Janet Yellen

Hopes that Kuroda would say something substantial, material and beneficial to the "three arrow" wealth effect (about Japan's sales tax) last night were promptly dashed when the BOJ head came, spoke, and went, with the USDJPY sliding to a new monthly low, which in turn saw the Nikkei tumble another nearly 500 points. China didn't help either, where the Shanghai Composite also closed below 2000 wiping out a few weeks of gains on artificial hopes that the PBOC would step in with a bailout package, as attention turned to the reported announcement that an update of local government debt could double the size of China's non-performing loans, and what's worse, that the PBOC was ok with that. Asian negativity was offset by the European open, where fundamentals are irrelevant (especially on the one year anniversary of Draghi FX Advisors LLC "whatever it takes to buy the EURUSD" speech) and renewed M&A sentiment buoyed algos to generate enough buying momentum to send more momentum algos buying and so on. As for the US, futures are indicating weakness for the third day in a row but hardly anyone is fooled following two consecutive days of green closes on melt ups "from the lows": expect another rerun of the now traditional Friday ramp, where a 150 DJIA loss was wiped out during the day for a pre-programmed just green closing print.

Dis-passionate discussion of next week's events and data, placed within a somewhat larger context.  

Based on media reports over the past few weeks, there are two clear front-runners in the competition to be named Ben Bernanke’s successor as Fed chairman. Current Vice Chair Janet Yellen sits in one corner, former Treasury Secretary and National Economic Council (NEC) Director Larry Summers in the other corner, and pundits are actively placing their bets. Yellen is "soft-spoken, even-tempered, 100% mainstream academic economist who boils the world down to simplistic concepts," so similarities between Bernanke and Yellen are far stronger than the differences. A hand off from one to the other would be about as eventful as a rainy day in Seattle. Compared to Yellen, Summers has a longer history as a heavyweight policymaker but as Charles Ferguson wrote, “rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy." And that’s what it seems to be coming down to: a choice between a yawn and a hiss. Why not appoint someone with a track record of getting things right, you ask? Well, that would require a culture of accountability in the White House. Does anyone remember when we last had that?

For the second consecutive day futures have drifted lower following a drubbing in the Nikkei which was down nearly 3% to just above 14K (time to start talking about the failure of Abenomics again despite National CPI posting the first positive print of 0.2% in forever and rising at the fastest pace in 5 years) and the Shanghai Composite which dropped to just above 2000 once again, after PBOC governor Zhou saying that China has big economic downward pressure and further reiterated prudent monetary policy will be pursued. This is despite Hilsenrath's latest puff piece which pushed the market into the green in yesterday's last hour of trading and despite initial optimism which saw stocks open higher following forecast-beating EU earnings gradually easing and heading into the North American open stocks are now little changed. It may be up to the WSJ mouhtpiece to provide today's 3pm catalyst to BTFATH, or else it will be up to the circular and HFT-early released UMichigan confidence index to surge/plunge in order to push stocks on any red flashing news is good news.

• The Department of Justice has opened an initial probe into the metals warehousing industry (WSJ)
• Obama Says Budget Debate a Battle for Middle Class Future (BBG)
• Death Toll From Spanish Train Crash Hits 77 (WSJ)
• ‘Fabulous Fab’ takes to witness stand (FT)
• Banks Said to Weigh Suspending Dealings With SAC as Charges Loom (BBG) - what about Anthony Scaramucci?
• How the Muslim Brotherhood lost Egypt (Reuters)
• German Business Confidence Rises for a Third Month (BBG)
• Fraternities Lobby for Tax Break Without Hazing Penalties (BBG)
• China charges Bo Xilai with corruption, paves way for trial (Reuters)
• Airbus Pushes Higher-Density A380 to Counter Luxury Image (BBG)

At precisely 4 am Eastern two opposite things happened: the German IFO Business Climate for July printed at a better than expected 106.2 vs 105.9 in June and higher than the 106.1 consensus: news which would have been EURUSD positive. And yet the EUR tumbled. Why? Because at the same time the ECB provided an update to the chart that "keeps Mario Draghi up at night" as we reminded readers yesterday - the ECB's all important credit creation update in the form of the M3, which not only missed expectations (of +3%) but declined from 2.9% to 2.3%. But more importantly, ECB lending to private sector shrank for the 14th consecutive month in June, and slid to a new record low 1.6% in June, down from a 1.1% in May.

While hardly a surprise, following recent speculative punditry (which failed miserably in forecasting Mark Carney as the next BOE head, something Zero Hedge predicted half a year ahead of the event due to one simple variable - he is from Goldman) and numerous trial balloons on Bernanke's successor coming hot and heavy from every direction, it was time for the Fed's own mouthpiece, Jon Hilsenrath, to speak, and bring back much needed drama and confusion.

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke's term expires January 31, 2014. While his continuation as Fed chair cannot be ruled out, he has given no public indications that he plans to seek another term and most market participants - as well as many members of Congress in last week's Humphrey-Hawkins hearings - seem to believe he will retire from public service early next year. As Goldman notes, the announcement of the next Chair of the Federal Reserve seems most likely to come in October, though nominations for Fed Chair have been announced as early as five months before the current term expires and as late as less than a month before expiration. There does not appear to be much risk to the Senate's ultimate confirmation of whomever the President chooses, though the Fed nominations have become more politically controversial over the last few years, which is likely to lengthen the confirmation process. Following previous confirmations, financial market volatility has typically increased slightly, though whether this occurs following the upcoming transition will of course depend on who is nominated.

