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Watch Ben Bernanke's Semi-Annual Monetary Policy Update To The Senate Live
Ben Bernanke, who is expected to appear before the Senate for his biannual Humphrey Hawkins presentation any second, has just released his latest Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. Some of the highlights from the report:
- Bernanke says longer-term inflation expectations will remain stable, and risk of deflation has become negligible
- The Fed has tools needed to withdraw stimulus, and reiterates rates will remain low for extended period
- A sustained oil price rise would be a threat to growth, price stability, particularly if it unmoors inflation expectations
- The recent rise in commodity prices likely will lead to only temporary and modest increase in US inflation
The full PDF report can be read here.
The live CSPAN webcast can be watched here.
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VIX
Green Shoots!
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/99er-charts-0
Since when does the VIX go up?
Early lunch for the Sackman?
I hope the day Bernanke and the Fed are bailed out by the Congress it is recorded and spreaded it on internet. That's for History.
One competent attorney could destroy Bernanke and get him to perjure himself within the inside of 10 minutes in a deposition.
Cake.
So, why isn't it done?
Because, like Greenspan before him, as a board member of the BIS, he is legally untouchable. This isn't info that they want the general public to know, as it raises the almighty question, "Why?"
Immunity, Bitchez!
QE2 asset bubble blowing in a nutshell, right from The Bernank himself:
"What we've done instead is focus on longer term securities taking duration out of the market and that has the effect of pushing investors into other types of investments and, for example, again making the corporate bond market more attractive, making the stock market stronger and the like."
He just said no QE3 for municipals, so we'll be getting QE3 for municipals soon.
Well he just said that the Fed was not going to buy city and state bonds......probably true ..but the National government will have some program..Build America Bonds or some other name to bail them out...then Ben just sells and buys more treasuries to finance it...
Senator called them Federal Reserve Notes. Has everyone been listening to Ron Paul? Pinch me.
Now Demint's talking gold. I have a fever of 102 and am home from work as a result but I'm pretty sure congress is making sense. Maybe I should drink more OJ.
ben said he was really, really, really gonna "watch" gasoline prices. not gonna do anything. but, he said, nobody will "watch" gasoline prices harder than him. promise.
And so it comes to be that high oil prices will be the scapegoat reason for QE3. I was waiting to see what tack he would take, his course is now clear.
Which will drive oil even higher.
'The Federal Reserve is not debasing the dollar' – the Ben Bernank, 3/1/10
Sen Toomey is sticking it to the little napoleon of money..
your dealing with a bond trader here pal not some jeck pol.
Pat Toomey: You gonna print more money or what?
Bernanke: Hells to the yeah; that's my gig, Sid.
Again, Bernakebust says, "We will not allow inflation!"
Who does he think he is? Oh, right, my bad.
Tell it to the Libyans, Bernugabe!
"...we will not allow inflation to go above 2%..."
"...we do not see any bubbles at this time..."
This hearing is adjourned.
"Thank You".
By saying there's no inflation, he's protecting himself by hiding behind the statsitic that inflation meaures. Being that CPI ignores food and energy, the inflation is muted and he's able to say things like, "By the information that I'm given on CPI, I am told there is no inflation".
From the outside BB appeared calm, but inside:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sql-aPwX8ac&feature=related
ya gotta wonder what it would be like to spend the day having YOUR ASS KISSED by the U.S. Senate. I bet ole ben woke up with morning wood just thinking about it
i hope Bernanke does not get paid a salary for this BS.....looks like report was made a 2nd grader
Well Bernanke said he did not support a classicial gold standard, but seemed open that an different type of the gold standard could work.
In my article ...Seigniorage Fails Causing Banks To Fall Lower Commencing The Mother Of Market Of All Bear Markets .... I wrote that March 1, 2010 is a day that will live in financial infamy as it confirmed the that the seigniorage of the Milton Friedman Free To Choose Currency Regime, which was based upon Quantitative Easing and Quantitative Easing 2, failed on February 22, 2011, when the distressed securities taken in by the Federal Reserve under its TARP Facility traded lower, as is seen in the Fidelity mutual fund FAGIX trading lower.
This resulted in world stocks, ACWI, turning lower.
On March 1, 2011, seigniorage continued to fail, as is seen in FAGIX, continuing to fail, which induced the banks, KBE, to trade 2.1% lower and world stocks, ACWI, to trade 1.4% lower.
We live in a bank centric and also an oil centric world. The world’s leading banker Ben Bernanke, in a semiannual report to Congress, told politicians that commodity price inflation, and oil prices more specifically, could pose a threat to economic growth and price stability if sustained at high levels, while at the same time reassuring markets and politicians that inflation remained low and expectations stable according to Forbes Blog.
Leading the Banks lower were the institutions which rose in value the most during the last two years under Ben Bernanke’s expanding seigniorage. These included Fifth Third Bancorp, FITB, Huntington Bankshares, HBAN, Regional Financial, RF. Bank of America, BAC, Citigroup, C, Wells Fargo, WFC and Sun Trust Banks, STI.
The contraction of seigniorage, that is moneyness, is the root cause of the failure of stock markets worldwide, VT, -1.7%.
The contraction of seigniorage seen in the fall of the distressed securities mutual fund FAGIX means the beginning of the end of credit as it has traditionally been known.
The world did not witness debt deflation on March 1, 2011, as much as it witnessed inflation destruction, which Urban Dictionary defines as the fall in investment value that accompanies derisking and deleveraging out of investments that were formerly inflated by money flows to, and carry trade investing in, high interest paying financial institutions, profitable natural resource companies, and high growth companies. Companies falling massively to inflation destruction included.
Bruce Krasting reports “Senator Shelby asked Bernanke to explain how he came to the $600b QE2 program. The answer came at minute 32 of this C-SPAN clip. Ben explained that he felt that a monetary ease equivalent to a 75 BP reduction in the Fed Funds rate was in order to avoid deflation. He equated $150-200 billion of QE as being equivalent to a 25BP reduction in short term rates. The justification for QE all along has been that monetary policy is range bound by zero interest rates. QE brings us below “0” in equivalent policy.” The sum of QE 1, QE lite (the top off of QE1) and QE2 is $2.35 trillion. Using Bernanke’s formula you get a range of 4% to 5% as the approximate interest rate consequence of QE. (2.35/.15 or 2.35/.2) That is an extraordinary number. The Fed’ ZIRP policy set interest rates at zero. QE has brought that to -4.5% (average) based on Ben’s numbers.”
The world is passing has passed through an inflection point: the world has passed from the Age of Leverage and into the Age of Deleveraging with the exhaustion of Quantitative Easing and with the failure of yen carry trade investing, as seen in the failure of the Optimized Carry ETN, ICI, on the very day that QE 2 was announced.
The Age of Leverage was characterised by debt expansion, credit liquidity, stability, economic growth and expansion and prosperity … The Age of Deleveraging is characterised by inflation destruction, debt deflation, credit ill-liquidity, instability, economic contraction and austerity.
One impact of the failure of seigniorage and inflation destruction, will be that in the age of deleveraging people will simply not have the financial where-with-all to buy homes. Renting, that is leasing of homes, will be a privilege extending by banks to a select group of individuals.