Federal Reserve Bank

We are confused: on one hand the Fed is injecting hundreds of billions of liquidity into the market, boosting the S&P to all time highs and making the rich richer (Piketty taking Excel lessons from Rogoff notwithstanding) while the economy remains stagnant because, according to the BLS, inflation is too low, and as everyone knows the biggest lament of the impoverished middle class is that "the value of my dollar isn't being destroyed fast enough for me to feel confident about the future." On the other hand, the very same Federal Reserve Bank (of Chicago), just announced that as a result of "prices continuing to increase between 3% and 33%" (!), beginning May 27 it is hiking the prices in its cafeteria. So, clearly prices are rising at a 33% clip due to, how does the IMF put it, lowflation, right? Oh, and harsh weather.

"This issue of participation in the labor force is a highly contentious one," notes RDG's Jon Ryding and has been extensively discussed here as some people leave the labor pool and retire after giving up on the job search (do people really want to work past age 65 given the choice? Are that many people doing what they love?) But, as Bloomberg reports, there is a growing segment of boomers who are paying for retirement with the proceeds of rallying stocks. For the select few, last year’s 30% surge in the S&P500 capped a bull market now in its sixth year (with 'wealth' trickling down to 401(k)s), but as one wealth manager warned "everyone understands that the market went crazy last year," and while 8 million people aged 65 and older are working, a 72% jump from a decade ago; there are a lucky few who are cashing out with the view that "if I need to, I can go back to work, but right now I’m going to enjoy life."

In a well-crafted 688 words published just 5 minutes after the minutes were exposed to the public, the Wall Street Journal's Jon Hilsenrath provides what bullish equity market believers might consider one of his more hawkish commentaries on what the Fed is really thinking. "Federal Reserve officials turned their attention to longer-run issues at their April policy meeting," he noted; adding that discussion of the Fed's "exit strategy" from low interest rates has heated up in recent weeks. His summation - lots of talk, no action... not what the bad-news-is-good-news crowd wants to hear.

The bells are ringing for the markets, but few are noticing.

Bailing out banks is not hard when a nation has a sovereign currency and the banks’ debts are denominated in that currency.

More Reasons QE Is a Dud

As The Fed tapers and shifts its decision-making process away from rules-based, model-backed strategies in favor of "we'll know when to tighten when we see it" qualitative hand-waving, it seems the need to maintain teams of PhDs - to mutually masturbate over the historical back-fitted effectiveness of their models - is lacking. As The Boston Globe reports, The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston will cut nearly 15% of its workforce - around 160 jobs - in the largest layoff in over a decade... “It’s obviously a tough decision for us and the folks who are here,” Lavelle said. “It’s really about cost and efficiency.” Austerity strikes... (as it turns out the job cuts are due to losing a key customer - The US Treasury!)

When it comes to the San Francisco Fed, it is best known throughout the financial community as the group of crack economists who spend millions of taxpayer funds to investigate such probing, for kindergarteners at least, topics as: is water wet, do trees make a sound when they fall in the forest, is it still worth going to college, and are hedge funds important in a crisis. Little did we know that, at least some of them, are homicidal psychopaths with suicidal tendencies. Because this is precisely what was revealed moments ago when Bloomberg reported that the chief operating officer of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and 26-year San Fran Fed veteran, Richard Hornsby, is facing a felony charge for threatening to kill the agency’s former top official, Ed DeMarco, and then kill himself.

Italy’s central bank, the Banca d’Italia, has recently published an important document detailing the storage locations and composition of the country’s gold reserves. The document confirms that Italy’s gold is held across four vault locations, three of which are outside Italy. This is a significant announcement given that the Banca d’Italia is the world’s third largest official holder of gold after the U.S. and Germany. Italy officially holds 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, worth more than €72 billion (US$ 100 billion) at current market prices. In the detailed three page report focusing exclusively on its gold reserves (and only published in Italian), the Banca d’Italia reveals that 1,199.4 tonnes, or nearly half the total, is held in the Bank’s own vaults under its Palazzo Koch headquarters on Via Nazionale in Rome, while most of the other half is stored in the Federal Reserve Bank gold vault in New York. The report also states that smaller amounts are stored at the Bank of England in London, and at the vaults of the Swiss National Bank in Bern, Switzerland.

Bad Government and Central Bank Policy Are the MAIN CAUSE of Runaway Inequality

Military Keynesians Are Full of Sh ... (Cough) ... Shallow Myths

Scientific Study Shows that the U.S. Is an Oligarchy

As the Ukrainian crisis festers and other dangers in the Pacific and the Mideast grow, an odd consensus among alternative analysts is taking hold — namely the belief that President Vladimir Putin and Russia represent some kind of opposition to globalization and the rule of corporate financiers. Perhaps moments in Putin’s rhetoric have seduced elements of the Liberty Movement into assuming that Russia is a “victim” in the grand schemes of Western oligarchy and that Russia is truly the "white knight", the underdog willing to stand up against the New World Order. We're sorry to say that nothing could be further from the truth. Russia is just as much a tool of the global elite today as it was after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Putin is just as much a socialist puppet as Barack Obama.

As we noted earlier this week, the Fed is growing increasingly concerned of a bubble forming in the financial markets. Previously we noted that Janet Yellen was issued warnings regarding this.

To really appreciate “too big to fail,” you must first and foremost understand that it is a political concept that springs from a sense of liberal privilege and entitlement.