Janet Yellen

With the "above the law" Federal Reserve coming under increasing pressure to answer a Senate investigation's questions about the 2012 "leak", it appears the proximity of the probe to Janet Yellen, has forced The Fed to 'fess up and throw someone under the bus. Meet Seth Carpenter, a nominee for assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets...

1. Dollar doesn’t matter, indicates strong economy relative to the world
2. Dollar matters for oil, but lower oil prices mean stronger consumer
3. Manufacturing slump doesn’t matter, only temporary
4. Manufacturing declines are consumer spending, but only a small part
5. Manufacturing declines are becoming serious, but only from overseas
6. US consumer demand is strong, except everywhere you look to actually find it.
7. ...

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

Either, a) BLS payrolls data is entirely 'made-up', or b) US jobs are being created in some other regions than the six major Fed surveys. Either way, this chart will strike fear into the heart of Janet Yellen as she 'hopes" for some cover for her rate-hike... before the whole house of cards collapses...

Terrible economic news is wonderful news for markets, all over again, and with the worst S&P500 quarter since 2011 set to close today, some horribly "great" news is just what the window-dressing hedge funds, most of whom are deeply underperforming the broader market (not to mention Dennis Gartman) ordered.

Most people believe that low oil prices are good for the United States, since the discretionary income of consumers will rise. There is the added benefit that Peak Oil must be far off in the distance, since “Peak Oilers” talked about high oil prices. Thus, low oil prices are viewed as an all around benefit. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth...

Absent some entirely magical economic developments, Janet Yellen looks set to be an unlucky Fed chairman. There is a growing risk that the fabric of the financial system may start to unravel during her tenure. Today’s investors are not exactly a lucky generation. Assuming they’ve survived two precipitous declines in stock markets in the course of a decade, they’re now faced with overpriced stocks, overpriced bonds, overpriced everything.

VIX is "searching for a new home" according to Goldman Sachs as the current elevated level of implied risk lies at the high side (around 24) of the current business cycle (~18) and recession-esque volatility (~26) range. Current options prices imply a 7% chance of a 10% crash in the next month and uncertainty is running twice as high ahead of this week's jobs data than on a normal payrolls week...

The Fed’s policy of forward guidance and radical transparency is not working. It turns out that letting the market peer over its shoulder as it makes monetary policy sausage is, in some ways, worse than the opaque process that existed prior to the arrival of Bernanke and Yellen. It pulls back the curtain and shows the human, error prone side of the Fed. Every time the Fed’s dots move, it is an admission of failure and undermines the very confidence it was trying to inspire.

Whether it’s the economy, climate, the planet, warfare, your future obligations, your pensions, the future of your children, nobody in power tells you the truth. Human life is fast losing the value we would like to tell ourselves we assign to it. We don’t, do we? Our technological advances haven’t come with moral advances, quite the contrary, our morals turn out to be a thin layer of mere cheap veneer. What advances we’re making are the last death rattle of a society in decline, and a dying civilization.

Despite the Fed continuing to kick this down the road, they continue to claim that we are in the middle of an ongoing recovery. There’s just one problem with that: things are getting worse than pre-crisis levels for millions of the poorest Americans. Possibly even more concerning is the fact that the amount of Americans living below the poverty line has soared since 2007.

Dear Fed Chairwoman Yellen: if you are still confused why there is so much slack and so little wage growth in the US economy despite the 5.1% "reported" unemployment rate, here is the answer: instead of a 5.1% unemployment rate in August, the true unemployment rate in the "land of the free" has been rising ever since the financial crisis, and is above 12% for the past three years.

High stakes poker, winner takes all. Traders better have their trade plans ready: The next 3 weeks will likely determine whether we enter a lengthy bear market or whether bulls can use coming positive seasonality to avert a major market break one more time. As the following charts show, by the end of October we shall have confirmation one way or the other...

"This is a monetary moment... we are looking at the beginning of the world’s reappraisal of the words and deeds of central bankers like Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi. You see monetary disorder manifested in super low interest rates, in the mispricing of credit broadly and you see it in the escalation of radical monetary nastrums that are floating out of the various central banks and established temples of thought: Negative real rates, negative nominal rates and the idea of helicopter money. So you need some hedge against things not going according to the script and that makes gold and gold mining equities terrifically interesting now."