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The phrase “don’t fight the Fed” is an unfortunate but popular delusion. It presupposes that the central bank has limitless power to direct the economy because it can print limitless money. I’m not sure where this idea comes from, but consider the fact that anyone today who is under 30 years old was barely old enough in 2008 to understand or care about the credit collapse. These people spent their formative years knowing only stimulus and QE. In their minds, this is the norm, and they think it always works because they haven’t yet witnessed a collapse.

I would say a better phrase for the 2020s is “The Fed is not going to save you”; the Fed is not a superhero and it does not have the power nor the inclination to protect the little people from economic folly. This should be readily apparent today, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and the central bank can’t seem to cure it with Quantitative Easing.

My position has always been that the Fed has no intention of saving the economy, only making it appear as if they care. This is evident in the fact that they created the Everything Bubble in the first place with years of near zero interest rates, then abruptly hiked interest rates into economic weakness, just like they did during the Great Depression. All it took was a few rate increases to cause stock markets to plunge in December 2018; liquidity was strangled and repo markets became unstable. Jerome Powell knew perfectly well that this would be the result; he openly discussed it in the minutes of the October 2012 Federal Open Market Committee.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Monetary Looting

December 18, 2019

Monetary Looting

The United States has historically bragged about its free and transparent markets. But what the Fed is doing today is pulling a dark curtain around the financing of this so-called free and transparent market. The public has no idea which Wall Street firms have received this $3 trillion or why they can’t borrow it elsewhere. This kind of obfuscation by the Federal Reserve could actually stimulate distrust in the U.S. banking system. The Fed admitted as much in its most recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes, writing that participation in the Fed’s loan program “could become stigmatized.”

– Wall Street on Parade: Is the Fed’s $3 Trillion in Loans to Trading Houses on Wall Street Legal?

The business model of Wall Street is fraud.
– Bernie Sanders

Financial services as currently structured is the most pernicious, predatory and corrupt industry on earth. Moreover, it’s the deliberately complex and opaque nature of the industry which then limits public debate when some problem arises and governments and central banks are called upon to take emergency measures to “save the system,” which is just a euphemism for enormous sums of corporate welfare being funneled to people and institutions who couldn’t survive otherwise.

It is systemic looting on a massive scale and the primary patrons of this ongoing and seemingly endless scheme are central banks. In the U.S. this means the Federal Reserve, which recently came back into the “market” with enormous new interventions in both the repo market and via renewed balance sheet expansion. I’ve read many of the smart takes on the repo crisis and still don’t feel confident I know precisely what’s going on. This is intentional.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Free Money Bubble Is About To Burst

November 16, 2019

The Free Money Bubble Is About To Burst

Recently, there has been a parade of central bankers along with their lackeys on Wall Street coming on the financial news networks and desperately trying to convince investors that there are no bubbles extant in the world today. Indeed, the Fed sees no economic or market imbalances anywhere that should give perma-bulls cause for concern. You can listen to Jerome Powell’s upbeat assessment of the situation in his own words during the latest FOMC press conference here. The Fed Chair did, however, manage to acknowledge that corporate debt levels are in fact a bit on the high side. But he added that “we have been monitoring it carefully and taken appropriate steps.” By taking appropriate steps to reduce debt levels Powell must mean slashing interest rates and going back into QE. The problem with that strategy being that is exactly what caused the debt binge and overleveraged condition of corporations in the first place.

Global central banks have abrogated the free market and are in the practice of repealing the business cycle and ensuring stocks are in a permanent bull market. Massive and unrelenting money printing is the “tool” that they use. The good old USA had its central bank cut rates to 0 percent by the end of 2008 to combat the Great Recession; and that paved the way for the EU to join the free-money parade by 2016. In fact, the Band of Japan had already been at the zero-bound range years before. This means much of the developed world has been giving money away gratis for the better part of a decade.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fed Cuts Interest Rate 3rd Time in 2019 With Hints of a Pause

October 30, 2019

Fed Cuts Interest Rate 3rd Time in 2019 With Hints of a Pause

The FOMC committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate to 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 percent.

Following the third rate cut in 2019, the Federal Reserve issued this short FOMC Statement.

