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It's All About Liquidity For The Banks

Liquidity is the buzz-word that central banks used to justify their policies of keeping short term rates at zero (give or take) percent and buying bonds from banks in return for giving them more of it. Central banks say their primary responsibility is to balance full employment with low inflation, but that’s just code for being able to keep the largest banks solvent in times of emergency by all means possible. This current emergency has lasted nearly seven years and counting.  

Here are my laws of liquidity behavior:

The first law of liquidity – when it is most needed, it will be least available.

The second law of liquidity – the easier it is to get, the less value it holds for the recipient.

The third law of liquidity – the harder it is to find, the greater its systemic cost.

Banks gain on multiple fronts from “accommodative” monetary policy with respect to their liquidity needs. First, they can borrow money at next to nothing. Second, they can hoard that extra cash under the guise of complying with capital reserve requirements and get brownie points for passing stress tests because they are holding the cash or high quality assets bought with the cash, that central banks provided them to begin with. Third, they can sell bonds they don’t want or need at full value to central banks, and afterwards mark similar bonds at higher levels than the market would otherwise value them.

This is all shell-game finance. It is why people should be diligent about…