Federal Reserve

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The vast majority of professional investors are unable to contemplate truly dark times for the markets. After all, the two worst items most of them have witnessed (the Tech Bust and 2008) were both remedied within about 18 months and were followed by massive market rallies.Because of this, the idea that the financial system might fail or that we might see any number of major catastrophes (Germany leaving the EU, a US debt default, hyperinflation, etc.) is on par with Bigfoot or Unicorns for 99% of those whose jobs are to manage investors' money or advise investors on how to allocate their capital. 

Let's compare three financial criminals. The first is an old-fashioned counterfeiter who doctors up paper and runs a printing press to produce fake currency. The second criminal borrows money based on a fraudulent asset and phantom future income. For example, the criminal might obtain a credit card based on false assets and income, or borrow money against a property that is worth far less than he claims and base his credit on an inflated fantasy income he does not actually receive. The third criminal borrows money from the Federal Reserve at zero interest and extends a loan to a fraudulent borrower because a government agency has guaranteed the loan. Whatever income the lender receives is pure gravy, and whatever losses are incurred when the fraud is uncovered are made good by the taxpayer. Since our banking system is based on money being borrowed into existence (i.e. fractional reserve), then how is creating money unsecured by either assets or income any different from actually counterfeiting bills? The outcome is identical: money created out of thin air.

Was the Chapter 11 Petition of MF Global Holdings filed fraudulently?

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke will testify at House Budget Committee (Chairman Paul Ryan, R-WI) full committee hearing on "The State of the U.S. Economy." The highlight of today's hearing will be watching Bernanke face his nemesis runner up, Paul Ryan, who will surely grill Blackhawk Ben with questions that are far more intelligent than the press corps could come up with during the last FOMC canned remark presentation. Watch the full testimony live at C-Span after the jump.

Punxsutawney Ben, who just saw the printer's shadow, and predicts six more trillion of free money, will address the House Budget Committee later this morning. We will also get the latest BS from the BLS how thousands of mass layoffs every day result in a drop in initial claims.

Borrowing money based on imaginary future surpluses is a higher form of counterfeiting. And that is precisely what the U.S. is doing, borrowing immense sums at every level, private, corporate and State/Federal, all leveraged against phantom future surpluses, even as the economy requires some 10% of its supposed output (GDP) to be borrowed and spent on consumption each and every year just to run in place, i.e. the Red Queen's Race (Bernanke, Goldilocks and The Red Queen January 10, 2011). In other words, the U.S. economy is running a massive deficit, and squandering the vast sums being borrowed on consumption and mal-investments. Once you rely on more borrowing against imaginary future surpluses to fund your current expenses, then eventually the costs of servicing that debt exceeds any possible future surplus. The last-ditch "fix" is to simply print units of money (or borrow it into existence like the Federal Reserve)--counterfeiting, pure and simple-- and deceive the market for a time via the illusion that the freshly printed units of money are actually backed by productive value or surplus. As history has shown, eventually the market discovers the actual value of this counterfeit money, i.e. near-zero, and the system implodes. Once there is no more "free money" to fund consumption and mal-investment, then the reality of systemic insolvency is revealed to all. You cannot counterfeit actual surplus value generated by productive assets, you can only counterfeit proxy claims on future surplus.

One of the laments of the uberdoves in the world over the past several years has naturally been the fact that interest rates are bound by Zero on the lower side, and that the lowest possible rate on new paper is, by definition, 0.000%. Which is what led to the advent of QE in the first place: in lieu of negative rates, the Fed was forced to actively purchase securities to catch up to a negative Taylor implied rate. This may be about to change, because as the just released letter from the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, or as we affectionately called the JPMorgan/ Goldman Sachs Chaired committee, the "Supercommittee That Runs America", simply because it alone makes up Tim Geithner's mind on what America needs to do funding wise, demand, "It was broadly agreed that flooring interest rates at zero, or capping issuance proceeds at par, was prohibiting proper market function. The Committee unanimously recommended that the Treasury Department allow for negative yield auction results as soon as logistically practical." And what JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs want, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs get. And once we get the green light on negative yields at auction, next up will be the push for the Fed to impose negative rates on all standing securities, which means that coming soon savers will be literally paying to hold cash. And that will be the final straw.

The CBO report is a stinker.