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September indicates that the labor market remains strong and that economic activity has been rising at a moderate rate. Job gains have been solid, on average, in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Although household spending has been rising at a strong pace, business fixed investment and exports remain weak. On a 12-month basis, overall inflation and inflation for items other than food and energy are running below 2 percent. Market-based measures of inflation compensation remain low; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations are little changed.
Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability. In light of the implications of global developments for the economic outlook as well as muted inflation pressures, the Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate to 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 percent. This action supports the Committee’s view that sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near the Committee’s symmetric 2 percent objective are the most likely outcomes, but uncertainties about this outlook remain. The Committee will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook as it assesses the appropriate path of the target range for the federal funds rate.
In determining the timing and size of future adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess realized and expected economic conditions relative to its maximum employment objective and its symmetric 2 percent inflation objective. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and re

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fed Cuts Rates Again, But Drops “Act As Appropriate” Pledge Signaling It Is Done Cutting

October 30, 2019

Fed Cuts Rates Again, But Drops “Act As Appropriate” Pledge Signaling It Is Done Cutting

While the assumption is that Fed officials (having passed on the opportunity to lean against dovish market expectations) would not shock the market and vote to keep rates unchanged (96% odds and Fed has never surprised at that level), that’s precisely what happened when the Fed announced it would cut rates by another 25bps, the 3rd rate cut in the past 4 months, and now the big question is whether this will be the last rate cut for the foreseeable future.

Key takeaways (via Bloomberg) from the FOMC decision:

Fed cuts federal-funds rate target range by a quarter point to 1.5%-1.75% — as investors and most economists expected — in the third straight reduction aimed at protecting the record-long U.S. expansion from threats posed by tariff wars and weak global growth, amid “muted inflation pressures”
But FOMC signals it could pause, as the statement omits the familiar pledge from recent months to “act as appropriate to sustain the expansion”; Fed instead says it will monitor incoming information as it “assesses the appropriate path” of rates
Fed still leaves door open to easing, saying that uncertainties remain around its outlook even as it calls labor market and consumption “strong”; acknowledges that business investment and exports “remain weak”
Kansas City Fed President Esther George and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren also dissent for third straight time, preferring no rate move at this meeting; St. Louis Fed President James Bullard votes with FOMC majority after dissenting at prior meeting in favor of half-point cut
Fed lowers two other key interest rates by quarter point, bringing interest on excess reserves rate to 1.55% and discount rate to 2.25%

As expected, and priced in, The Fed cut rates 25bps and shifted the wording in the statement to a more hawkish stance, from:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NY Fed Announces Extension Of Overnight Repos Until Nov 4, Will Offer 8 More Term Repos

October 4, 2019

NY Fed Announces Extension Of Overnight Repos Until Nov 4, Will Offer 8 More Term Repos

Anyone who expected that the easing of the quarter-end funding squeeze in the repo market would mean the Fed would gradually fade its interventions in the repo market, was disappointed on Friday afternoon when the NY Fed announced it would extend the duration of overnight repo operations (with a total size of $75BN) for at least another month, while also offer no less than eight 2-week term repo operations until November 4, 2019, which confirms that the funding unlocked via term repo is no longer merely a part of the quarter-end arsenal but an integral part of the Fed’s overall “temporary” open market operations… which are starting to look quite permanent.

This is the statement published moments ago by the NY Fed:

In accordance with the most recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) directive, the Open Market Trading Desk (the Desk) at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will conduct a series of overnight and term repurchase agreement (repo) operations to help maintain the federal funds rate within the target range.
Effective the week of October 7, the Desk will offer term repos through the end of October as indicated in the schedule below. The Desk will continue to offer daily overnight repos for an aggregate amount of at least $75 billion each through Monday, November 4, 2019.
Securities eligible as collateral include Treasury, agency debt, and agency mortgage-backed securities. Awarded amounts may be less than the amount offered, depending on the total quantity of eligible propositions submitted. Additional details about the operations will be released each afternoon for the following day’s operation(s) on the Repurchase Agreement Operational Details webpage. The operation schedule and parameters are subject to change if market conditions warrant or should the FOMC alter its guidance to the Desk.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Goldman: Here’s Why The Fed Is About To Shock The Market

June 16, 2019

Goldman: Here’s Why The Fed Is About To Shock The Market

As discussed earlier, and as both Bank of America and JPM explained, the biggest risk for the market next week is if the Fed not only doesn’t cut – the market assigns a very low probability to such a “pre-emptive” move – but fails to signal an aggressive dovish reversal in the form of a rate cut in July. And yet, despite its upbeat outlook – it still expects the S&P to close the year at 3,000, Goldman’s strategists are certainly taking the over on how hawkish the Fed will sound next week.

As Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius writes, the bank expects “unchanged” policy at the June 18-19 FOMC meeting and sees the subjective odds of a June cut at only 10%. More importantly, while Goldman looks for a dovish tilt to the proceedings it won’t be nearly enough to appease markets that have aggressively priced rate cuts in the fall.

