Phoenix Capital Research's blog

Dear Mr. President, You don’t know me, but I was one of the millions of Americans who voted for you in the last election. I have since been fairly critical of your Presidency largely because I, like many others, feel betrayed by the policies you have enacted upon winning said election.

A little while back, a Fed Economist by the name of Kartik Athreya, wrote a piece urging the public to only listen to economists who have PhDs from top level universities when searching for economic insights. Obviously this paper was a lot of fun for me to read. So I thought I’d present some thoughts on Mr. Athreya and the group of “experts” he represents

Back in April investor bullishness was at extremes. Consequently, Wall Street ramped stocks first upwards (the usual predilection) to shank the puts… only to swiftly reverse the action in the middle of the week to shake out the calls. This whole system occurs courtesy of the Federal Reserve which openly and blatantly pumps the market on options expiration week. I’ve shown the below chart before. It’s staggering that no one in Congress or any of the regulators actually bother following up on this. How much more obvious does Bernanke need to get?

The classic paradigm for thinking of the “American experience” involves the use of a “melting pot” or “patchwork” metaphor. The basic idea is that the US is a single entity comprised of a wide variety of ethnic/ social groups. This metaphor in turn is used to support the view that the US is a Democracy: a place where “your vote counts” no matter who you are.

However, to me, an examination of the real socio-political hierarchy in the US reveals that this entire “patchwork” ideology is a myth perpetuated in order to convince the general populace that they somehow matter or have an impact on the US political structure and proposed legislative policy