Apes Together Strong

'They create Swiss francs from the thin alpine air where the Swiss money grows' - and then buy Gamestop shares!

The Swiss National Bank has monetized about $12 million worth of Gamestop shares! (And $10 billion worth of Apple)

It’s no big deal. Perfectly normal to be able to create currency out of literally nothing - with no limit - and buy real assets.

Frankly, it’s a great deal for the Swiss (and the other cartels who do this.) Price literally means nothing to them. The only real risk is bankruptcy, right? But so what if one of your holdings goes bankrupt? Just print more!

Why not simply create enough Swiss Francs to convert to dollars to buy up every public company in the world?

You could then distribute the shares evenly to all Swiss citizens, and everyone would be rich and could buy Tesla’s and private jets.

Sure the Franc’s value might drop - someday, maybe - but they’d own every company in the world with everyone else holding Treasuries and MBS.

Nothing I’m saying here is any goofier than utterly idiotic things like, say, negative rates, which were thought up and implemented by people with far too many more years of college, and higher IQ’s, than me.

And most of the world cheered them on.

Jim Grant, 2016

Q: According to the latest SEC filings the SNB’s portfolio of US stocks has grown to more than $60 billion. [How quaint! They’re now up to $145 billion or so - rh]

Yes, they own a lot of everything. Let us consider how they get the money for that: They create Swiss francs from the thin alpine air where the Swiss money grows. Then they buy Euros and translate them into Dollars. So far nobody’s raised a sweat. All this is done with a tab of a computer key. And then the SNB calls its friendly broker – I guess UBS – and buys the ears off of the US stock exchange. All of it with money that didn’t exist. That too, is something a little bit new.

You too can invest in a private central bank that can create money out of nothing!

One of the jokes that did not endear me to most asset-gatherers.

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My one regret is that I never made it to #1.

Gotta find out who those “3 likes” were.

I was reminded of this classic tweet because I noticed that the CFA asset-gatherer who wrote it is still out there doing podcasts and other nonsense. If I remember correctly, my second-place award was prompted because he thought Ben Bernanke was a hero, and I disagreed.

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Today’s Gaslighting: Rent is Nearing Deflation Nationally According to RedFin

As usual when people with a net worth less than 7 or 8-figures chime in, the comments are amusing:

• Yea? Wanna tell that to my landlord? And everyone I knows landlord?

• for some reason that 17.5% inflation is acceptable but even 1% of deflation to get back to trend is the end of the world. tired of this

• This literally just means rents are approaching no longer going up. Doesn't mean they are going down.

Let’s look at rents a bit longer term…

This is from the BLS, so it’s probably greatly understated.

The horrific possibility remains that some Americans may see their rent not go up as much this year as last year, or even - God forbid - go down a bit.

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• Jim Chanos & Bethany McLean on Regulators, Enron, Earnings Adjustments, & The Golden Age of Fraud

• Quoth the Raven #311 - U.S. Dollar & Sovereign Debt Endgame, with Larry Lepard & Andy Schectman

• Marty Bent with Lee Slusher: An Ex-Intelligence Analyst's View on Ukraine

• An unsolicited plug for The Acquirer’s Multiple Get on their email list. Lots of good links, and Tobias is cool, and has a good podcast.

• Never Forget

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Seems like there are a bunch of new revisionist Waco TV show lately. Instead, check out the original definitive documentary, Waco: The Rules of Engagement.