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No Mo' POMO?
Authored by James Howard Kunstler via The Burning Platform blog,
Whenever the Federal Reserve wants to tweak the dials of the economy - or pretend that it can - it turns first to its sock puppet at The Wall Street Journal, John Hilsenrath, and “leaks” a rumor of policy change. They like to do this late on Fridays when financial markets are about to close, so that market players will have a whole weekend to ponder the Fed’s actions like medieval viziers reading goat entrails.
Last Friday’s puddle of steaming guts was a supposed preview of the Fed’s “exit strategy” from its reckless policy of “quantitative easing” or “money” creation (or “liquidity,” if you like). In other words, they supposedly intend to stop juicing the financial markets with fake wealth, i.e. capital not accumulated from real productive activity, but just fictively created on computer hard drives. For the past year they have been doing this to the tune of $85 billion a month, “buying” US Treasury bonds and bills and an assortment of miscellaneous securities (mostly trash that can’t be pawned off on anyone else) through their so-called “primary dealer” bank cohorts, the too-big-to-fail usual suspects, who “earn” hefty transaction fees in the process of conveying all these pixels from Point A to Point B. These interventions are called Permanent Open Market Operations, or PoMo.
The theory all along has been that this $85 a month would seep down to Main Street to provoke spending (increasing the “velocity of money) and therefore “jump start” the economy. The theory has proven itself to be complete horseshit, of course. All it has done is suppress interest rates on bonds, depriving old people of income off their savings by so doing. It also artificially jacked up reckless lending on loans for houses, cars, and college degrees, juiced the share price of stocks, and boosted food prices. Meanwhile, an increasingly former middle class languishes in a purgatory of foreclosure, penury, and desperation. The Fed can’t really do anything to help them. It can only burden them with more easy-credit debt, especially their college-age children. But ours is a financialized economy and finance is too abstruse for most ordinary people to understand, so they just muddle along in a fog of dashed hopes and repossession.
Lately, though, the financial markets at the heart of the financialized economy - that is, an economy based on buying and selling increasingly dubious “paper” assets rather than on capital formation through producing things of value - are sending distress signals. The aforesaid efforts at economic dial-tweaking have only produced distortions and perversions in the basic functioning of the markets they’re designed to tweak. They pervert the “price discovery” mechanism by dumping “free money” into equity markets. They distort “risk premiums” by steering money out of savings, where it earns less than nothing, into riskier investments subject to the vagaries of everything from weather (commodity markets) to control fraud (bank stocks) to geopolitics (Toyota stock). They debauch market expectations in general by implying permanent artificial life-support. They promote market gaming such as front-running equity prices via high frequency trading on computers, naked shorting (pretending to borrow shares that, in fact, do not exist) and the abuse of futures markets — lately illustrated in the ongoing smash of paper gold and silver contracts, with the side effect of driving yet more money into stock markets. Finally, they undermine the meaning and value of money itself, which is the most dangerous game of all because when people lose confidence in their national currency, nations dissolve in political chaos.
Despite the aura of control, Fed officials (and casual observers) may sense things spinning out of control. Of course, hyper-fragility is exactly the effect that all the Fed’s own actions would predictably lead to. When you divorce truth from reality, strange things are bound to happen. The Fed ventriloquists who speak through Hilsenrath at The Wall Street Journal suggest they would accomplish their exit from the current $85billion-a-month QE policy in a set of “halting steps” by irregularly dialing down QE issuance month-by-month to fine-tune the results on-the-fly, as markets may require. This is also complete horseshit because they could only accomplish controlled tweakings by somehow signaling their intentions beforehand through some lackey like Hilsenrath. Otherwise, they could not pretend to control the results of their actions. They might as well just throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. Unfortunately, the “halting steps” idea would only provide even more opportunities for selective, complex front-running, shorting, and gaming — which is to say setting up more dangerous behavior with more uncertain and possibly destructive outcomes.
Anyway, there’s no evidence at this moment that anyone believes what was leaked to Hilsenrath. It could easily be more smoke and mirrors aimed at concealing the fact that the Federal Reserve has no idea what it has been doing and fears the consequences. There is one thing that we know for sure in this strange period when bankers have tried to manage reality in the absence of truth: that advanced industrial-technological economies designed to run on $20-a-barrel oil can’t run on $100-a-barrel oil, and that is why the US economy was subject to financialization in the first place - to offset declining productive activity by an attempt to get something for nothing. Notice that this macro-trend coincided exactly with the rise of legalized gambling all over America. That is how the idea that you could get something for nothing got to be normal. The world is about to find out that you really can’t get something for nothing. It will be a harsh lesson.
