Ben Bernanke

No wonder one third of Americans are obese. The crap we are shoveling into our bodies is on par with the misinformation, propaganda and lies that are being programmed into our minds by government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, corporate media gurus, and central banker puppets. Chief Clinton propaganda mouthpiece, James Carville, famously remarked during the 1992 presidential campaign that, “It’s the economy, stupid”. Clinton was able to successfully convince the American voters that George Bush’s handling of the economy caused the 1991 recession. In retrospect, it was revealed the economy had been recovering for months prior to the election. No one could ever accuse the American people of being perceptive, realistic or critical thinking when it comes to economics, math, history or distinguishing between truth or lies. Our government controlled public school system has successfully dumbed down the populace to a level where they enjoy their slavery and prefer conscious ignorance to critical thought.

With Spain today, we have a virtually unregulated banking system sitting atop HALF of ALL Spanish mortgages after a housing bubble that makes the one that happened in the US look like a small bump.

At first we were going to comment on this "response" by the high priest of Keynesian shamanic tautology to Mark Spitznagel's latest WSJ opinion piece, but then we just started laughing, and kept on laughing, and kept on laughing...

So far, 2012 has been a banner year for the stock market, which recently closed the books on its best first quarter in 14 years. But Casey Research Chairman Doug Casey insists that time is running out on the ticking time bombs. Next week when Casey Research's spring summit gets underway, Casey will open the first general session addressing the question of whether the inevitable is now imminent. In another exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Casey tells us that he foresees extreme volatility "as the titanic forces of inflation and deflation fight with each other" and a forced shift to speculation to either protect or build wealth.

While one can talk until one is blue in the face about the pros and cons of the current central bank's (mis)deeds over the past 7 years, the reality is that most people are backward-looking (i.e., economists), not forward (which of course explains the prevalence of speculation as to whether the Fed's exponentially rising balance sheet will result in hyperdeflation or hyperinflation). As such, one can, for now at least, judge the Fed merely in the context of what it has achieved to date, not by the seeds of destruction it has planted. So how has Ben Bernanke performed so far when compared to his previous 4 predecessors, at least based on those two now completely irrelevant, but still oddly believed mandates: inflation and unemployment (because by now we all know that even the Chairman himself admitted the only thing that matters to the Fed is the Russell 2000 closing value). Below we present the Fed's accomplishments in the arena of inflation and jobs in the context of the past 60 years split by Chairmen starting with Martin (remember the 1951 Accord?), then going to Burns/Miller, Volcker, Greenspan and finally Bernanke. So who has been the fabbest among the Fed-est? You decide.

Muppets have received a lot of bad press since Greg Smith realized that he is not, in fact, a one-percenter.  Fortunately Elmo’s back to reclaim his rightful place in the financial world:  Making the seemingly incomprehensible  comprehensible while politely pointing out what should be obvious to everyone not in diapers.  That’s not so easy when the economic views espoused by everyone from central bankers to TV talking heads can only be accurately described as infantile.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath was kind enough to present to the general public some 515 pages of massively redacted Fed transcripts from the oh so very interesting period of 2007-2010, ahead of schedule. Unfortunately those curious to find out the details of just what was going on in that critical period between March 2008 and March 2009 will have to wait another 3 years for the full declassification to take place. That said, digging among the unredacted data, one does find the occasional pearl. Such as the following exchange between CHAIRMAN BERNANKE and the Fed staff, from the October 28-29, 2008 meeting, in the days when AIG was dying, when Lehman had failed, when money markets had frozen and when the end of the world was nigh. Ironically, it is this one unredacted piece of data that pretty much says it all.

• I’d like first to do the open market operations, which I hope are not too controversial. [Laughter] (source: page 231 of 513)

And that, as they say, is that.

From Morgan Stanley: "In our mind, many of the approaches to algorithmic execution were developed in an environment that is substantially, structurally different from today’s environment. In particular, the early part of the last decade saw households as significant natural liquidity providers as they sold their single stock positions over time to exchange them for institutionally managed products... While the time horizon over which liquidity is provided can range from microseconds to months, it is particularly shorter-term liquidity provisioning that has become more common." Translation: as retail investors retrench more and more, which they will due to previously discussed secular themes as well as demographics, and HFT becomes and ever more dominant force, which it has no choice but to, liquidity and investment horizons will get ever shorter and shorter and shorter, until eventually by simple limit expansion, they hit zero, or some investing singularity, for those who are thought experiment inclined. That is when the currently unsustainable course of market de-evolution will, to use a symbolic 100 year anniversary allegory, finally hit the iceberg head one one final time.

