SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Seriously?

"After dinner, Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want.  But people on the inside don’t listen to them.

Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders."

Elizabeth Warren


"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

Charles Mackay

And at what point will that brave individual, who begins to see things as they are, dare to call the madness of doing the same ineffective things, over and over, as the form of madness that they are?

The stock markets slumped a little today when Fed Vice-President Stanley Fischer said at an NABE conference that he is 'starting to see signs of inflation in the data.'

Oh really, is that data related to the US economy?   Because if so, no one else seems to be seeing it, except for those whose positions demand it.

They are not seeing it in the Consumer Credit numbers from this morning, with the rather big downward revision from the month before. And certainly not in the Payrolls number from last week, which was jam packed with low paying, part time jobs, declining hourly wages, increasing costs of healthcare and rent, and further erosion in the middle class.  Only someone insulated or detached from the reality of the day to day economy could have seen those numbers as 'good.'

Is it really so hard to understand that the point of stimulus is to stimulate aggregate demand from the bottom up, organically, by creating decently paying jobs and enabling the broadly based purchasing of essential goods?   Would J. M. Keynes be able to stop throwing up if he came back and saw what these purblind bean counters call 'stimulus?'

The purpose of stimulus is not to prop up an oversized and corrupt financial system that has already laid waste to the economies of the developed world.   It is not to further cripple the long suffering labor market that is being forced to compete with sweatshops and rigged currencies from regions that do not subscribe to that same social compact that defines the very fabric of America. It is not to further enrich a very small percentage of already very wealthy people, allowing their greed and short sighted stupidity to imperil the future well-being of entire nations.

These are simple truths.   And they are being led down blind alleys by careerism, self-interest, and vain and self-deludingly complacent bureaucrats, and strangled.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Year of Mercy

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So Jesus told those indignant listeners this parable:

“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father,
‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’
So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings
and set off to a distant country
where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
When he had freely spent everything,
a severe famine struck that country,
and he found himself in dire need.

So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens
who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed,
but nobody gave him any.
Coming to his senses he thought,
‘How many of my father’s hired workers
have more than enough food to eat,
but here am I, dying from hunger.
I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son;
treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’

So he got up and went back to his father.
While he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.
He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.

His son said to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’
But his father ordered his servants,
‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him;
put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found.’

Then the celebration began.
Now the older son had been out in the field
and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
The servant said to him,
‘Your brother has returned
and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’

He became angry,
and when he refused to enter the house,
his father came out and pleaded with him.
He said to his father in reply,
‘Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns
who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’

He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always;
everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.’”

"One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us...

I think we are like the people who, on the one hand, want to listen to the Lord, but on the other hand, at times like to find a stick to beat others, to condemn others. And Jesus has this message for us: mercy. I think, and I say it with all humility, that this is the Lord's most powerful message: mercy. "

Francis I

Dude, Where's My Recovery?

Happily we see that Anthony Sanders has found a new vehicle for his highly informative column, Confounded Interest, in case you wish to bookmark it.

The failure of the Fed and the regulators and the Solons of government is not terribly complex. What else would one expect if you address the symptoms badly, and do little or nothing to fix the very crux of the problem?

John Kenneth Galbraith said it quite succinctly some years ago. “Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

It is like sending billions in aid to a corrupt, Third World nation, where little of what is sent actually makes it to the people for whom it is intended.

It is not the stimulus or the principle behind it that is discredited.  What we have had is not the kind of stimulus designed to kick start aggregate demand. It has been the sustaining of the status quo, the continuation of a major policy error and widespread financial fraud, resulting in an asset bubble collapse and ongoing financial malaise.

It is the failure to reform, and to target aggregate growth and the well being of the public, which sadly takes last place on the agenda of those who have been blinded and corrupted by the greed and the power of Big Money.

And as we can see in this current presidential election, it is badly straining the social fabric of the Republic, and threatens to tear it apart.  With regard to the history of temptations of the ages, this is a story that is 'as old as Babylon, and evil as hell.'

US Labor Market Still Weak After Trillions In Stimulus
By Anthony Sanders

As I pointed out on Friday, the US jobs market had a fine print in terms of quantity of jobs added, not quality. 80% of jobs added were of the low-wage variety.

And two employment indicators show that the US economy is back … to the worst levels prior to 2008. Both U-6 underemployment (total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force) and the employment-to-population ratio still remain grim.

Despite the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus (ZIRP and QE 1-3) thrown at the employment problem.

M2 Money Velocity keeps falling along with real median household income (both lower than in 2007).

While we got stagnant wages and almost 10% U-6 underemployment, we did get big increases in asset prices (house prices and stock market prices).

Industrial production (YoY) and total business sales (YoY) are in negative territory.

The purchasing power for consumers has decreased dramatically since the creation of The Federal Reserve System in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson. But at least the volatility of industrial production declined. /sarc

At last bank credit growth is back at about 7.5% YoY. Mortgage credit growth (net) has barely broken into positive territory.

So after the $831 billion in fiscal stimulus in 2009 and the trillions in Fed monetary stimulus, dude, where’s my recovery?

Performance of Certain Assets Year To Date

"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted."

Alan Greenspan, May 20, 1999


"Gold has worked down from Alexander's time. When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."

Bernard Baruch


"The commerce and industry of the country, however, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented [by paper money], cannot be altogether so secure, when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Daedalian wings of paper money, as when they travel about upon the solid ground of gold and silver."

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 262