Federal Reserve

• Foreclosure Freeze May Slow U.S. Homebuyers on Legal Worry (Bloomberg, WSJ)
• Currency Rift With China Exposes Shifting Clout (NYT)
• Obama has the book thrown at him: Moment a missile narrowly misses U.S. President's head (and what's with the naked man?) (Daily Mail)
• No Margin of Safety, No Room for Error (Hussman)
• Greece to be bankrupt longer than expected as IMF to extend loans (Bloomberg) even despite Germany's ongoing protests (Bloomberg)
• Here comes the $100 porterhouse (Bloomberg)
• Currency wars are necessary if all else fails (Telegraph)
• Even $21 Billion Won't Get You a Greek Island Amid Red Tape (Bloomberg)
• Goldman director's wild parties riles co-op board (NYPost)

Although the Federal Reserve and therefore the fixed-income markets are closed for Columbus Day, we have the two Vice Chairmen, of the FOMC and the Board of Governors, both speaking today…

One of the more obvious side-effects of Ben Bernanke's simplistic QE 2 plan is to force retail investors out of their existing trajectory directed at fixed income products, and back into stocks, so that retail can once again occupy it long-coveted (by the bankers) position of buying Apple and Amazon at triple digit forward multiples. Unfortunately, as JPM's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou explains, all that QE's lowering of bond yields will do (in addition to sending soybeans limit up every day for the balance of 2010, despite what others claim is merely a hallucination) is "reinforcing retail investors' flows into bonds." The biggest problem with the secular shift away from equities, and into bonds, is that the very mindset that the banking cartel loved for so long: retail buying stocks high, buying even more higher, has now translated completely into bonds. As JPM says: "The more bonds rally, the stronger the buying of bond funds by retail investors." In addition to the daily flash crashes in now countless names, surely this phenomenon explains why retail investors have taken money out of stocks for 23 weeks now (leaving many mutual funds running on fumes and a prayer) and put it into the best performing asset category (after precious metals of course). And QE2 will cement not only retail, but institutional demand for bonds as well: "lower bond yields are widening the deficits of pension funds in both the US and Europe inducing them to move further into fixed income to reduce the mismatch between assets and liabilities... This raises the risk that these institutional investors will move more towards corporate bonds in search for yield. So a potential aggressive move away form government into corporate bonds could exert strong downward pressure on credit spreads." Suddenly the world will realize that the average duration on rate-based exposure is 10+ (especially if Mexico issues a few more 100 Year bonds). And when rates creep up even a tiny little bit, it is game over as the next negative convexity event will be the (credit) market itself. Which is why we have long said that the black swan is not a failed auction, but the merest hint that rates are finally starting to creep up.

The middle class were not prepared for the assaults they have been fending off. They became soft and satisfied. They stopped training. They became distracted by their gadgets, delusions of home wealth, and fear of phantom terrorist enemies behind every bush. The propaganda machine of their true enemies has convinced the middle class that foreign enemies are massing. The enemy is within. The middle class will need to sacrifice and go to war against two enemies. Are they up to the task? I’m not sure. In my opinion the following platform is the only way to save this middle class country. Liberals and supposed Conservatives will be outraged. No one will be happy with my solutions. So be it.

Today, we have three headlines of relevance. The first one comes from BusinessWeek as of October 9, "Finance Chiefs Warn Currency ‘War’ Is Risk to Growth" in which we read: "As the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting began in Washington, policy makers warned that efforts to boost exports by embracing weaker currencies threatened to provoke protectionism and trade imbalances at a time when economic growth is already slowing. China was again the target of criticism as foreign officials called the yuan undervalued and pushed for its appreciation to be accelerated." This was promptly followed by the Telegraph's "IMF fails to strike deal over currency frictions", in which we learn part two of the weekend's key festivities: "The International Monetary Fund on Saturday night failed to reach agreement on tackling mounting global "frictions" over exchange rate policies despite US calls to deal with the issue more forcefully." Which brings us to today's game of 'date the headline', which comes, somewhere in time, from the New York Times: "US said to allow decline of dollar against the mark" in which we read a paraphrase of a quote by then Treasury Secretary James Baker III, together with some additional commentary: "'I think if you look at the underlying economic fundamentals in this country, they're very, very good,' he said. But he added that the stock market appeared to be reacting to prospects of tax increases by Congress, the enactment of protectionist legislation to reduce foreign imports, and to fears of rising interest rates and inflation. He also said growth of computer-generated ''program trading'' of securities had contributed to the size of the daily sell-offs." Oddly enough, the situation described in the New York Times was identical, if not better, to what is transpiring right about now. As to what happened 24 hours after the original NYT article appeared, well, we all know that...

As more come on board with QE2, risk appetite is rising, but betting on a Fed-inspired recovery rally can be a dangerous game...

