Is The Fed About To Light The Fuse On A $9 Trillion Debt Bomb?

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) and European Central Bank (ECB) have created a very dangerous situation.

Throughout the last six years, there has been a sense of coordination between the Fed and ECB. This was evident both in terms of where capital went as well as how it was delivered via monetary policy.

For instance, when the Fed released its discount window documents in 2011, it became clear that most of the funds from QE 2 actually went to foreign banks located in the EU.

Similarly, when the EU banking system was close to imploding in 2012, the Fed coordinated with the ECB to announce QE 3 in an effort to prop up the EU banking system and calm overseas jitters to aid the Obama administration in its re-election campaign.

In short, from 2008 to 20414, the Fed and ECB worked together.

However, at some point this relationship was set to fracture. True, global Central Banks want to work together to maintain stability… but when every Central Bank is engaged in the competitive devaluation of its currency, at some point the relationship between Central Banks would become fractured as they individually had to choose to aid themselves over each other.

That point is today…

The Euro comprises 56% of the basket of currencies against which the US Dollar is valued. As such, the Euro and the Dollar have a unique relationship in which whatever happens to the one will have an outsized impact on the other.

This relationship first began to run off the rails in June 2014 when the ECB cut interest rates to negative. Before this, the interest rate differential between the Euro and the US Dollar was just 0.25% (the US Dollar was yielding 0.25% while the deposit rate on the Euro was at exactly zero).

While significant, the interest rate differential was not enough to kick off a complete flight of capital from the Euro to the US Dollar. However, when the ECB launched NIRP, cutting its deposit rate to negative 0.1%, the rate differential (now 0.35%) and punitive qualities of NIRP (it actually cost money to park capital in the Euro) resulted in vast quantities of capital fleeing Euros and moving into the US Dollar.