SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Fed Has Crossed the Rubicon

The Fed very deliberately stopped a market correction and managed to turn the equity markets around, very consciously, in order to end their taper without any negative effects to Wall Street.

Last night the Bank of Japan announced a more aggressive quantitative easing AND pledged a portion of their national pension fund to buying not only Japanese equities but also the equities of foreign markets.

The Fed and the Bank of Japan are back doing the money printing tag team and carry trades that carried the markets higher from 2002 to 2007 and helped to create the housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis.

And it is obvious that Wall Street and the ruling elite have learned absolutely nothing. They go from crisis to crisis, with their delusions of power growing with each successful fraud. If there is another financial crisis and bailout, prosecutions may be among the least of their problems.

Right now the BOJ is exporting deflation to the US in the form of a strong dollar. This is not going to help a recovery, but Yen based printed money may help to swell paper assets.

This is a formula for disaster.

 

Bernie Sanders: Breaking Big Money's Grip on US Elections

Not likely with both major parties swilling at the Big Money troughs, during and after office.

The first step will be to get the politicians to care what the people think and want again, and not treat them with such casual disdain and contempt.



Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - Good Morning Fiat Nam!

Good morning, Fiat Nam!

Thanks to Dave and Denali Guide for suggesting that greeting.

In case you were wondering what happened overnight, Kuroda and the Central Bank of Japan decided to significantly increase their Quantitative Easing.

As you may recall, the Fed and the Japanese Central Bank did a tag team of money printing in the 'recovery' in the 2000's as the US pumped up a housing bubble.

The Japanese said that in addition to buying more official debt, almost as much as the government can issue which is an overt money printing machine, the government has also indicated that they will use their substantial pension funds to buy more equities and REITs, including those of other countries.

I think Japan may eventually provide a good test of the theory that a sovereign that prints its own money can never default.   Japan's problems involve significant demographics, but a great portion is some of the worst crony capitalism and opaque government by insiders in the OECD nations.  It is this kereitsu corporatism that put the FU in Fukushima.

One thing that works in the people's favor is a favorable attitude towards the group backed by peer pressure, rather than a dog eat dog economy based on serial fraud, and commensurately a decent public safety net.  Or at least there has been.

Stock futures soared in the US and the Nikkei futures were limit up.  

Overnight the Russia central bank had to raise its interest rates to 9.5% to defend the ruble which was under pressure on the forex markets.  

And in what appears to be a somewhat counterintuitive move despite Dollar strength on Yen weakness, gold and silver were slammed down hard in thinly traded markets.

The pressure from the US and its client states is now shifting heavily to Europe and especially to Germany, to permit a similar move to quantitative easing in Europe.

China remains remarkably quiet for now. Eurasia is large enough I think to break away from the threat of financial repression. One wonders how far they can be pushed before they make that choice. Or perhaps it is already being made.

Interesting times.

 

October 30, 1938 - Mercury Theater Presents The War of the Worlds

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

Edward R. Murrow, talk to his staff at CBS before See It Now, 7 March 1954 on Senator Joseph McCarthy

And 'The Night America Trembled' 1957