Brad S
Well-known member
Oil is down 66% from the high - about the same as iron ore. All the industrial metals are similarly down. Grains are off a mere 50% more or less (wanna buy some $15,000 per acre corn ground now?) Fed beef ($180 - $120) is only down 33%. Even lumber and coffee are down. Pretty much an exhaustive list. Commodities are down, and down sharply. Some blame economic trends in China - slow boat freighters explain more than the Chinese ever will. Others have been warning all the QE helicopter money allows over production, then deflation. AND, we haven't even seen the inevitable sell off on Wall Street. I thought I'd post some thoughts from zero hedge on the matter:
On Saturday we once again explored the question of whether central banks are creating deflation. The idea that post-crisis DM monetary policy may be causing disinflationary pressures to build is somewhat counterintuitive on its face but in fact makes quite a lot of sense. Here's how we explained it:
The premise is simple. By keeping rates artificially suppressed, the central banks of the world effectively make it impossible for the market to purge itself of inefficient actors and loss-making enterprises. As a result, otherwise insolvent companies are permitted to remain operational, contributing to oversupply and making it difficult for the market to reach equilibrium. The textbook example of this dynamic is the highly leveraged US shale complex which, by virtue of both artificially low borrowing costs and the Fed-driven hunt for yield, has retained access to capital markets in the midst of the oil slump and has thus continued to drill contributing to the very same price declines that put the entire space in jeopardy in the first place.
Expanding upon that a bit, we might say this: those who have access to easy money overproduce but unfortunately, they do not witness a comparable increase in demand from those to whom the direct benefits of ultra accommodative policies do not immediately accrue. Meanwhile, as WSJ notes, governments are reluctant to spend in the face of heavy debt burdens and increased scrutiny on fiscal policy in the wake of the European debt crisis while China, that all important source of voracious demand, is in the midst of executing the dreaded "hard landing." Here's more:
The global economy is awash as never before in commodities like oil, cotton and iron ore, but also with capital and labor—a glut that presents several challenges as policy makers struggle to stoke demand.
"What we're looking at is a low-growth, low-inflation, low-rate environment," said Megan Greene, chief economist of John Hancock Asset Management, who added that the global economy could spend the next decade "working this off."
The current state of plenty is confounding on many fronts. The surfeit of commodities depresses prices and stokes concerns of deflation…
Meanwhile, public indebtedness in the U.S., Japan and Europe limits governments' capacity to fuel growth through public expenditure. That leaves central banks to supply economies with as much liquidity as possible, even though recent rounds of easing haven't returned these economies anywhere close to their previous growth paths.
"The classic notion is that you cannot have a condition of oversupply," said Daniel Alpert,an investment banker and author of a book, "The Age of Oversupply," on what all this abundance means. "The science of economics is all based on shortages."
But as we first highlighted early last month, signs that continued access to capital markets were triggering overproduction and oversupply in the oil market were readily apparent, as the US looks set to run out of oil storage capacity in just a few months' time.
At Cushing, Okla., one of the biggest oil-storage hubs in the U.S., crude oil is filling tanks to the brim. Last week, crude-oil inventories in the U.S. rose to 489 million barrels, an all-time high in records going back to 1982.
And it's not just oil:
Around the world, about 110 million bales of cotton are estimated to be sitting idle at textile mills or state warehouses at the end of this season, a record high since 1973 when the U.S. began to publish data on cotton stockpiles.
Huge surpluses are also seen in many finished-goods markets as the glut moves down the supply chain. In February, total inventories of manufactured durable goods in the U.S. rose to $413 billion, the highest level since 1992 when the Census Bureau began to publish the data.
On Saturday we once again explored the question of whether central banks are creating deflation. The idea that post-crisis DM monetary policy may be causing disinflationary pressures to build is somewhat counterintuitive on its face but in fact makes quite a lot of sense. Here's how we explained it:
The premise is simple. By keeping rates artificially suppressed, the central banks of the world effectively make it impossible for the market to purge itself of inefficient actors and loss-making enterprises. As a result, otherwise insolvent companies are permitted to remain operational, contributing to oversupply and making it difficult for the market to reach equilibrium. The textbook example of this dynamic is the highly leveraged US shale complex which, by virtue of both artificially low borrowing costs and the Fed-driven hunt for yield, has retained access to capital markets in the midst of the oil slump and has thus continued to drill contributing to the very same price declines that put the entire space in jeopardy in the first place.
Expanding upon that a bit, we might say this: those who have access to easy money overproduce but unfortunately, they do not witness a comparable increase in demand from those to whom the direct benefits of ultra accommodative policies do not immediately accrue. Meanwhile, as WSJ notes, governments are reluctant to spend in the face of heavy debt burdens and increased scrutiny on fiscal policy in the wake of the European debt crisis while China, that all important source of voracious demand, is in the midst of executing the dreaded "hard landing." Here's more:
The global economy is awash as never before in commodities like oil, cotton and iron ore, but also with capital and labor—a glut that presents several challenges as policy makers struggle to stoke demand.
"What we're looking at is a low-growth, low-inflation, low-rate environment," said Megan Greene, chief economist of John Hancock Asset Management, who added that the global economy could spend the next decade "working this off."
The current state of plenty is confounding on many fronts. The surfeit of commodities depresses prices and stokes concerns of deflation…
Meanwhile, public indebtedness in the U.S., Japan and Europe limits governments' capacity to fuel growth through public expenditure. That leaves central banks to supply economies with as much liquidity as possible, even though recent rounds of easing haven't returned these economies anywhere close to their previous growth paths.
"The classic notion is that you cannot have a condition of oversupply," said Daniel Alpert,an investment banker and author of a book, "The Age of Oversupply," on what all this abundance means. "The science of economics is all based on shortages."
But as we first highlighted early last month, signs that continued access to capital markets were triggering overproduction and oversupply in the oil market were readily apparent, as the US looks set to run out of oil storage capacity in just a few months' time.
At Cushing, Okla., one of the biggest oil-storage hubs in the U.S., crude oil is filling tanks to the brim. Last week, crude-oil inventories in the U.S. rose to 489 million barrels, an all-time high in records going back to 1982.
And it's not just oil:
Around the world, about 110 million bales of cotton are estimated to be sitting idle at textile mills or state warehouses at the end of this season, a record high since 1973 when the U.S. began to publish data on cotton stockpiles.
Huge surpluses are also seen in many finished-goods markets as the glut moves down the supply chain. In February, total inventories of manufactured durable goods in the U.S. rose to $413 billion, the highest level since 1992 when the Census Bureau began to publish the data.
