This note was originally published at 8am on August 29, 2013 for Hedgeye subscribers.

“The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”

-Robert Oppenheimer

Got introspective accountability? After he (quickly) realized the capacity of the nuclear weapons he helped create, Robert Oppenheimer became very unpopular with the State – primarily because he held both himself and the government to account.

Can you imagine a central planner of the Bernanke epoch holding themselves accountable to the highest levels of food, energy, education, etc. inflation in world history? Nah. That would require un-spinning the truth.

And the truth is that American political scientists who engaged in devaluing the purchasing power of the American people to 40 year lows in Q2 of 2011 know that sin. This is a market knowledge that history will not lose.

Back to the Global Macro Grind

If you’ve sat across the table from me and my macro research team in the last few years, you’ll know that I refuse to have a debate about mean reversion risks without contextualizing the post Nixon low in the world’s reserve currency (see chart):

  1. Got Causality? Of course, when a country cuts rates to zero then whispers to everyone front-running their next move that zero really isn’t zero (for Bernanke 0 = 0 minus 1, 2, 3, 4? QE5?), its currency goes down, hard
  2. Post Nixon (i.e. post his devaluing the Dollar by abandoning the Gold Standard in 1971, purely for political gain), the US Dollar Index has never seen a lower-low versus the 2011 low; that’s also when Gold hit its all-time high

Since most global commodities settle in Dollars, why there’s been raging inverse correlation (Dollar Down = Commodities Inflation Up) alongside causality in this relationship is trivial to everyone other than the people who should be held responsible for it.

What is less trivial is all of the unintended consequences associated with the ultimate central planning sin (an un-elected overlord confiscating the purchasing power of The People). Here are some of the big ones:

  1. Commodity Bubble
  2. Bond Bubble
  3. Emerging Market Bubble

Yep, that’s going to be a lot for Bernanke’s children (and their children) to noodle over for the next century. That is, of course, unless the next guy or gal running the un-elected agency does what no modern Federal Reserve Chairman has ever not done – raise rates.

For the last 6-12 months, I’ve spent a lot of time ranting about these Global Macro Themes:

  1. #CommodityDeflation
  2. #RatesRising
  3. #EmergingOutflows

These are relatively easy long-term TAIL risk calls to make because all 3 of them are basically about unwinding all 3 of the aforementioned bubbles. Once prices stop making all-time highs (commodities, bonds, or currencies), there’s this big little risk management critter Bernanke has never mentioned under oath called asymmetry.

So, alongside an English major who has never traded a macro market in his life being the chief Keynesian access “economist” @CNBC, at this stage of the cycle this is what you get:

  1. US Dollar making a series of intermediate-term TREND higher-lows (off her all-time lows in 2011)
  2. US Interest Rates making a series of intermediate-term TREND higher-lows (off their all-time lows in 2012)
  3. Gold and food prices making a series of intermediate-term TREND lower-highs (off their all-time highs of 2011-2012)

All the while, what we still get from the consensus TV circus that is government #AccessMedia is a bunch of uninformed people begging for more of the drugs that the political scientists got rich selling us.

If I am not clear on my long-term policy view, let me state it plainly – stop devaluing the Dollar and trying to smooth economic gravity. If you ever want to see US growth expectations come back, you have to let the US Dollar come back (and let rates rise alongside her).

Why am I going off on this today? Well America, we’re at The Crossroad. Unwinding the sin embedded in Bernanke’s post 2012 Jackson Hole policy is what markets have been doing for 10 months.

Collectively, we either have the responsibility within all of us to rise up against the tyranny of easy money and currency debauchery, or we do not. At this point, I can only hope the people who voted for this government hold it to account.

Our immediate-term Risk Ranges across 6 Big Macros are now as follows:

UST 10yr Yield 2.72-2.93%

SPX 1628-1665

VIX 15.26-17.04

USD 80.91-81.69

Brent 111.63-115.98

Gold 1347-1428

Best of luck out there today,

KM

Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer

Sin's Knowledge - CHART

Sin's Knowledge - vp