Federal Reserve

A simmering rage is bubbling below the surface as 20% of American households rely on food stamps to survive, the percentage of Americans in the labor force stands at a four decade low, real household income remains stagnant at 1988 levels, corporate profits have reached record levels while corporations continue to fire Americans – shipping their jobs overseas, and the six mega-corporations representing the mainstream media cover up the truth, mislead the public with propaganda, while celebrating the .1% as saviors of our economy. There is nothing more volatile to societal stability than millions of unemployed men, growing angry and resentful towards the ruling class for their lot in life.

In the short run this will probably lead to dramatic and unexpected change in financial flows. Over the longer run, a much-overlooked problem emerges. Simply put, it is highly unlikely that market rates will respond as the Fed moves its target rate upwards; in this case, the FOMC will have lost all control.

The fundamental fact is that the current financial and economic paradigm, characterized by heavy handed Federal Reserve intervention into credit markets, is dying.  Debt based stimulus is both sustaining and killing the economy at the same time.

Has there ever been a major holiday more focused on materialism than the modern American Christmas? This year, Americans are planning to spend an average of 830 dollars on Christmas gifts, which represents a jump of 110 dollars over the average of 720 dollars last year. But have our incomes gone up accordingly? Of course not.

Why Now?

The US is on its own and monetary expansion seems the only Holy Grail left...

The world is changing in so many ways which is ignored by markets and commentators. The Paris event is yet another wake up call for the markets on geopolitical risk, for the under-investment in education and basic research, but most importantly for how we continue to ignore facts. First it will get worse... we are simply not prepared for geopolitical risk to matter for markets neither are we yet willing.

Today's 1.75% rally in copper (ripping vertical at the US open) broke a record 14-day losing-streak after COMEX futures tested towards a '1' handle numerous times for the first time since March 2009 (when the S&P 500 traded around 800). The metals market appears to be increasingly pricing concurrent and/or future weakness in China’s old economy, according to Goldman, as China futures open interest surges, but discussions at the 2015 Shanghai CESCO conference last week exposed the extremely bearish views of Chinese market participants regarding Chinese metals demand in 2016 (notably sentiment was worse than that expressed by investors outside of China) specifically citing a Fed rate hike before year-end as a further bearish factor for metals.

"Fake", a simple definition: something that is not what it purports to be, a worthless imitation passed off as genuine; an impostor or charlatan.

Example: “American society is extraordinarily fake; filled with lies, fraud, facades, mirages, deception, disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and brainwashing.”

After 3 straight months of home price declines, August and now September have seen the usual seasonal pattern unfolding as Case-Shiller reports 0.61% rise in September (double the +0.3% expectations). Of course this runs in the face of NAR's 4 month decline in median home prices, but who's quibbling. Notably, 2015 is playing out almost exactly the same as 2014... winter is coming.

In his letter, reproduced below, Nader bashes  the "tediously over-dramatic indecision as to when interest rates will be raised"; demands that the Fed not "lecture us about the Fed not being “political.” When you are the captives of the financial industry, led by the too-big-to-fail banks, you are generically “political" and - in short - wants to know when the Fed will put the interests of Main Street over those of "plutocratic, crony capitalism for which the Federal Reserve has long been a leading Tribune."

If you close your left eye, the US dollar is strong. The labor market has recovered to its pre-crisis levels. The US is affluent and free. But if you close your right eye, the dollar is astonishingly overvalued based on nearly every objective metric that exists, police forces have turned into federally-funded paramilitary units, and a grand surveillance state now dominates over the citizens, and many of the basic freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution have become watered-down aphorisms rather than inalienable rights. That’s our world. It is simultaneously full of risk AND reward. The important thing is to look with BOTH eyes.

The Federal Reserve has been telegraphing to markets that they are going to raise the fed funds rate by 25 basis points next month at its December Fed Meeting.

All great monetary fiascos are forged upon a foundation of misperceptions and flawed premises. There’s always an underlying disturbance in money and credit masked by supposed new understandings, technologies, capabilities and superior financial apparatus. The notion back in 2006 and 2007 that the world was at the brink of a major crisis was considered absolute wackoism. Incredibly – and well worth contemplating these days - virtually no one saw the deep structural impairment associated with the protracted Bubble in “Wall Street Finance.” An even more momentous monetary fiasco has been perpetrated since the 2008 crisis, constructed upon a foundation of even more outlandish misperceptions and flawed premises.