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POMO's damage has already been done. As much as I'd like to believe these rumors they won't be true until real, sustainable economic growth is demonstrated. -- that's the inane justification of POMO's existence in the first place.
Algos, HFTs and shadow funding will be around as long as politicians and banksters are in bed together.
I'll believe the funding is gone when ethical people are in Captiol Hill and the inverted aqueduct that is our banking system is purged of it's sewage.
FED IS NOW OBSOLETE: $GOOG Google can now predict the stock market "http://www.nbcbayarea.com/blogs/press-here/Google-Can-Predict--205175951.html"
Shit! It looks like I'll need to invest in a computer now. No more newspaper trading for me! Fuckin' damn. I knew I was late to the party. Fuck me!
Correct, just in case you were wondering were you are in the debt-based system, you are here;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_pCDyiFUv9XU/S_HzX0bUJZI/AAAAAAAAJxA/UtOGAm5DPP...
This is how we all get to pay for decisions made by someone else 40 years ago.
indeed, a generation of "clickers" that are incompetent when it comes to actually doing something and trillions in debt with no job prospects - "winning". Let's see if they take it lying down or if some smart kid that went to a trade school starts building depended guillotines and selling them at 20k a pop. Maybe he'll even be politically correct and call them "claw-back devices". as is bonus claw-backs, bailout claw-back, pension claws-backs. You see folks, it's simply a peception and motivation management game. we the people, have not been providing the correct motivation or perception...
Bernanke says freedom-of-the-press is the Fed's 1st Amendment right.
"Let's see if they take it lying down or if some smart kid that went to a trade school starts building depended guillotines and selling them at 20k a pop."
Today's kid will build an app for that.
Unless the app drives an actual robot to get the job done, nothing will actually happen (pretty common result among most of the youth today).
Since money = debt, and those who are homeless don't have money, then it proves that debt is good because the more debt you have the more money you have. Truly, I have a dizzying intellect. Just wait until I really get going. Hold on... that's MastarCard calling to increase my debt ceiling...
flacon,
That made me laugh, thanks!
DavidC
Did the Bernank just figure this out last Friday afernoon...?
The story was a "test probe" by the FED to gauge market reaction. They'l scratch their heads over the little while and try something else.
Does goggle make an "app" that delivers essential commodites and funds unfunded liabilities and interest on debt? This generation is going to be slaughtered.
Stop POMO and I too can predict the stock market: in a word, DOWN.
But ours is a financialized economy and finance is too abstruse for most ordinary people to understand, so they just muddle along in a fog of dashed hopes and repossession.
Most rational people understand this has always gone on and likely will in perpetuity.
In any case, imo more important than worrying about the necessity for increasing growth is dealing with overproduction.
China's farcical real estate boom is but one of countless examples of the quest for compound growth going horribly wrong.
I agree with you, they can't clean this up without alot of pain.
"The world is about to find out that you really can’t get something for nothing. It will be a harsh lesson." - Optimist, nothing will change unless the supply lines break and the SNAP cards stop working, period. Go away already unless you have a fucking date we can trade on.
the snap cards may always work, yes??? just as the proles had everything they "needed.................
No, see how that worked out in the former Soviet Union. Plenty of SNAP cards, nothing in the fucking stores. Seriously, I have done business in St. Petersburg for a long time. The propaganda for a long time was that American stores were always so full because American citizens were too poor and could not afford to buy anything. Straight from my business associates. They always were very friendly because I "had it so rough" growing up there. Still some of the most generous people I know.
Indeed, a person can rationalize anything to themself.
i happen to think they will always feed the ducks...........its the only way to maintain order...............
I recall another Soviet-era story illustrating the worthlessness of US cars. Many of them had to be pushed by boats mounted on trailers.
"The propaganda for a long time was that American stores were always so full because American citizens were too poor and could not afford to buy anything"
Obviously neither propagandists nor the propagandized had even the most basic understanding of supply-demand. Sounds about right.
