The Clown Show Has Come and Gone

The opening segment from this week’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole has a little fun with the post-FOMC market situation.  Unfortunately, there is all too much reality in this clowning around.  From NFTRH 387:

Our main theme has been that the ironclad post-2011 confidence in the Federal Reserve among conventional market participants would slowly but surely start to fade because macro parlor tricks, so vigorously employed by the Bernanke Fed, were only tricks or in some cases (Operation Twist) borderline magic, after all.

clowncar

At biiwii.com (still unsure if or in what capacity the site may reappear) we used to have fun with clown car videos, as the various Fed members piled out honking horns, doing somersaults and shouting incomprehensible phrases and announcements.

Like Rosco’s clown car above, that is all fading away now. The pretense that the Fed is the steward of a sound financial system and currency has been stripped away. We are no longer anticipating a waning of confidence. In rolling over last week and playing dead, the Fed announced for all the world to see that it is no more secure or respectable than the clown known as ‘the Draghi’, Kuroda the Klown or the troupes in Canada, Australia, England and China’s Central Planning.

The US Fed, through no good work of its own was the beneficiary of a Goldilocks environment in which global economic pressures resulted in capital flight into the US.

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Post-FOMC; Uup is Down

Not only was there not a policy surprise – you know, in the face of recent commodity strength and those embedded services costs throughout the economy – but the Fed did not even talk tough, which I thought they might do.  Maybe Yellen will wobble and speak out of both sides of her mouth at the press conference.

Here is the USD ETF flopping on the non-event.

uup

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Okay Speed Readers…

Time to whip through this text and then start hitting buttons!  Or not.

Release Date: March 16, 2016

For release at 2:00 p.m. EDT

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January suggests that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace despite the global economic and financial developments of recent months. Household spending has been increasing at a moderate rate, and the housing sector has improved further; however, business fixed investment and net exports have been soft. A range of recent indicators, including strong job gains, points to additional strengthening of the labor market. Inflation picked up in recent months; however, it continued to run below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run objective, partly reflecting declines in energy prices and in prices of non-energy imports. Market-based measures of inflation compensation remain low; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations are little changed, on balance, in recent months.

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alice

Fed’s Bag of Tricks: Op-Twist 2?

Yesterday we reviewed the Scariest Chart in the World, an overly sensational tongue in cheek title for a chart that has bearish historical implications for the S&P 500.  Here it…

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Oh Snap!

I just discovered that one of my favorite data dumps, the St. Louis Fed, has a blog.  It is now linked to the left as 'FRED Blog'. From FRED: FRED…

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FOMC Accelerant

These moves were likely either sooner or later, and the FOMC's sorta kinda change of wording was just the accelerant needed. Uncle Buck is taking a break... ...and EUR/USD is…

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Short-Term Yields and the FOMC

So next week the drama will unfold once again on Wednesday as a bunch of interest rate manipulators make a "decision".  The 2 year yield has been telling them since…

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@Biiwii

As noted, this site is going to be more technical in nature where we do real work to get the markets right, as opposed to make inflammatory commentary about the…

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Yellen Greatly Concerned About Inequality

So am I and so are most decent people.  So bravo Janet, you are a decent person.  You are greatly concerned about inequality in this richest nation on earth.

Yellen says she’s ‘greatly’ concerned by rising inequality

Now let’s work the details…

“It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority,” Yellen said in a speech to a conference on inequality sponsored by the Boston Fed.

It is also no secret that manipulating short-term interest rates toward zero kills regular peoples’ ability to save.  It creates and furthers a wealthy investor class directly at the expense of the public, who have traditionally been savers.

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