Thanks to central banks’ easy money policies, historically low interest rates and a desperate search for yield have created new danger zones for investors trying to stay out of trouble.

Original Article: “Thanks to Central Banks, the Old Investment Rules Don’t Apply Anymore”

Sixty percent equities, 40 percent bonds. What has been considered the golden rule of portfolio theory for decades is of less and less value to investors today. Because central banks have backstopped almost every market, essentially mimicking the market maker of last and first resort, returns have been low, correlations have increased, and valuations are deprived of their meaning.
To act as the ultimate market maker as such, central banks have been leveraging up their balance sheets. They

Sixty percent equities, 40 percent bonds. What has been considered the golden rule of portfolio theory for decades is of less and less value to investors today. Because central banks have backstopped almost every market, essentially mimicking the market maker of last and first resort, returns have been low, correlations have increased, and valuations are deprived of their meaning.
To act as the ultimate market maker as such, central banks have been leveraging up their balance sheets. They have been creating liquidity—mainly in the form of electronic bank reserves—only to mainly swap them for pristine collateral in the form of government bonds. This has several consequences. Good collateral is siphoned off from the markets onto the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet,

Government-mandated money in the form of legal tender is a historical anomaly. For much of mankind’s history private monies and quasi monies competed alongside each other. Now, again, a new era of private money competition is resurging and reshaping our world.
Money, finance, and banking are currently experiencing the “Great Unbundling.” Value chains within finance are being broken up across the spectrum. Customers or users are no longer obtaining their money services as an all-in-one package from a single universal bank but increasingly follow a best-in-class approach in which the best offers from many different providers are chosen.
This trend of the fragmentation of financial services has also been recognized by the tech giants of our time. Amazon, Apple,

In the eyes of many, covid-19 has truly accelerated things. Tech aficionados have been rejoicing as virtual meetings, Zoom calls, and overall digitization within companies have seen a serious boost. At the same time, the corona crisis has intensified another contemporary development that people generally don’t really care about: today’s ongoing expansion of the money supply.
Although monetary policy had been ultraexpansionary even well before the virus hit the world, central bankers are currently upping the ante once again. While it took the Federal Reserve almost six years to create 3.5 trillion in new US dollar liquidity, this time around it took only ten months to unleash a monetary tsunami of $3 trillion with the projection of at least another $1.8 trillion

It seems the reach and influence of central banks has never been higher, yet they are increasingly flying blind in an environment where central bank tools are growing ever more imprecise and dangerous.

This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Millian Quinteros.
Original Article: “Central Banks and the Problem with Playing God​“.

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Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin has seen its price cut in half and beyond. Other crypto assets have fallen even more. Although the king of the crypto world has rebelled from time to time over recent months, Bitcoin’s occasional price increases have always been met with follow-up downturns.
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Towards the end of 2017, Bitcoin — and with it other cryptocurrencies — experienced a real hype. Within a few months, prices shot through the ceiling. The euphoria was ginormous and in hindsight pure madness.
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Am 10. Juni stimmen wir in der Schweiz auf nationaler Ebene über die Vollgeld-Initiative ab. Diese widmet sich einer der wohl komplexesten und zugleich wesentlichsten Thematiken unserer Gesellschaft: unserem Finanzsystem. Die Idee des Vollgeldes geht weit über die Initiative in der Schweiz hinaus und ist heute in erster Linie Bestandteil der «Modern Monetary Theory». Ihren Ursprung lässt sich in das 19. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgen. Auf der Webseite der deutschen Vollgeld-Vereinigung ist zu lesen:
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Dennoch wird in der heutigen Debatte um das Geldsystem – wie im ersten Teil beschrieben – allzu gerne

Wie der erste Teil darzulegen versuchte, muss einer Ausweitung der Geldmenge durch Geschäftsbanken zwangsläufig eine Vermehrung der Basisgeldmenge vorausgegangen sein. Ohne eine Entscheidung der Zentralbank, den Geschäftsbanken –vorgängig oder nachträglich – Basisgeld zur Verfügung zu stellen, ist eine jede Geschäftsbank aufgrund der gegenseitigen Konkurrenz untereinander in deren Möglichkeit, Geld zu schöpfen, beschränkt.
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