"Strategists are alerting that another economic crisis is in the making just to enable the Federal Reserve to double its Quantitative Easing policies and keep the financial markets properly heated while compromising real economic growth. The central bank has fallen into a very damaging market trap and now it appears to be condemned to issue endless easy money into the markets, otherwise the whole U.S. economy would irreversibly collapse in a finger snap.
In short, it appears that the looming lockdowns, which will prompt a tsunami of bankruptcies and lay-offs, might be the leverage needed to unleash more financial rescues, bailouts, and stimulus relief, and it is just a matter of time for the U.S. economy to fall into rock bottom once again. That's what we'll be discussing in this video.
To support the markets during the current recession, the Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet by over $3 trillion, injecting $120 billion in liquidity every month, and also buying corporate bonds and junk bond ETFs.
Although some may question why the Fed continues to "confuse" markets with the economy, considering how the system has been structured, it seems the bank has no other option. In short, since the value of financial assets in the US economy are marking a record of over 620% of GDP, a dramatic market crash would completely smash the highly financialized US economy, for that reason, it could never be allowed to happen
Another aggravator is the ever-growing budget deficit. After hitting a record of $3.1 trillion this year and knowing the U.S. will still face a tsunami of debt issuance in 2021, it is expected that another full-year deficit can largely exceed $3 trillion, especially considering the coming lockdowns are about to shut down the entire economy one more time and, of course, business will be in desperate need of further fiscal aid. In this sense, the Fed's current rate of debt monetization, which is through Quantitative Easing simply won't be enough.
While the U.S. Treasury faces net issuances of nearly $2.4 trillion, the Fed is expected to monetize at least half of this total, or $960 billion. So, remembering that under the present extraordinary monetary policies the Fed has virtually monetized every dollar of net issuance, the central bank is essentially in a huge cliff that could send Treasury prices to a major downfall if markets lower expectations for future Fed monetizations. In other words, the Fed has to double its scheduled monthly QE in 2021 just to catch up to where it was in 2020.
Therefore, strategists are warning that this situation puts the Fed in an eternal loop of stimulus issuance, which may even help at first, but it ultimately leads to weaker economic growth and a rising wealth gap in the long-run.
Up until this point, the Fed has already injected more than $36 Trillion into the economy. But the amount of economic growth achieved has been derisive. In a nutshell, the financial trap the Fed has fallen into requires constant interventions to sustain lower rates of economic growth, and whenever the Fed retracts the pace of intervention, economic growth sharply collapses.
That's why the agency has lowered interest rates to stimulate growth, but even after attaining the “zero bound,” the Fed has continued to fuel its expansionary monetary policy. In the absence of more debt issuance, the agency's power to “monetize” bonds to provide “monetary stimulus” to the markets is compromised. According to its "logic", keeping asset markets heated would enhance consumer confidence and generate a “trickle-down” effect on the economy.
However, from 2009 up until this point, the Fed’s balance sheet grew 438%, making the S&P 500 went up by 199.94%, while GDP only increased 21.24%, clearly showing how these enormous liquidity injections barely find a way to make any significant improvements in consumer spending.
Now, the Treasury market is so large that it has lost its ability to operate seamlessly on its own during stressful times. And the continuity of the present policies is now the most significant risk because the agency will need another crisis to use as a scapegoat for the next gigantic QE expansion.
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