Federal Reserve

Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan were the Elvis and Beatles of this movement – the first to see widespread fame for their efforts. Then came Ben Bernanke, perhaps the Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin of his day, taking existing tools and pushing them in new, previously unconsidered, directions.  Now, we have Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi, whose legacies are as yet undefined. They may end up like the next generation of rock stars from the 1970s – something like Bruce Springsteen, with a deep focus on common people in his music. Or, they could be the Bee Gees, who focused simply on commercial success. Only time will tell.

To help Main Street, the Fed must stop incentivizing speculation over investment and end policies that have shifted wealth and income to the top of the wealth pyramid. Main Street's woes are largely structural: the high cost of regulations, the soaring cost of healthcare insurance, the artificial-scarcity costs imposed by cartels enforced by the federal government and the pressures generated by globalization and automation. The Fed can't solve those problems, but it can certainly stop enriching the already-super-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) and European Central Bank (ECB) have created a very dangerous situation. And it is one that few if any investors are assessing.

Monetary policy 'rules' are no more accurate at determining interest rates than meteorologists are at forecasting the weather. The only difference between the two is that weathermen are precise on occasion, whereas the federal funds rate under the Taylor Rule is, at best, less wrong. Setting the price of money and credit in the name of unleashing the economy’s supposed potential output is the equivalent of enacting price controls on milk to unlock its full buying power. It’s a fallacy that cannot be achieved. The sooner the Fed pawns off its printing press, the sooner its market distortions will be lifted; and the sooner that each individual will be able to make rational decisions that make sense for not only himself or herself, but for the economy at large as well.

"It is our humble belief that the consensus at the Fed does not fully understand the magnitude of the problems in corporate credit markets and the unintended consequences of their policy actions."

You know the one thing Mark Zuckerberg with all his Billions can’t do today without causing a media sensation throughout Wall Street? Hint: Sell. If we were in fact at the edge of a bubble in the Valley – how would one be able to sell at the top without bringing on some negative feedback loop in their stock price? With this newly formed “Initiative” any selling is now wrapped into a wonderful meme of “We’re not selling to profit. (or preserve) It’s for charity. And we’ve stated openly we were going to do just that. So, nothing to see here, please move along, thanks so much." Remember, also, this year is the first year that the once Holy Grail of “IPO’s to the promised land” have been mired in quicksand.

And will Yellen keep yellin'?

The market is now officially so broken, that the biggest HFT-player no longer even makes any sense.

But Gold and Silver I figured were dead in the water until the Fed announcement on December 16^th and they both showed signs of life from the long side on Friday.

The mainstream media is increasingly suggesting that we have once again entered into a 'Goldilocks Economy.' The problem is that in the rush to come up with a 'bullish thesis' as to why stocks should continue to elevate in the future, they have forgotten the last time the U.S. entered into such a state of 'economic bliss.' You might remember this: "The Fed's official forecast, an average of forecasts by Fed governors and the Fed's district banks, essentially portrays a 'Goldilocks' economy that is neither too hot, with inflation, nor too cold, with rising unemployment." - WSJ Feb 15, 2007. Of course, it was just 10-months later that the U.S. entered into a recession followed by the worst financial crisis since the 'Great Depression.'

Whether or not the Fed actually manages to raise rates in the real world is less important than maintaining USD hegemony. No empire has ever prospered or endured by weakening its currency.

"Friday’s employment report clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter-percentage point at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting, ending seven years of near-zero interest rates."

"We live in a dystopian investment world, whose markets have morphed into an Orwellian backdrop of omnipresent government intervention and manipulation that is increasingly dictated by the quant community -- who worship at the altar of prices and price momentum (and are agnostic on values)."

So how do you grow household wealth by $18 trillion in the face of these dismal real world trends? In a word, with a printing press. But what happened today is that Draghi showed he is out of tricks and Yellen confessed she is out of excuses. Yes, this sucker is going down. And this time all the misguided economics professors turned central bankers in the world will be powerless to reverse the plunge.

Year end 2015, we go from Ponzi scheme to failure to the thing every major global bank desires. The dilemma is, the ingenuity to excel in this space lies in scrappy young startups, not trillion dollar mega banks. Let me prove this to you, step by prior art step.