SECRETARY STATEMENTS & REMARKS

Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen at the Open Session of the meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council

Editorial: The Financial Stability Oversight Council was Established in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Financial Stability Oversight Council provides comprehensive monitoring of the stability of our nation’s financial system.

This council is charged by statute with identifying risks to the financial stability of the United States; promoting market discipline; and responding to emerging threats to the stability of the U.S. financial system.

This council may be monitoring and identifying but they aren’t doing anything to reduce excessive government spending which has resulted in a $2.5T annual U.S. budget deficit, a 40 year high inflation rate, and a U.S. National Debt approaching $34T? This is just more of the same nonsensical approach of creating more layers of bureaucracy expense and resolving nothing.

November 3, 2023

As Prepared for Delivery

Our first agenda item is to discuss and vote on the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s analytic framework for financial stability risk identification, assessment, and response, and on the Council’s interpretive guidance on nonbank financial company designations. Before we turn to the presentation, I’d like to explain why I believe it is so important for the Council to achieve greater public transparency and analytic rigor and how these two documents will help the Council do so. 

Financial stability is a public good. The U.S. financial system enables people to make payments, build businesses, save, and manage risks. To fill our needs, it has evolved to be complex, diverse, and interconnected. We rely on it every day, and it has succeeded in supporting American families and businesses, enabling wealth creation and economic growth over generations. But, when it falters, we can experience financial crises that can devastate households and businesses for years afterwards.  

This is where the Council, or FSOC, comes in. Congress created FSOC after the global financial crisis to identify and respond to risks to financial stability. To maintain the strength of the financial sector, we need a nimble but robust structure to monitor and address the build-up of risks that could threaten the system. In the lead-up to the global financial crisis, inadequate oversight led to reckless risk-taking. When large, interconnected financial companies failed in 2007 and 2008, stress spread through the financial system and then to the real economy. The reforms implemented after that crisis substantially strengthened the financial system. And the banking system as a whole remains strong. But recent stresses in some financial sectors arising from the onset of the pandemic and the sudden failures of some regional banks underscore the continuing need to remain vigilant to threats to ensure the resilience of the financial system and our economic strength.  

This is the purpose of the Council, and our two votes today go to the heart of FSOC fulfilling its critical mission. 

Our first vote will be on approving the Council’s analytic framework for financial stability risks. This framework will help the public better understand how the Council goes about its work and how it draws on its various statutory tools to respond to risks. For the first time, it provides a clear explanation of how the Council monitors, evaluates, and responds to potential risks to financial stability, regardless of whether they come from activities, individual firms, or other sources. Under the framework, the Council’s response to a particular risk to financial stability will depend on the nature of the risk. Often, risks emanate from widely conducted activities and can be effectively addressed through action by an existing regulator or interagency coordination. Other times, risks are instead concentrated in one or more specific nonbank financial companies. 

This brings me to the Council’s guidance on nonbank financial company designations. Among the tools Congress gave the Council is the authority to designate a nonbank financial company for Federal Reserve supervision and prudential standards if the company’s distress or activities could pose a threat to financial stability. The guidance we are voting on today will help ensure that the Council is able to use this authority as needed. It describes in detail the procedural steps for the Council’s review of nonbank financial companies for potential designation. These involve rigorous analysis and transparency. The guidance maintains strong procedural protections for companies under review, including significant Council engagement and communication, and provides them with opportunities to be heard. The guidance also affirms that the Council will engage extensively with companies’ primary financial regulators. The guidance also eliminates several prerequisites to designation in place under the current guidance that were not contemplated by the Dodd-Frank Act and that are based on a flawed view of how financial risks develop and spread. And, again, designation is only one of the Council’s tools and is not being prioritized over other approaches to addressing financial stability risks. 

In voting to adopt the analytic framework and guidance, we will increase the transparency of the Council’s work and establish a durable process for the Council’s use of its designation authority, strengthening the Council’s ability to promote a resilient financial system that supports all Americans.  

With that, let me turn to Sandra Lee, Treasury’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Council, for the presentation.

Surge in China’s Demand for Gold Is Slowing as Economy Stumbles

The jitters affecting the world’s second-biggest economy are starting to feed through into China’s gold market.

Source: Bloomberg: Published Jun 19, 2023  •  2 minute read

(Bloomberg) — The jitters affecting the world’s second-biggest economy are starting to feed through into China’s gold market.

Article content

A surge in purchases by Chinese residents, driven by pent-up demand after three years of pandemic restrictions and optimism that the economy would quickly rebound, is starting to slow — yet another sign that the recovery is losing momentum.

China vies with India as the world’s biggest consumer of gold bars, coins and jewelry. Its central bank has also been a recent buyer, adding to its reserves for seven straight months after a three-year pause. Although most gold trades as a financial asset — notably as a haven for investors during risky times or as a hedge against inflation — China’s physical demand for the precious metal has helped underpin its ascent this year to over $2,000 an ounce.

The rapid expansion in retail sales of gold and silver jewelry looks to have topped out, rising 24% year-on-year in May to 26.6 billion yuan ($3.7 billion). That’s slower than the 44% and 37% growth recorded in the previous two months. The same period last year included the extended lockdown of Shanghai, when demand for goods and services cratered across the economy.

