Bill Dudley

When it comes to Glenn Hubbard, the man needs no introduction, at least to those who have watched the Charles Ferguson seminal movie 'Inside Job.' Indeed, the extensive connections of the Dean of the Columbia school of business to the financial industry is well known, a fact which served as the basis of Ferguson's question: just how corrupt is America's elite educational establishment, and just how much of a factor in the perpetuation of the status quo is Wall Street's puppet control over each generation of rising financial and economic thinkers. For those who are unaware, Hubbard also happens to be presidential candidate Mitt Romney's top economic advisor. The reason why Hubbard has suddenly made the headlines, is because of his overnight statement that contrary to what the potential future president has said, namely that Bernanke's days would be numbered under a Romney presidency, and that the Fed would be audited, Glenn has taken the other side of this argument, and told Reuters that Bernanke should "get every consideration" to stay beyond January 2014, when Ben's term expires. But why? Well, for the answer to this particular question, we have to go back to that long ago year 2004, when Glenn Hubbard together with current Fed president, and former chief Goldman chief economist Bill Dudley, authored a white paper bearing the Goldman sachs logo, titled "How Capital Markets Enhance Economic Performance and Facilitate Job Creation." In a word: for Mr. Hubbard (as well as for Mr. Dudley, Goldman Sachs, and thus, the New York Fed) it is all about the capital markets.

When the Lieborgate scandal broke out and the Bank of England trace became publicly known, some of the more conspiratorially inclined elements saw in this epic shakedown at the English central bank nothing but an opportunity for the world's dominant investment bank, Goldman Sachs, to capitalize on the scandal and the succession panic now that Paul Tucker is obviously out of succession rotation, and to appoint its own tentacles to the head of this most important central bank that is currently squid free. In fact, on July 3 we said:"now that the natural succession path at the BOE has been terminally derailed, it brings up those two other gentlemen already brought up previously as potential future heads of the BOE, both of whom just happened to work, or still do, at... Goldman Sachs:  Canada's Mark Carney or Goldman's Jim O'Neil. Granted both have denied press speculation they will replace Mervyn King, but it's not like it would be the first time a banker lied to anyone now, would it (and makes one wonder if this whole affair was not merely orchestrated by the Squid from the get go... but no, that would be a 'conspiracy theory'.)" We wonder if this speculation can be upgraded from conspiracy theory to conspiracy fact, now that Bloomberg itself has written a major article discussing just this suddenly very likely outcome.

A preview of the key events in the coming week (which will see more Central Banks jumping on the loose bandwagon and ease, because well, that is the only ammo the academic econ Ph.D's who run the world have left) courtesy of Goldman Sachs whose Jan Hatzius is once again calling for GDP targetting, as he did back in 2011, just so Bill Dudley can at least let him have his $750 million MBS LSAP. But more on that tomorrow.

A week ago we noted that the departure of the Fed's PPT head, Brian Sack, whose tenure was set to end today, which we casually reminded the market about hours earlier, and his replacement with an academic, would likely be the greatest undiscussed S&P catalyst as the head of the entire US equity market, not to mention the Fed's POMO and various other known and unknown open market operations, would be none other than a B-Grade UCLA academic. Well, this has now changed, because as Dow Jones reports Brian Sack has withdrawn his resignation from the New York Fed, and will stay on as advisor to Goldman FRBNY plan Bill Dudley.

• BRIAN SACK WITHDRAWS RESIGNATION FROM NEW YORK FED
• BRIAN SACK TO STEP DOWN AS HEAD OF NEW YORK FED MARKETS GROUP
• BRIAN SACK TO STAY AT NEW YORK FED AS ADVISOR TO DUDLEY

The status quo must continue at all costs. And for those wondering why Sack must stay on at all costs, we bring your attention to the following post from December 2010: "Why Does Brian Sack Interact With Goldman's "FX Committee"?"

In simple terms, Germany may be willing to prop up the EU, but only if its demands are met. The track record for the PIIGS in terms of meeting demands is abysmal. Moreover, implementing such measures takes months if not years. Given that Spain’s ten-year is back over 7% and Italy is now begging informally for a bailout, the EU doesn’t have that time.