Barring an unlikely surprise on the funds rate, we expect the market to focus on four key developments:

the statement’s policy stance/balance of risks paragraph,
the number of participants projecting cuts in the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP),
the extent of dovish changes to the statement and economic forecasts, and
the tone of Powell’s press conference.

Rather than Goldman’s standard “Then and Now” table, the chart below “plots the setup for next week’s meeting across three dimensions, as well as their averages ahead of three major dovish shifts: September 2007 (at which the Fed abandoned the hiking bias and cut 50bps in response to subprime turmoil), September 2010 (formally signaled QE2), and March 2016 (scuttled the hiking cycle until global risks abated). Here, Hatzius also shows the three-month evolution of these four variables: stock prices, IG credit spreads, and consensus GDP growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Doing Harm with Uber-Dovish

March 25, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Doing Harm with Uber-Dovish

This week’s FOMC meeting will be debated for years – perhaps even decades. The Fed essentially pre-committed to no rate hike in 2019. The committee downgraded both its growth and inflation forecasts. Having all at once turned of little consequence, we can now dismiss the 3.8% unemployment rate and the strongest wage growth in a decade. Moreover, the Fed announced it would be scaling back and then winding down balance sheet “normalization” by September. This put an impressive exclamation point on a historic policy shift since the December 19th meeting. At least for me, it hearkened back to a Rick Santelli moment: “What’s the Fed afraid of?”

Markets came into the meeting fully anticipating a dovish Fed. Our central bank returned to the old playbook of beating expectations. In the process, the Federal Reserve doused an already flaming fixed-income marketplace with additional fuel.

After trading to 3.34% during November 8th trading, ten-year Treasury yields ended this week a full 90 bps lower at 2.44%, trading Friday at the lowest yields since December 2017. Yields were down 15 bps this week – 17 bps from Tuesday’s (pre-Fed day) close – and 28 bps so far in March. And with three-month T-bill rates at 2.40%, the three-month/10-year Treasury curve flattened to the narrowest spread since 2007 (briefly inverting Friday). Five-year Treasury yields ended the week inverted 16 bps to three-month T-bills – and two-year Treasuries were inverted about eight bps.

Collapsing sovereign yields were a global phenomenon. Japan’s 10-year JGB yields declined four bps Friday to negative eight bps (-0.08%), the lowest yields since September 2016. With Germany’s Markit Manufacturing index sinking to the lowest level since 2012 (44.7), bund yields dropped seven bps to negative 0.015% – also lows going back to September 2016. Swiss 10-year yields sank 12 bps this week to negative 0.45%. Two-year German yields closed out the week at negative 0.57%. UK 10-year yields dropped 20 bps (1.01%), Spain 12 bps (1.07%) and France 11 bps (0.35%).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fed Has Given Up: Get Ready for More QE

March 23, 2019

The Fed Has Given Up: Get Ready for More QE

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to keep the federal funds rate unchanged. Overall, the FOMC signaled it has made a dovish turn away from the promised normalization of monetary policy which the Fed has promised will be implemented “some day” for a decade. Although the Fed began to slowly raise rates in late 2016 — after nearly a decade of near-zero rates — the target rate never returned to even three percent, and thus remains well below what would have been a more normal rate of the sort seen prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

Much of the Fed’s continued reluctance to upset the easy-money apple cart comes from growing concerns over the strength of the economy. Although job growth numbers have been high in recent years — and this has been assumed to be proof of a robust economy — other indicators point toward less strength. Workforce participation numbers, wage growth, net worth numbers, auto-loan delinquencies and other indicators suggest many Americans are in a more precarious position than headlines might suggest.

The Fed’s refusal to follow through on raising rates, however, has highlighted this economic weakness, and today’s front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal reads: “Growth Fears to Keep Fed on Hold”

Abandoning Plans to Reduce the Balance Sheet

For similar reasons, the Fed has also signaled it won’t be doing much about it’s enormous balance sheet which ballooned to over four trillion dollars in the wake of the financial crisis. Faced with enormous amounts of unwanted assets such as mortgage-backed securities, the Fed began buying up these assets both to prop up — and bail out — banks and to produce an artificially high price for debt of all sort.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Everything Bubble Has Met Its Needle… and It’s Named Jerome Powell

January 4, 2019

The Everything Bubble Has Met Its Needle… and It’s Named Jerome Powell

In December, Jerome Powell confirmed that he is going to implement a financial reset.