Gold can overcome near-term headwinds

Source: UBS CIO Daily Updates

by Chief Investment Office08 Jun 20233 min read

Thought of the day

The price of gold has remained under pressure following the stronger US employment report supporting expectations that the Federal Reserve will “skip” rather than ending hikes at its policy meeting next week. The potential for higher rates over coming months, after evidence of stubbornly high inflation, raises the opportunity cost of holding the precious metal, which generally doesn’t provide a yield. In addition, sentiment on gold was also undermined by International Monetary Fund data showing official gold reserves declined by 71 metric tons in April, which was the first net decrease in over a year.

As a result, gold has now fallen more than 5% from its recent peak in early May, when investors were more confident that the Fed had already finished its rate-hiking cycle. In our view, a further slide in gold to around USD 1,870 an ounce is possible (from USD 1,945 at present), as markets push back expectations for the start of rate cuts from the Fed.

But we still see potential gains for gold over the coming year, and we view the precious metal as a valuable hedge in portfolios.

Fed policy and the prospect of dollar weakness still supports gold. While the Fed is on a more hawkish trajectory than had been thought in early May, an imminent end to rate hikes still looks likely. In addition, the Fed is closer to starting a cutting cycle than its peers, including the European Central Bank (ECB). We also expect the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to back away from its ultra-easy monetary policy stance, relaxing its targets for government bond yields. This combination can be expected to weaken the US dollar, making gold less expensive for investors holding other currencies. Gold has historically performed well when the US dollar softens due to their strong negative correlation, and we see another round of dollar weakness over the next 6–12 months.

Central bank demand for gold should remain healthy, despite the recent decline. The decline in official holdings reported by the IMF does not reflect a reduction in enthusiasm for gold among central bankers, in our view. The Turkish central bank was reported as the major seller, but the World Gold Council believes these sales were due to local dynamics rather than a change in the central bank’s long-term strategy.

The longer-term trend suggests no reduction in appetite for gold among central bankers. Last year marked the 13th consecutive year of net gold purchases by global central banks and the highest level of annual demand on record dating back to 1950. At 1,078 metric tons in 2022, central banks’ buying of gold more than doubled from 450 metric tons in 2021. Based on the 1Q23 data from the World Gold Council, central banks are on track to buy around 700 metric tons of gold this year, much higher than the average since 2010 of below 500 metric tons.

Geopolitical and economic uncertainty could boost demand for gold among both investors and central banks. Gold has long benefited from safe-haven inflows during periods of geopolitical strife. The intensifying rivalry between the US and China, along with tensions arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, make further flare-ups more likely. In addition, gold’s relative performance versus the S&P 500 improves significantly during US recessions, based on data since the 1980s. While recent US economic data have been resilient, stubbornly high inflation raises the risk that the Fed will overshoot in tightening rates—especially if regional banks continue to cut back lending to ensure liquidity following recent deposit outflows.

So, we continue to see upside in gold over the coming year. We keep our forecast of USD 2,100/oz by year-end and USD 2,250/oz by mid-2024 unchanged.

The BIS Issues A Dire Warning: “We Are Moving From The Liquidity To The Solvency Phase Of The Crisis”

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by Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/08/2020 – 05:45

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and the BIS – the central banks’ central bank – warning about excesses from monetary policy (the most recent amusing example of this was last October when as we wrote, “Fed Announces QE4 One Day After BIS Warns QE Has Broken The Market”). Actually, to this list of 3 certainties we can add one more: central banks roundly ignoring the warnings from the central bank mothership.

That, however, does not prevent the BIS from continuing this trend of warnings, and today the Basel-based organization did just that when in its Quarterly Review publication it cautioned that the surge in financial markets following COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs and the U.S. election has left asset prices increasingly stretched.

Sounding surprisingly similar to Goldman, which as we reported earlier today issued an almost identical warning, when it observed that its sentiment indicator is now +2.0 standard deviations above average…

… which has left positioning extremely stretched and represents a 98th percentile reading since 2009…

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Breakeven Inflation is Breaking Out

December 04, 2020

By Bryce Coward, CFA in Economy, Markets, Portfolio Management

Inflation expectations as priced by the Treasury market are hitting 18 month highs just now. As the reader can see, inflation expectations across all treasury maturities are at cycle highs. This is happening coincident with growing expectations for the $908bn bipartisan stimulus deal and widespread expectations that the Fed will ease in some additional way at their next meeting 12 days from now. That these two events are anticipated by the market does pose some near-term downside risk for inflation expectations, since there is now room for disappointment. Even still, keeping the long game in mind is useful. Indeed, there exist multiple structural catalysts for inflationary pressure that haven’t existed in quite some time:

  1. de-globalization
  2. USD which may be under continued pressure from massive twin current account and budget deficits
  3. the possibility that US oil production has peaked, or at least will not grow as it did last cycle
  4. raw material (especially base metal) inflation from the acceleration of green transport and power generation trends
  5. demand-pull inflation from fiscal stimulus

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Gold, Stocks, & Bond Yields Surge As Dollar Purge Continues

by Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/01/2020 – 16:00

Since the election, and the ongoing roll out of Biden’s nominees for economic and policy teams, the dollar has been on a one-way streak lower…

The dollar is unchanged versus its fiat peers since Jan 2015…

And it appears the plunge in the dollar is being recognized by gold enthusiasts who bid the barbarous relic back above $1800, erasing last week’s end of month losses…

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