Not like it should come as any surprise that the bank that first among peers "discovered" that flow, not stock matters, implying the Fed may literally never be able to stop monetizing, is expecting the FOMC to "ease monetary policy on June 20", but nonetheless here is the full just released Q&A from Goldman's Jan Hatzius, who just happens to be a Pound and Pence drinking buddy of former Goldmanite Bill Dudley, who just happens to run the New York Fed. Connects the dots. Implicit is that a big dollop of Large Scale Asset Purchases is imminent. That said, if the Fed does disappoint on June 20, and merely extends the maturity of bonds that it will sell as part of a Twist extension from 3 to 4 years, as the bond market appears to be implying (as first warned by Zero Hedge), then all bets are truly off. On the other hand, note where Goldman says: "However, it is also possible that the program would be specified as a "flow" of purchases of perhaps $50bn-$75bn per month." If that happens, gold is going to $2000, $3000, hell, $10,000 very soon, as it means the Fed will not stop printing ever again. Period.

Thus we have the world’s three most important Central banks as well as the global economy’s “economic miracle” retreating from aggressive monetary intervention.

Folks if you’re buying into the whole QE 3 is coming on June 6^th  argument you’re out of your minds. This is an election year. If the Fed announces QE 3 now, Obama is done. Do you really think this is going to happen when even the Fed’s biggest doves are noting that the consequences of QE outweigh the benefits?

We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble. Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon. The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working.

Last night it was uber-dove Janet Yellen, today it is uberer-dove, former Goldmanite (what is it about Goldman central bankers and easing: Dudley unleashing QE2 in 2010, Draghi unleashing QE LTRO in Europe?) Bill Dudley joining the fray and saying QE is pretty much on the table. Of course, the only one that matters is Benny, and he will complete the doves on parade tomorrow, when he shows that all the hawkish rhetoric recently has been for naught. Cutting straight to the chase from just released Dudley comments:"we cannot lose sight of the fact that the economy still faces significant headwinds and that there are some meaningful downside risks... To sum up, the incoming data on the U.S. economy has been a bit more upbeat of late, suggesting that the recovery may be getting better established.  But, while these developments are certainly encouraging, it is far too soon to conclude that we are out of the woods in terms of generating a strong, sustainable recovery.  On the inflation front, the year-over-year rate of consumer price inflation has slowed in recent months, and despite the recent rise of gasoline prices, we expect inflation to moderate further in 2012." Translate: NEW QE is but a CTRL-P keystroke away now that all the inflation the Fed usually ignores continues to be ignored.

What makes this time different? Several items:

1. The Crisis coming from Europe will be far, far larger in scope than anything the Fed has dealt with before.
2. The Fed is now politically toxic and cannot engage in aggressive monetary policy without experiencing severe political backlash (this is an election year).
3. The Fed’s resources are spent to the point that the only thing the Fed could do would be to announce an ENORMOUS monetary program which would cause a Crisis in of itself.

The one sentence that may change everything: "...we have found some evidence that at the very long end of the yield curve, where Operation Twist is concentrated, it may be not just the stock of securities held by the Fed but also the ongoing flow of purchases that matters for yields..."

Big picture: the markets are being held together via a very tenuous balancing act on the part of EU leaders and the world Central Banks. The short-term bias will be bullish due to the factors listed above. But big trouble is lurking just beneath the surface. And should anything upset the current balance being maintained, we could see some real fireworks in the markets in short order.

For today's definitive example of peak cognitive dissonance and self-delusion among those who determine the monetary fate of the world no less, look no further than the Dallas Fed's Dick Fisher, who just said the following according to Reuters:

• No one presently believes that the Fed is going to proceed with QE3

Funny considering earlier, we got this from Goldman's Bill Dudley:

• No decision yet on QE3, New York Fed's Dudley says

And that is why central planning always fails. Because a room of these terminally confused people sits down and determines the fate of the world based on their naive academic interpretation of what they perceive is reality.

As noted earlier when we said that Jamie Dimon (who just happens to be one of two Class A directors at the NY Fed) just showed the Fed who is boss, the Fed has now been "forced" to release the Stress Test results today at 4:30 pm instead of as previously scheduled on March 15. Jamie Dimon is now officially defining the Fed's timetable. This is all in jest of course: Dimon would never do anything without preauthorization from Bill Dudley, which means that even as the FOMC statement was a big yawn, the JPM release less than an hour later was planned purely to ramp stocks into the close on the lack of a definitive promise by the Fed to keep printing. Well played gents.