That reset will crash stocks.

We know this because the Fed didn’t even HINT at tapering its Quantitative Tightening program at this latest Fed FOMC despite stocks staging the worst December since the Great Depression.

This tells us that the Powell Fed is going to normalize the Fed’s balance sheet no matter what. And THAT is the real issue for the financial markets (the withdrawal of liquidity) NOT rate hikes/cuts.

This is what the market is reacting to. Stocks now know that the era of easy money is over. The Fed is being run by a man who doesn’t see it has his job to create/sustain asset bubbles.

And that is why The Fed Has Confirmed It Will Crash Stocks

In December, Jerome Powell confirmed that he is going to implement a financial reset.

That reset will crash stocks.

We know this because the Fed didn’t even HINT at tapering its Quantitative Tightening program at this latest Fed FOMC despite stocks staging the worst December since the Great Depression.

This is what the market is reacting to. Stocks now know that the era of easy money is over. The Fed is being run by a man who doesn’t see it has his job to create/sustain asset bubbles.

And that is why we are going to crash.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Powell Federal Reserve Lowers “Fed Put” Strike Price

December 22, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Powell Federal Reserve Lowers “Fed Put” Strike Price

I have little confidence history will get this right. Today’s overwhelming consensus view holds that Powell this week committed a major policy blunder. After his early-October “we’re a long way from neutral” “rookie mistake”, he has followed with a rate increase right in the throes of a stock market sell-off, Credit market instability and mounting global and domestic economic risk. He stated the Fed’s balance sheet runoff was stuck on autopilot, even as stunned market participants fret illiquidity. Moreover, Powell disappointed skittish markets heading right into December quadruple-witch options expiration – in the face of an impending government shutdown. How times have changed.

There was irony in Alan Greenspan joining Bloomberg’s Tom Keene Wednesday for live coverage of the FOMC policy decision. It was, after all, the original “Greenspan put” that morphed over Bernanke’s and Yellen’s terms into the interminable “Fed put.” Markets this week were desperate for confirmation that the Powell Fed would uphold the tradition of pacifying the markets and, when needed, invoking the Federal Reserve backstop. Markets were prepared to begrudgingly tolerate a rate increase. But the marketplace demanded evidence – an explicit signal – that the FOMC recognized the gravity of market developments and was prepared to intervene. Chairman Powell didn’t share the markets’ agenda.

Our Federal Reserve Chairman should be commended. Under extraordinary pressure, Mr. Powell and the FOMC didn’t buckle.

Expiration for the aged “Fed put” was long past due. For too long it has been integral to precarious Bubble Dynamics. It has promoted speculation and speculative leverage. It is indispensable to a derivatives complex that too often distorts, exacerbates and redirects risk. The “Fed put” has been integral to momentous market misperceptions, distortions and structural maladjustment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Laughable FOMC Statements on Phillips Curve, Inflation Expectations

February 22, 2018

Laughable FOMC Statements on Phillips Curve, Inflation Expectations

The Jan 30-31 FOMC minutes were published today. In addition to the usual drivel came laughable Phillips Curve nonsense.

The Fed released its January 30-31 FOMC Meeting Minutes today.

The minutes were a combination of the usual drivel about the economy plus some downright laughable comments on the Phillips Curve and inflation expectations.Let’s start with the drivel.

Economic Drivel

In their discussion of the economic situation and the outlook, meeting participants agreed that information received since the FOMC met in December indicated that the labor market continued to strengthen and that economic activity expanded at a solid rate. Gains in employment, household spending, and business fixed investment were solid, and the unemployment rate stayed low. On a 12-month basis, both overall inflation and inflation for items other than food and energy continued to run below 2 percent. Market-based measures of inflation compensation increased in recent months but remained low; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations were little changed, on balance.

Almost all participants continued to anticipate that inflation would move up to the Committee’s 2 percent objective over the medium term as economic growth remained above trend and the labor market stayed strong; several commented that recent developments had increased their confidence in the outlook for further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent inflation objective. A couple noted that a step-up in the pace of economic growth could tighten labor market conditions even more than they currently anticipated, posing risks to inflation and financial stability associated with substantially overshooting full employment.

However, some participants saw an appreciable risk that inflation would continue to fall short of the Committee’s objective. These participants saw little solid evidence that the strength of economic activity and the labor market was showing through to significant wage or inflation pressures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Fed is on a Mission

September 21, 2017

This Fed is on a Mission

QE Unwind starts Oct. 1. Rate hike in Dec. Low inflation, no problem.

