Main Street

Just as many expect that the #1 buyer of Treasuries (the Fed) will soon begin paring back its purchases, the top foreign holder (China) may cease buying, thereby opening a second front in the taper campaign. Little thought seems to be given to how the economy would react to 5% yields on 10 year Treasuries (a modest number in historical standards). The herd assumes that our stronger economy could handle such levels. That is why when it comes to tapering, the Fed is all bark and no bite. But the market understands none of this. This is not unusual in market history. When the spell is finally broken and markets wake up to reality, we will scratch our heads and wonder how we could ever have been so misguided.

We know the ten "people" that run the world, that 25 cities represent over half the world's GDP, and that the world's billionaires control a stunning $33 trillion in net worth... but who controls what the average joe-sixpack on Main Street buys? As PolicyMic notes, these ten mega corporations control the output of almost everything we buy - from household products to pet food and from jeans to jello. The so-called "Illusion of Choice," that these corporations (and their nepotistic inter-relationships) create is remarkable...

At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of the administration's collective mouth.  And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us.  Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years.  Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust. Aside from the now "fake" employment data, the following are five massive economic lies that the government has been telling you... Our financial system is far more vulnerable than we are being told.  We are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet, and when this bubble bursts it is going to be an absolutely spectacular disaster. Please don't believe the mainstream media or the politicians when they promise you that everything is going to be okay.

At one point during the evening, when pressed about whether his Quantitative Easing program was good for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, Ben Bernanke flat out denied it, saying that such a premise is "simply not true".   He defended his printing $85 billion per month, suggesting that fixing interest rates at zero is beneficial for society because, among other things, it allows people to 'buy cars'.  I saw these words coming out of his mouth and thought to myself, "Is this guy f'ing serious?" Cars. Wow. As if going into debt to purchase a rapidly depreciating consumer item is somehow a victory for the people.

One can debate whether QE has benefitted Main Street or Wall Street until one is blue in the face, even though five years later, the answer is perfectly clear to all but the staunchest Keynesians and monetarists (and if it isn't, just pay attention to the 3:30 pm S&P ramp every day). One thing, however, that is undisputed is what the market itself says about where the QE money ends up when it is being spent by its recipients. And that story is so simple even a Keynesian would get it. Stated briefly, luxury retailers such as Tiffany, Coach and LVMH are now up 500% since the Lehman lows, and about 30% above the prior cycle highs. On the other hand, regular retailers such as Macy's, Kohl's and JC Penney are barely up 100% from the crisis lows, and still more than 30% below the last bubble highs.

In 1997, the SE Asian Tigers all faced severe economic stresses, partially triggered by a primarily foreign capital-funded massive real estate bubble in Thailand. Today the EXACT same thing is happening as untempered foreign investment into Thailand’s real estate market has created not a “soaring” real estate market as economists always incorrectly explain them, but massive real estate market distortions better known as a bubble.

If one was a foreigner visiting for the first time, one would think Space Available was the hot new retailer in the country. Thousands of Space Available signs dot the bleak landscape, as office buildings, strip malls, and industrial complexes wither and die. At least the Chinese "Space Available" sign manufacturers are doing well. The only buildings doing brisk business are the food banks and homeless shelters. However, reports like the recent one from SNL Financial – Branch Networks Continue to Shrink - are emblematic of the mal-investment spurred by the Federal Reserve easy money policies, zero interest rates, and QEternity... In a truly free, non-manipulated market the weak would be culled, new dynamic competitors would fill the void, and consumers would benefit. However, extending debt payment schedules of the largest zombie entities and pretending you will get paid has been the mantra of the insolvent zombie Wall Street banks since 2009.

When Tim Geithner announced his departure from the US Treasury in January, the only question was how long would it take the former NY Fed head to get a job with the only industry that he cared about as either a Fed or Treasury official: Wall Street. Tim did his best to diffuse such speculation with amusing stories about writing books, which were accentuated by his refusal to join the Fed chairmanship race. Why not? After all there was nobody that Wall Street would benefit more from as the head of the Fed than TurboTax Tim. Today, less than a year after his exit from public service, the answer has presented itself - Tim Geithner is joining private equity titan Warburg Pincus, his first private sector job in decades since working for Henry Kissinger early in his career.

You pack of fringe Zero Hedge low brows!

"I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing.... We were working feverishly to preserve the impression that the Fed knew what it was doing...  The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time....  Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets.  As for the rest of America, good luck..... The implication is that the Fed is dutifully compensating for the rest of Washington's dysfunction. But the Fed is at the center of that dysfunction. Case in point: It has allowed QE to become Wall Street's new "too big to fail" policy."

For almost two years (most recently this week), we have been vociferously explaining the dismal fact that "quantity" of jobs in this recovery is no match for dreadful "quality" of jobs as the "born-again jobs scam" contonues to roll on. Bloomberg's Matthew Klein has decided that nine pictures are better than a thousand words as he explains (in short sentences and simple charts) what the jobs report really means...

This morning's announcement of the 25% rise in the IPO price of Twitter raised a few eyebrows across Wall and Main Street. Most will argue that investors have all learned many lessons in the 18 months since Facebook IPO'd to a clarion call for retail money large and small from every form of media that exists... The following headlines from the pre-IPO suggest, unfortunately, that we learned absolutely nothing...

Today, one of America's best-known welfare programs with 47.6 million participants or 15% of the total population, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program also known as "foodstamps" or EBT, is due for a substantial haircut: beginning Friday, there will be a phased in $5 billion reduction (6% of the program) for the 12 month period starting November 1st 2013. So what happens next? 

No wonder investors don't take economists seriously. Or if they do, they shouldn't. Since Richard Nixon interrupted Hoss and Little Joe on a Sunday night in August 1971, it's been one boom and bust after another. But don't tell that to the latest Nobel Prize co-winner, Eugene Fama, the founder of the efficient-market hypothesis. No matter the facts, Fama has his story and he's sticking to it. "I think most bubbles are 20/20 hindsight," Fama told Cassidy. The rest of us, who lived through the tech and real estate booms while Fama was locked in his ivory tower, know that in a boom people go crazy. There's a reason the other term for bubble is mania.

If Obama’s budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the National Debt increased by 87%, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.