Federal Reserve

I try to provide an inductive, critical and speculative analysis of the Fed`s (open market) operations to date. Although not quite as speculative as the typical bank loan of the past few decades.

Stocks may rise and stocks may fall (not likely) but one thing is certain: the Fed's $2.3 trillion balance sheet will never stop growing. Time for the weekly update.

It is time for the weekly update of the only financial component that really matters: the composition of the Fed's $2.3 trillion (and rising) balance sheet.

Six months after our last update on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet in visual form, it is time to resume updating readers on what the biggest balance sheet in America looks like, especially since now that Fed is back in the monetization business. So without further ado, here is how Bernanke Capital, LLC looked as of September 1.

There is much debate over whether the Federal Reserve should tighten or further ease monetary policy. This dichotomous framing overlooks another possibility, which is whether the Fed should change the mix of its stance, tightening in some areas and further easing in others. In particular, there are strong grounds for the Fed to abandon its support of the Treasury bond market and to raise gradually the federal funds rate (to say one per cent), while simultaneously increasing its purchases of mortgage backed securities. If permissible, the Fed should also purchase state government bonds according to a per capita formula. Such a recalibration of policy could have positive effects. Increased purchases of MBS will help the housing market, which remains at the heart of the US economy's problems. Declining house prices continue to inflict financial losses on banks and consumers, and the prospect of further price declines deters buyers and undermines new construction. Increased MBS purchases could help stem this problem by further lowering mortgage rates. That would help households by facilitating more mortgage refinancing, help banks by reducing foreclosures and help the construction industry by making home ownership cheaper.

Excerpt from the much anticipated letter of what will soon be a hedge fund even bigger than Goldman Sachs: "As our mortgage investments mature, we will use the cash proceeds to seed FRC. FRC will then go out and buy S&P 500 futures, wheat, etf’s, leaps, reit paper, speculative biotech stocks, BRIC assets, and anything else you can think of. The Fund’s mandate is to be long only-everything- anywhere on earth." The fund is also rumored to have a lock-up period of 1 milisecond to allow HFT frontrunners to park their securities at FRC LLC, while the traditional 2/20 payment structure will be inverted, with Bernanke paying out 2% on all AUM, and will also pay out an additional 20% to any profit (or loss) generated by the fund for its LPs.

A not very long time ago, in a galaxy known as the Milky Way, the member of an occult group of sinister individuals warned that should this group ever get to a point where it believed it could fix fiscal problems through printing money, this would present "a paramount risk to the long-term welfare of the U.S. economy." The group is better known as the Federal Reserve and the individual was Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher. The same Richard Fisher, who recently wrote about the FinReg unaddressed concept of how Too Big To Fail will lead to another massive systemic crash, went as far as saying that "even the perception that the Fed is pursuing a cheap-money strategy to accommodate fiscal burdens" would be disastrous, and that "the Federal Reserve will never let this happen. It is not an option. Ever. Period." Boy, was he wrong. Nonetheless, Fisher's speech from May 28, 2008 before the Commonwealth Club of California, should be read by all Keynesian fanatics as it is without doubt one of the most lucid presentations of rational thought from the ranks of the Fed. With observations such as that "we know from centuries of evidence in countless economies, from ancient Rome to today’s Zimbabwe, that running the printing press to pay off today’s bills leads to much worse problems later on", one may only hope that all those who advocate even more rampant spending and irresponsible money printing to "fix" the economy, will finally see the light. Alas, mired in their own stupidity, they won't. And Fisher's words, so prescient in 2008, yet so ignored, will suffer the same fate today, and the Fed will continue on its way to singlehandedly destroying this once great country.

BlackRock continues to churn Maiden Lane LLC into its second anniversary, which turns out to be an important date. If it can mark to model the portfolio high enough, JPM could get cashed out ahead of Uncle Sam.

If you don't give us what we want, we'll shoot ourselves ...

When we disclosed that the Fed was getting crammed down last week on Red Roof Inn foreclosures, little did we know that Alan Grayson was going to take the material and make pure comedic poetry out of it. One more reason to applaud the brilliance of our corrupt and moronic Senators for preventing the much needed and long-overdue audit of the Fed.Enjoy.

No ...

Why audit the Fed? Let me count the ways ...

These nominees are prominent members of the Washington-Wall Street-Academia Economics Complex, whose members shift between government, Wall Street, and academia. All of the nominees are Keynesian economists. They are known as regulators, technocrats, and inflationists.

Remember that bit about how the Fed only holds the highest quality debt (we forget if it was Tweedledum or Tweedledee who said it)? It appears that's just the latest lie in the Fed's endless catalog of misrepresentations. According to TREPP, 11 properties held by Red Roof Inn hotels saw foreclosure actions initiated on them by CMBS special servicers, and are now being sent to the auction block. Guess who is most impacted by this action? Why, the Federal Reserve of course.

Enough with the Federal Reserve mafia syndicate and its endless array of bailouts, under the table deals, cronyism, politicized monetary decisions, and rampant theft of America's wealth already. We endorse the Sanders-Feingold-DeMint-Leahy-McCain-Vitter-Brownback Federal Reserve Transparency Amendment to the Financial Reform Bill. If the Fed's clowns won't end their endless rape of America, it should at least be fully transparent for all to see.