For different reasons, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan are trying to weaken their respective currencies. China is allowing its currency, the yuan, to strengthen, but not quickly enough for the U.S. This amounts to a two-fer for central banks in that they can accomplish two seemingly diverse tasks. It reminds me of an old spoof television commercial showing a couple fighting over whether a product was a floor wax or a dessert topping–”It’s a stimulus program. No, it’s currency manipulation. No kids, it’s both.”

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Unless the government substantially changes its approach, unemployment will keep rising.

When the momentum of the masses gravitates toward the truth, those that desire to suppress it have always resorted to smoke and mirrors to divert the people’s attention away from the truth and to channel their focus into avenues that waste their energies.

Payroll day, wholesale inventories, and one Fed speech….

The doubts over QE2 are increasing. Yesterday, Dallas Fed's Fisher raised the warning flag when he said that "despite recent speculation in the press and among market pundits, we did little at that meeting to settle the debate as to whether the Committee might actually engage in further monetary accommodation, or what has become known in the parlance of Wall Street as “QE2,” a second round of quantitative easing." Today, St. Louis hawk Bullard makes an even stronger case that the run up in stocks since the August lows is unjustified, or at least, largely premature, when he told CNBC that "Federal Reserve officials could wait until December before making any decision to ease monetary policy further if they feel they need more clarity on the outlook." He added that "We did hit this soft patch in the economy but it's not so soft that it's obvious that you have to do a lot right now. It's still possible to make the case that the economy will improve naturally." Most importantly, Bullard clarified that the Fed missing its policy targets do not make a case for further easing a slam dunk, that the economy may still improve without extra help, and that has not heard of any discussion at the Fed moving in the direction of buying a broader range of securities. On the other hand, Bullard also said that it doesn't look like the Fed will be able to get inflation back close to target without more policy help, making the confusion complete.

To get a more complete understanding of our current crisis, we need to look at the history of events that led up to it. We need to peer deeply into the inner workings of the Global Banking Intelligence Complex. Without acknowledging and exposing the covert forces that are aligned against us, we will not be able to effectively overcome them.

Last week, during our regular scheduled Fed balance sheet update, we said "We believe that within one week the Fed will surpass Japan as the second largest holder of Treasurys, and China, the current top holder, in just over a month." Ww were right: as of Wednesday, the Fed disclosed it held $819.1 billion in US Treasurys. That excludes yesterday's $2.1 billion POMO which settled today, which does in fact bring the total to above the $821 billion held by Japan as of the end of July. With only $25 billion to go, and a rate of monetization of about $8 billion per week (and likely faster now that prepays are accelerating), we believe the Fed will be #1 by the mid-terms, just in time for the QE2 party to really blast things off. Aside from this there was little notable in the weekly balance sheet update: bank reserves increased by $16 billion in the past week, as Primary Dealers added to their purchasing capacity post the end of quarter window dressing.

Tomorrow will likely be a jobs-predicated bloodbath. First, we will get the NFP data, which expectations have pegged at -5K (and for some reason Private payrolls still matter, even though the census impact is now negligible) but as Goldman is likely spot on with their estimate of -50K, and validated by recent ADP data, the finally number will be big miss to consensus. More importantly, as we highlighted in today's Frontrunning, tomorrow the Labor Department will announce a million-ballpark wholesale downward revision to 2009 employment numbers (due to birth-death and other perpetual upwardly biased adjustments), confirming that the jobs situation is far more dire than anything Joe Biden could have ever imagined. As the ever-optimistic Neil Dutta from BofA stated: "That adjustment is probably overstating the
employment gains because we are in a very subdued recovery and the
likelihood is that the birth-death factor is making the data look better
than it otherwise would be." Tax records will probably show more businesses closed than initially estimated by the Labor Department, analysts said. This will certainly sour the mood, and the only saving grace will be how much of an impact the market will believe a near-certain QE2 will have on stocks (and has not been priced in yet). In the meantime, here is Goldman's latest view on why the labor picture in America is getting worse and worse.

As the U.S. prepares to embark on a new round of Federal Reserve quantitative easing, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that it is the right course for the economy and job creation. Here’s another: The voyage might have to be aborted — or at least diverted — soon after QE2 leaves the dock because the Fed may be sailing into a political hurricane. Even before the anticipated launch of the next round of Treasury purchases — it’s expected to be made official on Nov. 3 — the Fed’s unmistakable signals have fueled commodity price gains as the dollar has sagged. Since the Fed’s Sept. 21 policy statement, crude oil had surged more than 9% to above $83 a barrel on Wednesday, approaching its highest levels since October 2008. (Oil prices did retreat on Thursday.) The risk for the Fed is that such price increases will be felt in the economy long before any modest positive impact from lower interest rates.