Central Banks

Fed credibility questioned and Yellen sick - Palladium surges 8% - Russia and central banks buy gold - Smart money rebalancing and selling overvalued assets to buy depressed assets especially silver

"The big upside for both corporate bonds & corporate stocks has subsided as the liquidity story has peaked. Of greater note, the recent big reversal in the performance of assets directly linked to the bull market on Wall Street. Private equity managers and large asset managers saw their stocks appreciate 36% & 32% respectively between QE1 and the end of QE3. Since the end of QE3, the annualized returns are -10% & -18% respectively."

"By relaxing constraints on other economic actors, central-bank support may create opportunities for them to shirk their responsibilities. In turn, this may render it more difficult for the central bank to withdraw its exceptional measures. The road to central bankers’ hell may be paved with good intentions."

The market, which clearly ignored the glaring contradictions in Yellen's speech which said that overseas events should not affect the Fed's policy path just a week after the Fed statement admitted it is "monitoring developments abroad", and also ignored Yellen explicit hint that NIRP is coming (only the size is unclear), and focused on the one thing it wanted to hear: a call to buy the all-critical USDJPY carry pair - because more dollar strength apparently is what the revenue and earnings recessioning S&P500 needs - which after trading around 120 in the past few days, had a 100 pip breakout overnight, hitting 121 just around 5am, in the process pushing US equity futures some 25 points higher at last check.

Did Goldman just hand out the blueprint to crush the next "Lehman" and unleash the next global bailout? Read on to find out.

"...the federal funds rate and other nominal interest rates cannot go much below zero, since holding cash is always an alternative to investing in securities. ... the lowest the FOMC can feasibly push the real federal funds rate is essentially the negative value of the inflation rate. As a result, the Federal Reserve has less room to ease monetary policy when inflation is very low. This limitation is a potentially serious problem because severe downturns such as the Great Recession may require pushing real interest rates far below zero for an extended period to restore full employment at a satisfactory pace."

When risk sold off last week in the wake of the Fed’s so-called “clean relent,” it signalled at best a policy mistake and at worst the loss of any and all credibility. Tonight, Yellen gets a do-over.

Contrary to popular opinion, there are problems that are too big for the Central Banks to control.

When we summarized yesterday's very strong 5 Year auction, we previewed today's 7 year issuance as follows: "assuming no material changes in the demeanor of the market over the next 24 hours, expect tomorrow's 7Y auction to also proceed without a hitch. In fact, the more the general sense of risk-off, the stronger tomorrow's auction will likely be." That's precisely what happened.

"... this time we would see deeply negative interest rates in the US (and Europe). Sweden has led the way, dipping their toe below the water line with their current -0.35% policy rates but there will be more, much more along these lines. For if -0.35% is possible, why not - 3.5% or less? It goes without saying that deeply negative interest rates would be accompanied by a massively expanded QE4 in the US. The last seven years of exploding central bank balance sheets will seem like Bundesbank monetary austerity compared to what is to come."

The global race to the bottom continued on Thursday as Norway and Taiwan moved to cut rates sending NOK plunging to its weakest level against the dollar in 13 years and pressing Tawain dollar forwards to six year lows. 

European equity have been weighed on by BMW after reports in German press that the Co.'s emission tests for their X3 model could show worse results than that of the Volkswagen Passat. The Norwegian and Taiwanese central banks have both cut interest rates, taking the number of central banks to cut rates this year to 40. Today's highlights include US weekly jobs data and durable goods orders as well as comments from ECB's Praet and Fed's Yellen. Of note US data, including jobless claims, durables and home sales will be delayed today & not released to newswires 1st due to Pope's visit

The best position for a tyrant or tyrants to be in, at least while consolidating power, is tyranny by proxy. That is to say, the most dangerous tyrants are those the people do not recognize: the tyrants who hide behind scarecrows and puppets and faceless organizations. The worst position for the common citizen to be in is a false sense of security and understanding, operating on the assumption that tyrants do not exist or that potential tyrants are really just greedy fools acting independently from one another. Being the clever tyrants that they are, the members of the central banking cult hope you are too stupid or too biased to grasp the concept of conspiracy. If you cannot identify the agenda, you can do nothing to interfere with the agenda.

Anyone who looks at this index chart and thinks we are at the cusp of anything resembling a bull market is clinically insane and should be locked up for the protection of themselves and society at large.