Earlier today, the New York Fed was kind enough to voluntarily disclose the finacial holdings and assets of one former Goldman Sachs employee, and current FRBNY president Bill Dudley. Bill Dudley is also known as the gentleman to have received, when he was stil head of the PPT, aka the Fed's Open Markets Group, a waiver signed by one Tim Geithner on September 19, 2008, allowing him to keep not only his investment in AIG, which was "de minimis" at $1,200, but also in General Electric, which was not de minimis at $106,830. And while his modest holdings of AIG likely did not impact Dudley's protocol of bailing out the failed insurer, his interest in GE, and thus its then fully held subsidiary NBC Universal, parent of such comedy channels as CNBC, could potentially have been a source of conflict. Which is why the Fed has disclosed the full holdings of Dudley as of the 2008 year, in which we find that the bulk of Dudley's net worth was held by JPMorgan Chase Deferred Income Benefit Award (over $1MM) and JPM Chase Deferred Compensation ($500,001-$1,000,000). Was Mr. Dudley also completely conflict free vis-a-vis the bulk of his holdings, and their custodian, and did the New York's Fed largesse to bail out JPM among many others, have anything to do with this particular heretofore unknown detail? Of course not. After all, Jon Corzine is a free man. In other news, anyone who needs urgent access to the discount window or a $1 trillion overnight loan at 0.001% interest, should just call the Fed's 24/7 hotline: 877-52-FRBNY.

Counterfeiting is illegal because it is the false creation of value. The counterfeiter takes low-value paper and turns it into high-value money, which is fundamentally a claim on the real productive value of the economy that issues the currency and recognizes it as a proxy means of exchanging that productive value. Counterfeiting is illegal because the counterfeiter creates no additional value--he creates only the proxy for value. Creating real value--adding meaningful goods or services to the economy--is tedious, hard work. How much easier to simply transform near-worthless paper into a claim on actual goods and services.  If this is illegal, then would somebody please arrest the Board of the Federal Reserve for counterfeiting? The Fed has blatantly printed money without creating any real value to back up their added claims on productive value. Hence they are counterfeiting, pure and simple. A government based on rule of law would arrest these fraudsters and cons at the earliest possible convenience.

Growth. It's what every economist and politician wants. If we get 'back to growth', servicing debts both private and sovereign become much easier. And life will return to normal (for a few more years). There is growing evidence that a major US policy shift is underway to boost growth. Growth that will create millions of new jobs and raise real GDP. While that's welcome news to just about everyone, the story is much less appealing when one understands the cost at which such growth comes. Are we better off if a near-term recovery comes at the expense of our future security? The prudent among us would disagree.

It was only logical that following its most profitable year in history, the world's most successful hedge fund (by absolute P&L), which generated $77 billion in profit in the past year, would follow up with mass promotions. In other news, it is now more lucrative, and with better job security, to work for the FRBNY LLC Onshore Fund as a vice president than for Goldman Sachs as a Managing Director. Also, since one only has to know how to buy, as the ancient and arcane art of selling is irrelevant at this particular taxpayer funded hedge fund, think of all the incremental equity that is retained courtesy of a training session that is only half as long.

Metaphors have an uncanny ability to capture the essence of complex situations. Here is one dam metaphor that distills and explains the entire global financial system in 2012. The way to visualize the current situation is to imagine a dam holding back rising storm waters. The dam is the regulatory system, the rule of law, trust in the transparency and fairness of the system and the machinery of perception management. All of these work to keep risk, fraud and excesses of speculation and leverage from unleashing a destructive wave of financial instability on the real economy below. As legitimate regulation and transparency have been replaced with simulacra and manipulated data, the dam's internal strength has been seriously weakened.

What is the bottom line?  The stark decline in the BDI today should be taken very seriously.  Most similar declines have occurred right before or in tandem with economic instability and stock market upheaval.  All the average person need do is look around themselves, and they will find a European Union in the midst of detrimental credit downgrades and on the verge of dissolving.  They will find the U.S. on the brink of yet another national debt battle and hostage to a private Federal Reserve which has announced the possibility of a third QE stimulus package which will likely be the last before foreign creditors begin dumping our treasuries and our currency in protest.  They will find BRIC and ASEAN nations moving quietly into multiple bilateral trade agreements which cut out the use of the dollar as a world reserve completely.  Is it any wonder that the Baltic Dry Index is in such steep deterioration? Along with this decline in global demand is tied another trend which many traditional deflationists and Keynesians find bewildering; inflation in commodities.  Ultimately, the BDI is valuable because it shows an extreme faltering in the demand for typical industrial materials and bulk items, which allows us to contrast the increase in the prices of necessities.  Global demand is waning, yet prices are holding at considerably high levels or are rising (a blatant sign of monetary devaluation).  Indeed, the most practical conclusion would be that the monster of stagflation has been brought to life through the dark alchemy of criminal debt creation and uncontrolled fiat stimulus.  Without the BDI, such disaster would be much more difficult to foresee, and far more shocking when its full weight finally falls upon us.  It must be watched with care and vigilance...