When that happens, they be like: "OH SNAP!!!!"
It already happened. Remember last year California's EBT card system went down for 4 hours. There were already fights breaking out in the stores and cops being called.
In 4 hours.
Imagine 4 days. Or 4 Months. Cities will be burned to the ground and roving gangs will prowl the burbs in 'Mad Max' cars.
dont forget those horendous loin cloths
I'm 100% with you on that, it's like what the other guy said "things will change when there are ethical people on Capital Hill". Really wish some of our fellow ZH'ers here would stop living in these fantasy scenarios where there is any political fix to this. Nominal gains can be engineered to infinity, and your "liberty" and "freedom" can be supressed (through a number of means) as much as it needs to be in order to make you at least pretend to enjoy your shit sandwich. Even with the moves by other countries to continue to deteriorate the petrodollar, it's important to keep in the back of your head that the continued managed decline can go on until, as Laws is saying here, enough people can no longer get food and entertainment. We're in the "bread and circuses" stage of the decline. The Romans ran this stage for 100 years before they went to autocratic emporer phase.
Disagree.The Romans and horses and oxen amoung other asesets---and maybe 70 Million. We have no gasoline and 7 Billion people Huge difference in situations.
The Romans ran for 100 years, we would not last 2 years. Milestones
True that Milestones,
Clickity-clack, clickity-clack rolls the train down the track,
Faster, faster straight down the hill,
Ben is berift of sight,
As the train wreck begins to build.
Jump now; and roll before the hit,
Ben will be first to hit the click.
Clickity-clack, clickity-clack rolls the train down the track.
Watch your back, true that.
No Moar POMO BITCHEZ
OT, but I cannot believe anyone would want to stay long overnight with all of the Euro CPIs and GDPs coming out tomorrow and Wed.
3.5 billion in POMO tomorrow. Pretty sure the overnight longs are gonna be fine.
cheesepopebux will be printed to infinity... [but it STILL won't be enough to hold the 'Potemkin Village Idiots', who count on them, together in unison]...
It's like I'm conversing with someone channeling Tiny Tim when I bring this subject up, no matter who it is.
"The system isn't so fragile, 9/11 was a shock and the market came right back"
"Sure the trading machines cause flash crashes but they always come right back"
"Sure copper prices are dropping but that only means construction is declining. The DOW is doing just fine"
These are responses the Tiny Tim channelers have given me recently.
We'll know who is correct soon enough
Just look at what we pay in just interest payments on the national debt and tell me with a straight face that you have or have had an exit strategy all along. What a joke. It just isn't funny anymore
double post
I just had someone tell me that you have to buy today because the last 17 tuesdays were positive. He is an incredibly dumb person, and yet he is probably right.
3.5 billion in POMO tomorrow. He probably isn't aware of this, but he's right anyways.
I was thinking the same thing. I didn't buy because I am an incredibly stupid person.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/
Well we know how that theory worked, unfortunately we're about 0.001% of the population that does. Not to mention most Americans have no idea what The Fed does, is, or that they are unelected officials wielding extraordinary power.
No MO Po mo is just micronathia jawboning by the FED trying to squeeze the last bit of credibility out of its money printing orgy but without setting off an uncontrolled chain reaction/meltdown. Like the wicked witch said..."These things have to be done delicately!"
Without a POMO we will all get soft-ons
In case if you guys forgot
"No Plan B"
There will be QE
"forever"
It’s all a crock of shite,
The Fed isn't managing either economy or employment. The Feds’ primary objective is trying to manage consensus and expectations. In the real world actions speak louder than words; in the FED world MOAR words MUST speak louder than actions.
There is no plan B simply because there are no exits from plan A which basically is Ctrl+P in a variety of levels and forms.
Sequestration was good for a gain of few hundred thousand jobs, cutting off POMO should bump that number to at least +400k.
Negative breadth, negative ticks, no volume and a rising vix: anyone want to bet against ES making a new high on the close today?
POMO becomes TOMO on the way to NOMO
OMG! Are you telling me that there has been MANIPULATION? ... Nooooo! ... MillionDollarBonus, say it ain't so!
And that nice steak that used to be $5.99/lb is now about $10/lb. See the magic of inflation.
