Tag Archives: federal reserve

Double Dips and Currency Wars

Stacy Summary: I found this video interview with Chris Whalen via Jesse’s Cafe Americain. And here is another article from his site with some great, if scary, charts (see one below) about the recent deterioration in the US housing market.


Pending home sales:

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Financial Terrorist Playing Cards Now Available to Order

Stacy Summary: @jischinger has made this awesome deck of financial terrorist playing cards and they are now ready to order! You can see samples of some of the cards here.

From MaxKeiser.com Images

From MaxKeiser.com Images
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Reflexivity and Fraud: Manipulating Polls, Prices, Perceptions, and Outcomes

Any serious student of markets knows the ‘Efficient Market Theory’ is hokum. George Soros’ ‘Reflexivity Theory’ rules. In short, prices change perception and since most trading is done based on perception the case for fundamental analysis goes out the window. Example: dot coms in 2000.  Into this mix add the fraudsters on Wall St. who manipulate prices – not to make or lose money per se – but to manipulate perceptions.  We saw this in 2008 when stock prices were manipulated by Wall St. to give the impression that the banking sector was about to collapse. The government acted on that perception and handed trillions over to the fraudsters.

The same can be said of rigged polling results.  Changing the perception of the public mood can change the outcome. Because people act based on perception, not reality. The popular website DailyKos is suing a pollster for this very reason.

Recently, I called for some favors from friends who are connected with the MPAA (I served on the board of the Creative Coalition) to stop Cantor Fitzgerald’s box office futures contracts because I knew from my experience running HSX/Cantor that insiders were abusing their position in ways that were not consistent with free market capitalist principles and I hated the thought of another American industry getting torched by Wall St. 

In the case of Cantor Exchange and Trend Exchange, this means moving prices outside of the ‘price discovery’ mechanism; producing exogenous results for nefarious ends.

Government officials hoping to restore balance and accountability to markets are, unfortunately, beholden to the market riggers and perception manipulators who throw a few dollars at the politicians to finance their election campaigns.  We cannot expect anyone working inside government to stop this abuse.  Only through direct citizen action can any change happen. The recent boycott of BP, in my opinion, should be expanded until BP’s stock is driven down to zero.  And if ExxonMobil comes in and takes them over, then the boycott should move over to Exxon.

In a more perfect world, the Federal Reserve Bank should have kept interest rates high enough to deter the market riggers and perception distorters in the vein of Paul Volcker (now marginalized for obvious reasons).  In other words, the tools to rectify the economy are within government’s grasp.

The government needs to fight the perception, put out by a complicit media, that doing the right thing is somehow counter productive.  America needs to stop worrying about what the rest of the world perceives as its short comings and focus instead on taking the necessary actions required to give markets what they need to restore vitality, transparency, and integrity across all the various trading platforms that comprise the backbone of our economy.

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Economics is hard, so you should only trust the experts

Stacy Summary:  Oh boy.  This paper from The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is doing the rounds all over the blogosphere this morning.  Would love to have your thoughts on their argument.  I know we had one ‘there is no housing bubble in Canada’ commenter who is no longer on the site, but he would agree as he believed you must have an economics degree to qualify to comment on the economy around you.  But your thoughts?  And how long before heretics start being burned at the stake?

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High Frequency Terrorism: A Day That Will Live in Infamy [UPDATED]

Stacy Summary:  Lest we forget about last week’s news . . .

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[Audio] Max Keiser on Thom Hartmann

Stacy Summary: In case you missed it, here is Max on Thom Hartmann Show.

For more download & listening options visit Archive dot org

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“People want to kill somebody, but they don’t know who to shoot at”

Stacy Summary:  Swaps wiping out counties, countries and financial systems across the world . . .

“People want to kill somebody, but they don’t know who to shoot at”

Jefferson County’s debacle is a parable for billions of dollars lost by state and local governments from Florida to California in transactions done behind closed doors. Selling debt without requiring competition made public officials vulnerable to bankers’ sales pitches, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for borrowing gone awry.

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‘Tight’ credit undermines Fed easy money ‘growth’ efforts

Stacy Summary:  The Bloomberg headline is the deflationary argument you have been hearing from Steve Keen, Mish, etc.; I have linked to a blog entry by Keen that discusses what this credit contraction means in terms of the flations.

So has the government cavalry ridden to the rescue? If the crisis were one simply of liquidity, the answer would be yes. A government stimulus can overwhelm the impact of a credit crunch, and the innate dynamic of a productive economy can re-assert itself after such a crisis, leading to renewed growth.

But this not merely a crisis of liquidity. It is one of excessive private debt, on a scale that is also unprecedented: the USA is carrying US$41.5 trillion in debt on the back of a US$14 trillion economy, proportionately 70 percent more debt than it had at the start of the Great Depression. In December 2007, the private sector swung from ramping up debt levels as it chased speculative gains on asset markets, to retreating from debt as the asset bubbles burst.

In the space of a year, private debt went from adding US$4 trillion to aggregate demand, to subtracting US$165 billion from it. Private debt had ceased being the economy’s turbocharger and had instead become its flooded engine.

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Multiple simultaneous ‘debt explosions’

Stacy Summary:  Okay, I have eyewitness deflation report for you.  A rather posh restaurant only 50 yards from our apartment has had a fixed lunch menu for 4 years now set at 25 euros.  This included three courses and a glass of wine and the place was always packed (it’s not exactly an enormous restaurant).  A few months ago, it was no longer so packed and the set menu price was cut to 16 euros.   Today, they cut the price to 14 euros, which is amazing for Paris.  That’s the price normally seen in a restaurant catering to students or a bit lower end of the market.  The set menu still includes three courses and a glass of wine.

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Gold vending machines, Spanish downgrades and Federal Reserve’s power grab

Stacy Summary:   How are all these stories related?

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