Faber News Flow

Don't let the cacophony of central-bank rate-hike announcements mislead you: global policy settings are still historically loose. Monetary policy has room to tighten much more significantly, leaving asset prices exposed to further, potentially material, downside. This week the Riksbank in Sweden unexpectedly hiked 100bps, on Wednesday the Fed delivered its fifth consecutive rate increase, while the Philippines, Indonesia, Switzerland, Norway, South Africa and the UK are all expected to lift rates today. Yet despite this flurry of policy tightening, the Global Policy Rate – the median central-bank rate of the major EM and DM countries around the world – is only 3%. This rate was more than 5% before the Lehman crisis, and 15% in the early 1980s. But it's the inflation-adjusted version of this measure that's the real (pun intended) eye opener: the Global Real Policy Rate is very negative and still close to its historical lows. It has only recently begun to turn up, and has a l