The two-day meeting of the FOMC ended on Wednesday with a momentous announcement that has been telegraphed for months: the QE unwind begins October 1. It marks the end of an era.

The unwind will proceed at the pace and via the mechanisms announced at its June 14 meeting. The purpose is to shrink its balance sheet and undo what QE has done, thus reversing the purpose of QE.

Countless people, worried about their portfolios and real estate investments, have stated with relentless persistence that the Fed would never unwind QE – that it in fact cannot afford to unwind QE.

The vote was unanimous. Even no-rate-hike-ever and cannot-spot-housing-bubbles Neel Kashkari voted for it.

The Fed also telegraphed that it could raise its target range for the federal funds rate a third time this year, from the current range of 1.0% to 1.25%. There is only one policy meeting with a press conference left this year: December 13, when the two-day meeting ends, remains the top candidate for the next rate hike.

This has been the routine since the rate hike last December: The FOMC decides to change its monetary policy at every meeting with a press conference: December, March, June, today, and December.

Even hurricanes won’t push the Fed off track.

The Fed specifically mentioned Harvey, Irma, and Maria. No matter how destructive, they won’t impact the economy “materially” over the “medium term” and therefore won’t impact the Fed’s policies:

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria have devastated many communities, inflicting severe hardship. Storm-related disruptions and rebuilding will affect economic activity in the near term, but past experience suggests that the storms are unlikely to materially alter the course of the national economy over the medium term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rate Hike Cycles, Gold, and the “Rule of Total Morons”

September 21, 2017

Rate Hike Cycles, Gold, and the “Rule of Total Morons”

In response to Janet Yellen’s everything is OK speech following today’s balance sheet reduction notice by the FOMC committee, I received an interesting set of comments from Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man Blog regarding rate hike cycles, gold, and stock market peaks.

“Rule of Total Morons”

A new bull market in gold started in late 2015 concurrently with the Fed’s first rate hike. That is no coincidence. The gold market is highly sensitive to future changes in liquidity. The more tightening moves the Fed undertakes (which it does in the face of collapsing money supply growth, because its decisions are based on lagging economic indicators), the more gold bullish and the more stock market bearish the fundamental backdrop becomes. Anyone long stocks should actually ask himself how it is possible that gold is up nearly 30% from its low, despite an ostensibly “gold bearish” rate hike cycle.

But they never do ask the right questions, which is why stocks peak with a big lag, particularly in major bubbles. Economic historians found out that the economy was technically very likely already in recession when the stock market peaked in 1929. In the 2007 to 2009 bust, NBER backdated the beginning of the recession to December 2007, but in May of 2008 Bernanke was still talking about how well the economy was doing and how the high oil price was “creating inflation” (thereafter he began to shut up about all that, but not before demonstrating for everyone to see how utterly clueless he was). And of course, stocks peaked in October of 2007, practically two seconds before the economy fell into recession.

In bubble regimes, the final stage is always characterized by the “rule of total morons”. That’s just how it is.

Missing Inflation

Central banks cannot see inflation because they are totally clueless how to measure it: Central Banks Puzzled as Global Inflation Hits Lowest Level Since 2009: Solving the Puzzle

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yellen’s Balance Sheet Baloney

April 3, 2017

YELLEN’S BALANCE SHEET BALONEY

Of the many questions reporters asked Janet Yellen on Wednesday, at her press conference following the FOMC’s decision to raise the Fed’s policy rates, my favorite was the very first, posed by the Financial Times‘ U.S. Economics Editor, Sam Fleming.

Here is Mr. Fleming’s question:

[You’ve stated that the Fed wants to delay*] balance sheet normalization until [interest rate*] normalization is well under way. Could you give us some sense about “what well under way” means, at least in your mind — what kind of hurdles are you setting, what kind of economic conditions would you like to see, is it a matter of the level of the short term federal funds rate as being the main issue? What kind of role do you see the role of the balance sheet playing in the mobilization process over longer term? Is it an active tool or passive tool? Thanks.

And here is Chair Yellen’s response:

Let me start with the second question first. We have emphasized for quite some time that the committee wishes to use variations in the fed funds rate target or short term interest rate target as our key active tool of policy. We think it’s much easier, in using that tool, to communicate the stance of policy. We have much more experience with it, and have a better idea of its impact on the economy. So, while the balance sheet asset purchases are a tool that we could conceivably resort to if we found ourselves in a serious downturn where we were again up against the zero bound, and faced with substantial weakness in the economy, it’s not a tool that we would want to use as a routine tool of policy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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