Addressing his perception of lessons learned from the financial crisis, Ben Bernanke is speaking this afternoon on poor risk management and shadow banking vulnerabilities - all of which remain obviously as we continue to draw attention to. However, more worrisome for the junkies is the total lack of QE3 chatter in his speech. While he does note the words 'collateral' and 'repo' the proximity of the words 'Shadow, Institutions, & Vulnerabilities' are awkwardly close.

For those who believe in this sort of thing, here is JPM's Chief Technician Michael Krauss, who says that "The “one way” market rally since Dec-Jan is over. Expect weeks, if not months of lateral movement." Well, there's that. Then there is the only thing that matters in "markets" these days - which way Ben Bernanke sneezes. Everything else is meaningless: McClellan oscillators, Ichimoku clouds, RSIs, oh and of course, fundamentals.

The Fed's currency swap with the ECB is nothing more than a covert bailout for European banks. Philipp Bagus of Mises.com explains how the USD-funding crisis occurred among European banks inevitably leading to the Fed assuming the role of international lender of last resort - for which US taxpayers are told to be lucky happy since this free-lunch from printing USD and sending them overseas provides an almost risk-free benefit in the form of interest on the swap. Furthermore, the M.A.D. defense was also initiated that if this was not done, it would be far worse for US markets (and we assume implicitly the economy). The Fed's assurances on ending the bailout policy should it become imprudent or cost-benefits get misaligned seems like wishful thinking and as the EUR-USD basis swap starts to deteriorate once again, we wonder just how long before the Fed's assumed role of bailing out the financial industry and governments of the world by debasing the dollar will come home to roost. As Bagus concludes: "Fed officials claim to know that the bailout-swaps are basically a free lunch for US taxpayers and a prudent thing to do. Thank God the world is in such good hands." and perhaps more worryingly "The highest cost of the Fed policy, therefore, may be liberty in Europe" as the Euro project is enabled to play out to its increasingly centralized full fiscal union endgame.

I know, I know: the stock market will never go down because Ben Bernanke and the other central bankers won't let it. It's funny how the "Bernanke/European Central Bank Put" is ranked alongside gravity as a rule of Nature until markets roll over; then talk shifts from purring adulation of central bankers' godlike powers to panicky calls for another flood of liquidity/free money to "save" the market from the harsh reality of global recession. The crash test dummies know better: they've been called up for a humongous crash. The basic mechanism that is being overlooked is Liquidity Resistance. This is akin to insulin resistance, where insulin becomes less effective at lowering blood sugars. The amount of insulin required to maintain normal blood sugar levels increases as resistance rises until even massive doses of insulin no longer have the desired effect and the system crashes.

• With a 2 Year delay, both FT and WSJ start covering the shadow banking system. For our ongoing coverage for the past 2.5 years see here.
• Trouble in shipping turns ocean into scrapheap (Telegraph)
• First-Quarter Home Prices Down 20.7% in Capital (China Daily)
• Bernanke Says Banks Need Bigger Capital Buffer (Reuters)
• Monti’s Overhaul Can’t Stop Pain From Spain: Euro Credit (Bloomberg)
• Spain Confronts Crisis Threat as Rajoy Seeks Deficit Cuts (Bloomberg)
• Japan’s Noda Announces Anti-Deflation Talks as BOJ Sets Policy (Bloomberg)
• White House makes case for Buffett Rule (CNN)
• Cameron to Make Historic Myanmar Trip (FT)
• 'Time for Closer Ties' With India (China Daily)

Back in 2006, contrary to conventional wisdom, many financial professionals were well aware of the subprime bubble, and that the trajectory of home prices was unsustainable. However, because there was no way to know just when it would pop, few if any dared to bet against the herd (those who did, and did so early despite all odds, made greater than 100-1 returns). Fast forward to today, when the most comparable to subprime, cheap credit-induced bubble, is that of student loans (for extended literature on why the non-dischargeable student loan bubble will "create a generation of wage slavery" read this and much of the easily accessible literature on the topic elsewhere) which have now surpassed $1 trillion in notional. Yet oddly enough, just like in the case of the subprime bubble, so in the ongoing expansion of the credit bubble manifested in this case by student loans, we have an early warning that the party is almost over, coming from the most unexpected of sources: JPMorgan.

The regulators have "fixed" a big problem. Actually they just created a much larger one.