Archive - Jun 2015 - Story

Memo to the Fed and its media tool Hilsenrath: we're not here to further enrich your already obscenely rich banker and corporate cronies by buying overpriced goods and services we don't need. Our job is not to spend every cent we earn on interest to banks and mostly-garbage corporate goods and services. Our job is to limit the amount we squander on interest and needless spending. Our job is to build the financial security of our families by saving capital and prudently investing it in assets we control (as opposed to letting Wall Street control our assets parked in equity and bond funds).

Emboldened by its recent “unprecedented” prosecutorial success, the DoJ will now pursue a fresh round of MBS-related settlements with banks that knowingly packaged and sold shoddy CDOs. Banks expected to settle in coming months include Barclays PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC,UBS AG and Wells Fargo & Co.

The world’s financial system is saturated with speculations fostered by nearly two-decades of central bank credit inflation. Just since 2006, the footings of central bank balance sheets have expanded from $6 trillion to upwards of $22 trillion. That’s all combustible monetary fuel that cannot be recalled; it can only be liquidated in the course of a monumental meltdown in the casino. So, yes, after the carnage of the past few days the global sovereign bond index has lost $625 billion since the bond bubble peak in late March. Call that spring training.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, a former al-Qaeda informant for the Ali Abdullah Saleh government claims Abdullah Saleh and his lieutenants not only turned a blind eye to AQAP operations in the country, but in fact played a direct role in facilitating al-Qaeda attacks even as the government accepted anti-terrorism financing from the US.

"How long the bubble can continue to inflate is the key question – but necessarily unanswerable. Inherently irrational, bubbles usually last longer than expected, [but they] ultimately burst... they expand continuously, then pop."

All key asset classes are at or near a key inflection point: either yields breach through resistance levels and send risk lower across the board over inflation fears, or bond volatility comes crashing down and allowing the "wealth effect" stock rally to continue.

Presented with no comment...

Although we solved the "mystery" of America's missing wage growth some three months ago, the central planner/ Ivory Tower crowd is still confused. WSJ has taken the time to lay out nine prevailing theories from some of the country’s ‘finest’ economic minds...

Central bankers have promised ad nauseum to keep rates low for long periods of time. And they have delivered. Their claim is that this helps the economy recover, but that is just a silly idea. What it does do is help create the illusion of a recovering economy. What we have is the financial system posing as the economy. And a vast majority of people falling for that sleight of hand. Now the central bankers come face to face with Hyman Minsky’s credo that ‘Stability Breeds Instability’. Ultra low rates (ZIRP) are not a natural phenomenon, and that must of necessity mean that they distort economies in ways that are inherently unpredictable. For central bankers, investors, politicians, everyone. That is the essence of what is being consistently denied, all the time.

Citing an ongoing OIG and DoJ probe, Janet Yellen says the Fed is currently unable to comply with a Congressional subpoena requesting information regarding a 2012 incident in which the minutes from the FOMC's September meeting were leaked to consulting firm Medley Global Advisors.

By now it should be clear, without the flow of Federal Reserve funny money, the wedge between the reality of collapsing macro- and micro-fundamentals and ever-expanding valuation hope-based stock prices is bound to close... and that is why the following 2 charts must be terrifying for Janet (and every asset-gathering commission-taking talking head out there.. oh and Steve Liesman).

Two weeks ago, Citigroup presented what it thinks is the biggest nightmare for the Fed: it said that the FOMC’s "biggest worry is not lift off and its market and economic implications, but what happens if the economic recovery dies of old age without the Fed having done anything to tighten." And, according to Citi's FX strategists, "if this were to occur, the USD would probably fall faster than it rose from July-March." A precursor to loss of faith in the Dollar's reserve currency status perhaps. Today, Citi's Steven Englander lays out what is the Fed's second biggest nightmare: a rebound which is so fast, the Fed's entire carefully planned renormalization schedule collapses.

Just in case there was some confusion how to read today's blistering jobs data, here comes NY Fed's head and former Goldmanite with the explanation:

DUDLEY SAYS FED STILL LIKELY TO START RAISING RATES THIS YEAR

His comments initially pushed futures to the lowest since this mornings furious ramp to green  but since then ES has managed to rebound modestly and is now unchanged since the speech because it is clear that the Fed is just as clueless as everyone else what to do.