B+

• Greece's Fringe Parties Surge Amid Bailout Ire (WSJ)
• ECB fails to stem reduction in lending (FT)
• More Twists for Spanish Banks (WSJ)
• Banks use ECB cash to buy bonds, lend less to firms (IFR)
• UK still long way off pre-crisis growth – King (Reuters)
• Dublin confident of ECB deal to defer payment (FT)
• Goldman's European derivatives revenue soars (Reuters)
• Japan Faces Tax Battle as DPJ Finishes Plan on Sales Levy (Bloomberg)
• Insurance Mandate Splits US Court (FT)

How to get rid of unwanted pests?

Any and all negative overnight news are now completely ignored as the scramble for risk hits the usual fever pitch following Bernanke's latest attempt to transfer cash from safe point A to ponzi point B, aka stocks. First, China's industrial firms suffered a rare annual drop in profits in the first two months of 2012 mainly in petrochemicals, metals and auto firms, the latest signs of weakness in the world's No. 2 economy and reinforcing the case for policy easing, according to Reuters. This was the first Jan-Feb profits downturn since Jan-Aug 2009. Profits fell 5.2 percent so far in 2012, according to the industrial profitability indicator, published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) every month. The last period that China reported nationwide industrial profit fall was in the first eight months of 2009. Then there was the German GfK Consumer Confidence which unlike yesterday's IFO, missed: nobody cares. Also on the negative side was an earlier auction of Spanish Bills which sold EUR 2.58 billion, just barely off the low end of a target issuance of EUR 2.5-3 billion. As noted however, neither this, nor the series of US disappointments which looks set to end March with 15 of 17 estimate misses is relevant. To wit: French consumer confidence soared to 87 on expectations of 82, as the easiest and lowest common denominator to boost risk assets is now abused everywhere, by UMich, by Germany and now by France. And why would people not be confident - stocks everywhere are higher despite fundamentals. After all if something fails, there is a central planner to fix it. Never forget - the taxpayer credit card has no limits. Net result - green across the board. 

The Fed is clearly worried about the economy. Ben Bernanke's latest speeches aren't exactly inspiring. It is as if he thinks the rosy(ier) numbers are some prank being played upon him by the gods; that soon this will all be taken away. He is right. He admits he doesn't understand why the economy is the way it is. Reality doesn't fit his theory. ("It's supposed to work, dammit!") So, what do you do when you are the head of the world's biggest printing press, and don't know what else to do? Why QE3 of course.

Earlier we presented the view by one of the TBAC's co-chairmen, Goldman Sachs, former employer of such NY Fed presidents as Bull Dudley. Now we present the only other view that matters - that of Fed boss (recall the JPM dividend announcement and how Jamie Dimon pushed Ben B around like a windsock) JP Morgan, and specifically chief economist Michael Feroli who is a little less sanguine than the market about interpreting Bernanke's promise to always support stocks, using the traditional stock vs flow obfuscations which is about as irrelevant as they come. To wit " How one views the word "continued" in this context depends in part on whether it is the stock (or total announced amount) of asset purchases that matter for financial conditions, or whether it is the monthly or weekly flow of those purchases.... according to the stock effect view the end of Twist purchases in June does not amount to a tightening, but rather is a continuation of the current accommodative stance of monetary policy. Thus, "continued accommodative policies" for a stock effect adherent would not necessarily imply an extension of asset purchases beyond June." That said, all of this is semantics. Recall that the US has $1.4 trillion in debt issuance each and every year. Unless the Fed steps in to buy at least a material portion, this debt will never be parked, rendering all other plot lines, narratives and justifications for QE moot.

All you need to read and more.

The enigma that is eccentricity can be unravelled by grasping of this single statement; that which you perceive is both a matter of the object of your perception (in this case; the eccentric person) and your apparatus of perception. Eccentricity, then, is as much a quirk of the popular mind as it is of a particular person. So with the assumption that you seek creativeness and intrigue — here’s how to think eccentrically, find your edge and risk little for lots.

