Have Central Bankers Lost Control? Could The Bond Bubble Implode Even If There Is No Tapering?

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Michael Snyder

Are the central banks of the world starting to lose control of the financial markets?  Could we be facing a situation where the bond bubble is going to inevitably implode no matter what the central bankers do?  For the past several years, the central bankers of the planet have been able to get markets to do exactly what they want them to do. 

Stock markets have soared to record highs, bond yields have plunged to record lows and investors have literally hung on every word uttered by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other prominent central bankers.

In the United States, it has been remarkable what Bernanke has been able to accomplish.  The U.S. government has been indulging in an unprecedented debt binge, the Fed has been wildly printing money, and the real rate of inflation has been hovering around 8 to 10 percent, and yet Bernanke has somehow convinced investors to lend gigantic piles of money to the U.S. government for next to nothing.  But this irrational state of affairs is not going to last indefinitely.  At some point, investors are going to wake up and start demanding higher returns.

And we are already starting to see this happen in Japan.  Wild money printing has actually caused bond yields to go up.  What a concept!  And that is what should happen - when central banks recklessly print money it should cause investors to demand a higher return.  But if bond investors all over the globe start acting rationally, that is going to cause the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet to burst, and that will create utter devastation in the financial markets.

Equity Valuations Forming Second Biggest Bubble in US History

Jason Kaspar, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Despite the terrible economic performance of the past ten years (both in terms of the markets and the general economy), equity valuations are now approaching the second largest bubble in United States history, surpassed only by the technology bubble. Both the cause and the potential ramifications of this development are astounding.

Exhibit 1: The cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, or CAPE.

This is not a “fad” valuation metric.  CAPE dates back to 1871, offering 140 years worth of data, during which time the mean price-to-earnings ratio is 16. According to Yale University’s Dr. Robert Shiller, the market is now 41% overvalued according to this valuation metric. The only time the markets have been more overvalued was a few brief months in 1929 and the tech bubble.