiveness. So far so good: convergent interests.

But the Power Elite in China was split by the weakening dollar, as one group saw the decline in the value of China's vast stash of U.S. Treasuries as a loss of face internationally: the decline made China look like a chump, never mind the positive impact on China's competitiveness of the sagging dollar.

All of that was on the back burner, so to speak, until the eurozone's overindebtedness exploded into the global awareness in May 2010. Suddenly the liquidity/low interest rate/reinflate convergence of Elites split into camps with radically divergent interests.

The Fed/Politico camp that was counting on a depreciating dollar to revive exports and goose the "risk trade" flight to equities that powered the "stock market is rising, so everything's great" perception-management so beloved by politicos and Fed lackeys is now in full panic mode as the dollar rises and equities tank: bad news, indeed, for those bent on inflating equities by destroying the dollar.

The "Old Money" Anglo-American camp is not so-secretly delighted by the euro's implosion, as that leaves the yen, the dollar and even the pound as alternatives. And despite what the Fed/Politico camp believes, the Old Money knows that a strong currency is the backbone of global dominance, as that strength enables the owner of the currency to buy assets on the cheap when blood is running in the streets.

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