The glogalist at the UN want people elsewhere to start eating insects.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/fight-world-hunger-eat-insects-un-recommends
Is that Bubble Bernanke and the Fed's plan when inflation gets out of control?
Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and the rest of the Fed members can telll the muppets to start eating insects when food is unaffordable.
Shh im hunting wabbits now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiEUDzIrEQE
It's either porno or pomo, or both, for NY FED employees as part of their daily routine.
whenever the time comes for this thing to crash, we all know the criminals that the fed r, they will notify their banker friends, and then say 2-3 years after when we cant recover, it will be the same thing again, qe and inflating stocks. i dont think they will ever learn that it leads to nothing but disaster.
So much emotive language. Leads to disaster for who. The financial elite
are making billions and a disaster for "us" is a absolute boon for them. So
many cheap assets for sale. Emotions is why we are "here" and the financial elite are "there". Psychopaths rule the world, they are laregy emotion free. We will all continue to be victims, this is the way of the world.
Aww, poor baby, doomed to be a victim for life due to...The Man holding you down!
the fed will use pomo - no pomo to raise volatility so dimon and blankfein can get bigger bonuses. nothing is real except the new york gangster bonuses. anti-trust is so twentieth century.
" ... nothing is real ... "
Sing it, Bennie sing it! ...
"Minuscule Yields Forever"
Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Minuscule Yields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Minuscule Yields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me
Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Minuscule Yields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Minuscule Yields forever
No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't, you know, tune in but it's all right
That is I think it's not too bad
Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Minuscule Yields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Minuscule Yields forever
Always, no sometimes, think it's me
But you know I know when it's a dream
I think I know I mean a "Yes" but it's all wrong
That is I think I disagree
Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Minuscule Yields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Minuscule Yields forever
Minuscule Yields forever
Minuscule Yields forever
[I buried all...]
medieval viziers reading goat entrails
Got me interested on that statement.
Hilsenrath needs to quit eating the rat turds in the punch bowl.
The WSJ should be ashamed of themselves for allowing 'Chair Satan' to use their fine publication/establishment as a POMO research project.
/major sarc
Just watching C Span while some shit head US Senator was asking the nominated Deputy White House Budget Director why we could not get more tax money from US corporations.
NOT so that we could reduce the deficit but so that we would not have to sequester.
That is, so that we can just keep deficit spending!!
Anybody that thinks that the Fed can stop monetizing US deficits is a moron.
Oh, they could.
Just watch it all crash and burn. Crispy, Japan style.
Will they? I have quite a bit of money that says "No Fucking Way Man".
The Fed and the other central banks have already lost control. They've created a monster that they can't kill without asset prices getting smashed.
Is the "u" in "Kunstler" pronounced as in "putt" or in "put"?
it's pronounced 'un'. As in Attilla the 'HUN'...
The Germans have solved that particular linguistic and spelling peccadillo quite satisfactorily with the Ü.
Then along came the Americans and messed it all up... Kunstler is a german word meaning "artist" or "performer", but the german word has the ü; "Künstler" so would be pronounced with a u as in put. Not realising the dots have importance, they have been removed and from then on the Americanisation has left Kunstler with a mispronounced name for eternity. Most probably teachers and peers telling the poor kids that their name is pronounced as it's spelled, not spelled as it is pronounced with a U as in putt. And so ignorance yet again triumphs over wisdom.
Yes, I regularly get mail from the UK addressed to my "Strabe" (The Germans will get this).
Ahh, so! Thanks. One of those peculiarities like the"Ausfart" signs on tbe freeways I suppose.
Hey your only a third world county if you don't have enough Billionaires or is Wall St just jealous of Zimbabwe.
While I appreciate the author's overall point and flowery histrionic delivery, he should at least be accurate regarding the Bogey-man of QE. QE has NOT, in fact, been going on to the tune of $85 billion/mo "for the past year". More accurately, QE 3 began in mid-Sept 2012 and "Twist" was replaced by OMT in mid-Dec 2012. So, full-on QE has had less than 6 months in existence, which actually makes the Fed's "communication" potentially even MORE bearish.
I see no need to make things up to be more than they are.
This is why you read Zero Hedge
"fake wealth, i.e. capital not accumulated from real productive activity, but just fictively created on computer hard drives."
And there's Bitcoin, right there.
