Old Economic Rules Failing a New World Order

Reality is there is no longer any of the old rules of the economics and finance that apply.  The world central banks now control the debt markets and manipulate them to such a degree that market rates are not the free market rates that would be in place if central banks were staying out of the way. QE is in place around the world so there is minimal liquidity anywhere for major bond traders, and that skews market prices. The fear factor due to Brexit, the high risk that the EU will possibly disintegrate over the next five years, terrorism, the flood of refugees into the EU which over time will create political instability and more violence, and the threats of Russian aggression into the Balkans, along with all the other world issues, including the disastrous Obama foreign and military policies, has driven trillions into safe havens—sovereign bonds. Just think about how irrational it is that European bonds are at negative rates while the yield on ten years is 175 bps higher. That makes no sense at all. In a truly free market situation that would not happen. There is little chance the rate situation will change for a long time—maybe two years or more. That being the case, there is little chance the Fed can raise rates much until the world central banks once again let rates be governed by free markets and not manipulated markets. We then need to look at geopolitics. Turkey is now headed to be an authoritarian Islamic state. How they play in the world will probably not be good as they have made big mistakes for several years and have been a big reason ISIS was able to recruit and build its fighting force by having Turkey as the transit point because the Turks thought ISIS would take down Assad. Between Obama and Hillary fleeing the field in Iraq and the Turks encouraging ISIS, ISIS had the way opened for them to become what they are. This has directly impacted the bond markets because the rise of terror to the current level has caused economic problems in France, Turkey and in the Middle East. The refugee problem has complicated smooth functioning of the EU policy makers. Result is economies now need help, and so the central banks and Draghi have had to resort to QE to a greater degree than they may have. Add to all of this the China problem. China drove the world economy over the past 10 or more years and is now driving it again, only downward. The huge excess demand for commodities and manufacturing technology and consumer products caused the rest of the world to ramp up production, and oil prices and commodity prices are well beyond where they would have been had China not been on a government subsidized boom to build the country and its infrastructure. It was mainly done on massive debt to all levels of government and to leverage investors in real estate. Now that has ended, and the result is a crash for many less developed countries and a flood of cash out of China as the economy there drowns in a debt crisis. Clearly the Chinese government data is phony, and growth is far less than reported. Most private sector companies are illiquid and in serous financial difficulty as the banks are not lending to them and the big state-owned companies are not paying them timely. China has a debt crisis the likes of which has rarely been seen other than maybe Greece and Argentina and Puerto Rico. The good news is China has trillions of reserves and will use that to keep the banks liquid and they are keeping liquidity at big state owned banks. China is not Greece or Argentina. And they will get through it but it will take years for the they and the rest of the world to get back to equilibrium. The result of all this is rates are not going to rise much, if at all this year and maybe not next year. Good news for US real estate. Foreign money is flowing in here and will continue to do so as the various world crises continue to drive capital to the one last safe haven. The combination of low rates for a long time and the flood inward of capital will keep the UE CRE market stable when it would otherwise have declined this year, and probably next year.