If indeed the administration had floated a trial balloon with Larry Summers' Fed Chairman candidacy, it appears to have been full of lead. Moments ago Fed mouthpiece Hilsenrath just undid the disturbance in the farce with an article that promptly crushes Larry's chances as Bernanke's replacement, instead putting Janet Yellen up as the "front-runner for the top fed post."

Overnight newsflow (which nowadays has zero impact on markets which only care what Ben Bernanke had for dinner) started in Japan where factory orders were reported to have risen the most since December 2011, retail sales climbed, the unemployment rate rose modestly, consumer prices stayed flat compared to a year ago, however real spending plunged -1.6% significantly below the market consensus forecast for +1.3% yoy, marking the first yoy decline in five months. This suggests that households are cutting utility costs more so than the level of increase in prices. By contrast, real spending on clothing and footwear grew sharply by 6.9% yoy (+0.6% in April) marking positive growth for a fourth consecutive month. Simply said, the Japanese reflation continues to be limited by the lack of wage growth even as utility and energy prices are exploding and limiting the potential for core inflation across the board.

It's been a long time since Hilsenrath actually reported news instead of serve as a leak dissemination service for the New York Fed. Today was one of those time with news from the WSJ that the Obama administration, and specifically Jack Lew, has begun assembling a short list of candidates for the Federal Reserve chairmanship, in the expectation that Ben Bernanke won't seek reappointment when his second term ends in January. According to Hilsenrath, since the decision on whether the Chairsatan stays or goes is all his, Bernanke may decide to stay for a few more years of QEasing, however he won't: "many of Mr. Bernanke's friends and associates believe he wants to step down when his term expires, after nearly eight years overseeing the central bank's response to the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression."

There may come a day soon where the markets sell off if one of the whiskers in Big Ben's beard is out of place. Or perhaps if his tie is a bit crooked. Or maybe we end up with Janet Yellen as the next puppet in charge over at the local banking cabal and we fret about her hairdo. I don't know, but one thing that is for certain is that this central bank so wants to be loved and we are so under psychological attack with all of this QE nonsense that it isn't even funny. QE is the endgame. ZIRP was only the beginning. QE, or monetization (which they'll never call it because of the negative connotations), is the heroic measure applied to an already dead system. Our system, for all intent and purposes, died in 2008. It ceased to exist. The investing, economic, and business paradigm that has existed since is drastically different than its predecessor despite all the efforts being made to convince everyone, including Humpty Dumpty, that it is in fact 2005 all over again.

Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke likened monetary policy to landing a jet on an aircraft carrier which reminded ConvergEx's Nick Colas of a few choice 'Top Gun' quotes...  "Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash" seems most appropriate. But Colas' review of a recent academic paper on the social dynamics of how long people applaud - and why they stop - is perhaps useful in comprehending the market's reaction.  The funny thing about the work is that the distribution of ‘Clapping duration’ looks pretty much exactly like the P/E ratio of the U.S. equity market going back to the 1800s.  Why do people start and stop their applause or buy into a stock market?  It all happens "at the margin" in both cases, and just a few people putting their hands in their pockets is enough to get the rest to stop.  In the end, this is a simple analysis, but one which speaks to capital markets as essentially large “Social networks”, and that is an intuitively appealing construct.  Attention and engagement ebb and flow based on macro confidence, micro financial results, and other fundamental inputs.  Valuation becomes an analysis of whether more or fewer investors will be clapping next month or next quarter.  But one thing is for sure – you want to be among the first people to clap and quit when the noise is the loudest.

The biggest bond fund manager on the planet likely had a bad day today and judging by his comments during the following Bloomberg TV interview, he is not too impressed with the current Fed head, who is "driving in a fog," or the front-runner to fill Ben's shoes, Yellen "is a Siamese twin in terms of policy... [preferring someone] who would emphasize Main Street as well as Wall Street - which has been the emphasis for the past three or four years." The mistake the Fed is making, Gross explains, "is blaming lower growth on fiscal austerity and expects towards the end of the year once that is gone, all of the sudden the economy will be growing at 3%," or more simply the error of their policy-making ways is "to think that is a cyclical as opposed to a structural problem in terms of our economy." The bottom-line is that Gross sees less Taper (due to disinflation) and warns "those who are selling treasuries in anticipation that the Fed will ease out of the market might be disappointed."

In what year was the following written:

The Federal Reserve appears on track to buy the entire [amount of] government debt it has committed to purchase, barring a sharp, unexpected shift in the economy's prospects. If anything, lingering weakness and renewed concerns about global credit markets may lead top officials to lean toward doing more rather than less. A recent batch of better-than-expected economic data, including a relatively upbeat reading on the job market, has raised questions about whether the Fed acted prematurely in pulling the trigger... The Treasury market has been selling off sharply, in part as a response to the somewhat brighter landscape.

The answer...