New Normal

It appears the world is ganging up on The Fed as following China's recent clear and present threat should the USD strengthen, BoJ's Kuroda warned that further QQE might threaten the bank's finances - implicitly demanding moar from Yellen because he knows he's out of bullets. Add to that the surge in China credit which merely extends the life of already zombified firms, thus spreading more deflationary stress to the world and stocks from China (SHCOMP -3%), Japan (NKY -500) to US (Dow -280 points from Bullard Bounce highs) are tumbling.

While some central banks prefer to stealthily 'manage' their markets, a bid here, a stick-save there, today's epic intervention, short-squeeze, carry-trade-carnage in Offshore Yuan is the most visible hand yet in the new normal world of central planning. USDCNH is now down over 850 pips on the day - a record 1.25% strengthening in the offshore Yuan...

Maybe because not enough people caught the dire warning the first time, moments ago Bloomberg reported that Han Jun, the deputy director of China’s office of the central leading group for financial and economic afairs, spoke at an event at the Chinese consulate in New York and practically reiterated the anonymous source's warning practically verbatim. To wit: "There won’t be a strong economic stimulus and people shouldn’t expect a V-shape recovery; instead long period of L-shape growth path is likely" said Han, who participated in the drafting of China’s latest five year plan.

In the eyes of Western bankers, it was the perfect “scheme” – hence their label for the plan. In the eyes of any sane, rational, human being, it was/is the most naked, clumsy fraud that one could possibly imagine. But the corporate media assured us there was considerable enthusiasm amongst India’s population for this scam. However, in two weeks, out of a population of more than one billion people, holding an estimated 40 million pounds of gold, the Conspirators managed to steal less than 0.000002% of India’s privately held gold. So we’re now told that India’s government sees “temple gold” as its best/easiest target for stealing.

Will the scheme by the One Bank and India’s government to steal some/most/all of the 20,000 tonnes of privately held gold in India be successful?

Bill Dudley and the Federal Reserve (Fed), in their efforts to influence economic growth may have created a speculative and consumption driven environment that is crushing productivity growth. Ingenuity, not debt, made America an economic powerhouse. If we are to resume down that path we need the Fed to end their “self-defeating” policies and in its place we must demand ingenuity from them. The Fed, along with government, needs to properly incent productivity. The Fed should start this arduous task by removing excessive stimulus which will take the speculative fervor out of markets and allow asset bubbles to deflate.

"In America, the idea is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded with a good life for yourself and a better chance for your children.” That’s what America used to stand for, and indeed much of the Western world. Freedom. Truth. Hard work and fair play. Building a better life. But those ideals have all but faded now, displaced by a new normal of war, debt, government surveillance, freedom-killing bureaucracy, and a monetary policy that decimates responsible, hard-working people for the benefit of a tiny elite.

Moments ago, in its latest Q4 GDP revision, the Atlanta Fed just pulled the rug from under the economy (and the market now that bad news for the economy is bad news for stocks), and slashed its latest quarterly forecast by another 50%, from 1.3% to a barely positive 0.7%.  In other words, according to the Atlanta Fed, Janet Yellen launched a rate hike cycle in a quarter when GDP will be just 0.7%, and which when averaged across the prior 3 quarters, would mean that the US will have grown at just 1.8% in 2015, a 25% drop from the 2.4% GDP growth in 2014.

The seventh anniversary of Zero Hedge is just around the corner, and so, for the seventh year in a row we continue our tradition of summarizing what our readers found to be the most relevant, exciting, and actionable news of the year, determined by the number of page views. We bring you the articles that you, dear reader, found to be the most interesting in the past 365 days.

Banks have finally woken up to the risk their billions in C&I loans issued to fund "financial engineering" are exposed to. The reaction: an unprecedented surge in loan collateralization, with the percent of total loans secured by collateral soaring by nearly 50% in the past quarter to a record 55.9%, the highest ever!

It’s all here: unilateral Exceptionalistan in action against anyone who dares to defy imperial diktats. From Ukraine to Syria, and all across MENA (Middle East and North Africa), the proxy war between Washington and Moscow, with higher and higher stakes, won’t abate. Imperial despair over the irreversible Chinese ascent also won’t abate. As the New Great Game picks up speed, and Russia supplies Eurasian powers Iran, China and India with missile defense systems beyond anything the West has, get used to the new normal; Cold War 2.0 between Washington and Beijing-Moscow.

With EU inflation still stuck in Japan mode and with GDP bumping along at the "new normal" pace of what might as well be 0%, the market expects more from Draghi going forward. Need proof? Just look at yields.

'Keep It Simple Stupid' is the underlying narrative of the "two cows explain economics" meme... but, in light of the 'new normal' reality unleashed by ever-intervening central planners, some of the key political, economic, and corporate systems needed a re-work...

"The trouble is that rents are running high not because house prices are booming and/or construction is sawing but because structurally new entrants to the housing market are renters not owners. This is reflected in the very low first time homebuyer rate, less than 30 percent."