Back on November 25, 2008, in response to the complete wipe out in the capital markets, the Fed quietly announced its foray into Quantiative Easing, which was expanded in March of the following year, and the de facto start of the New Normal Centrally Planned regime.
491 days later, on March 31, 2010, QE1 was "tapered."
206 days later, when the market had gone exactly nowhere, the Fed commenced QE2 which had previously been disclosed at the 2010 Jackson Hole conference.
QE2 continued for 250 days and fully "tapered" on June 30, 2011.
83 short days later, with the market tumbling, the Fed had no choice but to continue its central banking press, and on September 21, 2011 started Operation Twist, which has since turned into QE3, or 4 depending on how one keeps count, also known as open-ended QE.
A month ago, despite one failed headfake experiment previously, the Fed announced it would begin tapering Open-ended QE by $10 billion, ostensibly by $10 billion at every FOMC meeting, but "data dependent" which of course means if the market is crashing the Fed would stay engaged.
So central planning continues, and as of January 19, 2014, the latest episode of QE, started in September 2011, has gone on for 851 days.
Altogether, of the 1881 days starting on November 25, 2008 and continuing through January 19, 2014, the Fed has directly and unambiguously intervened in the markets for a total of 1592 days. It was not been directly involved in the market for a tiny 289 days.
In sum: the New Normal is best characterized by a Federal Reserve which has been actively manipulating the equity "market" 85% of the time.
This is how the Fed's central-planning calendar looks:
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And this chart, courtesy of DoubleLine Capital, shows how the "stock market" has moved during this period.
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