Friday, August 28, 2015

28/8/15: Central Banks' Activism in a Chart


Having been out of contact due to work and summer break commitments, I will be updating the blog over the next few days with interesting bits of information that have been overlooked over the last 10 days or so. So stay tuned for numerous updates.

To start with, here is a picture of the Central Banks' monetary activism to-date:

Source: @Schuldensuehner 

The chart above sets 2005 = 1000 and indexes the uplift in Central Banks' balancesheets expansions: Fed almost x5.6 times; PBoC almost x6.4 times, ECB almost x2.3 times and heading toward x3.3 times under the ongoing QE, BoJ almost x2.1 times... not surprisingly, the old Fed 'put' is now pretty much every Central Bank's default option...

Much of this mountain of money printing has gone to grease the wheels of sovereign debt markets. Much of the resulting revaluation of financial assets is simply not sustainable under the premise of the Central Banks' 'puts' withdrawal (monetary tightening).

In simple terms, the ugly will get uglier and we have no idea if it will get any better thereafter.

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