Like fucking on a double dose of Viagra and trying to pull it out and putting a condom on. All the time keeping all involved happy and stimulated before safely ejaculating into a rubber hose.
Yeah, right. Is "delusional" even the appropriate word to describe the Fed's state of mind? The only thing they can perhaps still manage to control is a safe exit strategy for their private jets and choppers.
They are loosing credibility and control with each passing day.
Everyone for themselves.
Giving free money to the banks to keep asset prices higher than they should be (gasoline consumption is half.. HALF... what it was in 2007) is just another way to fleece the real economy, skimming money from savers, workers, etc and giving it to the banks.
shit if they quit the qe the source of massive short positions would be shut off as well and PM price might finaly head north
If the Feds had any sense at all, you would think they would realize the problems that surging home prices and surging rent prices might beget upon a population with high unemployment (and those SOBs do know the advertised rate of 7.5% is BS) and stagnant wage growth for most people and an economy that is slogging along. One wonders what they might be preparing to do next when this bubble bursts. Maybe the Fed will step in at that point and buy the whole world.
FedFUBAR.
Maybe unemployment is not a problem as we are allowing millions from our creditors nations (i.e. South Korea, China, India) to come here and buy up all our foreclosed homes and businesses. They have all the money from excess trade reserves. All we have to do is dilute native white middle class americans to a level where they have no political power -if they are unemployed and have no money-who the hell cares what unemployment levels are.Illegal mexicans don't vote -native african Americans don't vote -except for those significant amounts with government jobs and beneficiaries of affirmative action. These third world immigrants (many propserous and flush with cash) don't care about our tradtions of Liberty and Freedom are not a threat -they only care about taking their own share of the pie -and they have signifcant advantges since their home countries have billions in reserves from our trade deficits.
I was gonna junk you but instead I'll pick a point or two and try to argue... A colleague's wife works in unemployment, She gives this example: There are 7 people with the same name and SS # collecting benefits. Why, you ask? Because by the time this is discovered, they have no idea who the original person is! I'm not trying to be rascist, just telling a (true) story, but the "folks" collecting these benefits aren't from here originally... And you can bet your ass, with the new lax "no ID required" voting laws, EVERYONE receiving a free lunch voted for Santa Claus (Obama)...
A friend of mine says uncertainty is the key, investors are actually quite rational, and the system has been broken for decades.
It is the injection of uncertainty that keeps the system going.
As soon as people are able to obtain certainty the market will collapse.
Not that certainty is in itself the problem. Certainty is good. It is simply unfortunate that certainty at this time will reveal the economy to be the house of cards that it is.
In other words, TPTB have intentionally obfuscated the pricing mechanism of the free market in order to acheive their ends. However, in the end, the market always wins.
The odd part is that logic is so easily applied to what is going on. TPTB would not obfuscate to mislead people as to how well the economy is really doing, thus they engage in this behavior because the economy is doing ________?
Thre was an FT headline something about bernanke warning investors about risk taking. I had to chuckle when i saw it. At 85 billion a month, there is no risk taking. Investors have a blank check from the FED.
It reminds me of when Greenspan warned of irrational exberance in 1996. What did he do about it? NOTHING. So the market hiccupped for a day then went about being irrationally exuberant. It isn't what Bernanke says, it is what he does. If Bernanke wants less risk taking, he has to pull the punch bowl that is feeding risk taking. So unless Bernake puts his money where his fat mouth is, what he says is irrrelavent, as more excessive risk taking will continue.
POMO Piss On Me Operations
Gotta dash the quarter finals of CupCake Wars is about to start on BBC.
People need to stop thinking of QE as a just poor policy,
It's robbery, actually.
And even more immoral because it's sanctioned by govt.
People need to stop thinking of QE as a just poor policy,
It's robbery, actually.
And even more immoral because it's sanctioned by govt.
----------
Yes. So we should be glad they are going to slow down with it. And slow it (a little) they can, despite all the caterwauling above....
....IF the economy will have any legs to allow the slow-down. Signals are very mixed right now. That's because the administration's policies are so conflicted. The economy would love to recover, but it's held back by govt interference.
I predict a very small cutback hailed as historic. Just after everyone gets back to work in September.
And no, the interest payments by the govt won't be a problem. Watch their magic.
Infinite QE meet Jenga Market.