As we pointed out about a month ago, in "While You Were Sleeping, Central Banks Flooded The World In Liquidity" as the world was focused on headlines whether or not the Fed would step up as it always does when the market is sliding, and unleash the monetary floodgates, it was not Ben Bernanke, but eveyrone else that hit CTRL+P and took the place of the Fed, of note the primary central banking peers among the Final Four - the ECB, the BOE and the BOJ. And why not: after all the hope was that since electronic money is electronic money, and can be moved from point A to point B at the push of a button, it would be used primarily to reflate stocks around the world, but mostly where the path has least resistance - the US. What was not accounted for was that money would also be used to inflate commodities such as oil - a key factor when delaying further US-based easing in an election year. However, more than even record for this time of year gas prices, there was one even more important outcome from this chain of events. As the following chart from Willem Buiter shows, in its fake attempt to show monetary restraint, the Fed has gone straight into last place in the "race to debase." Needless to say, in a world with $25+trillion in "excess" debt (debt which would need to be eliminated simply to reduce global debt/GDP to a "sustainable" 180% per BCG), last is a very bad place to be...

SkyNet is now sentient, and has commenced rebelling against its creator, following the BATS exchange announcement of self help against.... Itself.

• BATS BYX Exchange has declared self-help against BATS BZX
• March 23, 2012 11:07:25 ET

• BATS BYX Exchange has declared self-help against BATS BZX per Rule 611 of Regulation NMS. Routing to BATS BZX has been suspended as of 11:07:04 ET.

  The Fed's new price rule raises more questions than it answers. The real question is whether 'the rule' is a beard for the Fed's coming plan to ignore it and work on its unemployment 'mandate?' Can the expression of a rule, even one that is poorly articulated, cause expectations to cluster around it?  And is that where the Fed is going...  

Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency. To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. President Obama’s order, however, takes things much, much further.This is all playing out with nearly perfect historical precision. Time and time again throughout history as once great empires accelerated their declines, governments have taken steps to protect their interests against the people. In the past, they have imposed curfews, disarmed the population, curtailed civil liberties, and declared national emergencies, usually against some great faceless enemy from abroad who threatens their way of life. As it turns out, though, our great faceless enemy is not some mythical boogeyman living in a cave, nor some angry brown person who hates us for our freedoms… but the very people within the system who’ve taken an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ Have you hit your breaking point yet?

Gold may not be 'money' to the Chairman, but it sure is to Turkey. The WSJ reports that "The Turkish government, facing a bloated current-account deficit that threatens to derail the country's rapid expansion, is trying to persuade Turks to transfer their vast personal holdings of gold into the country's banking system." The reason: "The push to tap into the individual gold reserves—the traditional form of savings here—is part of Ankara's efforts to reduce a finance gap that is currently about 10% of gross domestic product." In other words, "sequester" the population's hard assets (politely of course), and convert these to paper to fund the country's creditors, both foreign and domestic. Mostly foreign. In other words, Southeast Europe is slowing becoming the staging ground for the 21st century equivalent of Executive Order 6102, where first Greek, and now Turkish gold, is about to be pulled from point A to point B, where point B is some top secret vault deep under London.

Everyone who believes the government is "here to help disadvantaged people" needs to wake up and ask what kind of government we have when due process has been replaced with "legal" looting. R.T. reported the income in question on his 2006 Federal and Arizona tax return. Wouldn't common sense, not to mention common law, suggest that the state of California should be required to ask the citizen who now resided in another state if the income in question had been reported in that state? How about notifying the citizen of the state's claim and his/her rights to present facts relating to the state's claim? There was no due process. How can this be legal in a nation that is nominally governed by rule of law? First the state steals the $1,343 and authorizes its parasitic predatory bag-"person" Wells Fargo Bank to steal another $100 for handling the state's theft. A week or two later the citizen is notified of the theft as a fait accompli. Now the onus is on the law-abiding citizen to attempt to reclaim his own money from a distant, all-powerful Kafkaesque state agency. How can this be legal in a nation supposedly operating under rule of law? Let's be very clear about what happens here in America on a daily basis...

All you need to read.

What is more amusing than the pathological liars that are Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke testifying to congress? Both of them testifying at the same time. Such as now. From C-Span: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke go before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday to discuss lessons learned from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. In a hearing titled, “Europe’s Sovereign Debt Crisis: Causes, Consequences for the United States and Lessons Learned,” both financial chiefs will share their personal experiences.  Since the crisis, the Federal Reserve has assisted foreign counterparts by provide monetary support. In November, the Fed and it's worldwide counterparts announced a cut in the interest rate premium charged to over seas banks which borrow in dollars.  The monetary policy targeted struggling European banks. In a Senate hearing earlier this year, leading economists also testified on the European debt crisis and the outlook for the eurozone. They said that the U.S. should treat the crisis as a wake-up call and urged lawmakers to bring down debt and spending to sustainable levels.