CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter

 But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.

There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.

Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.

For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022. 

Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.

The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.

Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.

But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

We've had an unprecedented three consecutive years now where inflation has remained higher than the 10-year UST yield on an average annual basis, and our hapless FOMC looks set to make it four

 There were just two years of this in the 1970s inflation, and they too were consecutive.

Anyone who calls Jerome Powell an inflation fighter is an idiot, or a stooge for the status quo of inflation profiteers.

This is all on the backs of the people, but where is the angry mob?

So medicated, so drugged, and so otherwise anesthetized by bread and circuses that the elites don't even bother to hide the truth.

 

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield in 2020, 2021, 2022 (annual average)

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield January through July 2023 (monthly view)

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis saying the quiet part out loud lol: Inflation benefits the federal government

 

It's been a terrible year so far for investors in US Treasury securities because of the rising rate environment, but great for stocks

UST yields rose a net 1.31% in the aggregate week over week on 7/28.

DFF rises to 5.33% after the latest FOMC rate hike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year to date Treasury, Total Bond, Cash, and Total Stock performance using popular Vanguard funds:

VFISX +0.75% VFITX 0.90% VUSTX 1.58% VBTLX 2.05% VMFXX 2.75% lol VTSAX 19.99%!

Stocks have been the place to be, and cash has beaten even the total bond market.

Meanwhile stocks are obscenely overvalued at 169 using the latest report of GDP out Thursday:

 

Welcome back to the same stupid shit: Quantitative Easing, Round IV, with a half twist back flip

The long-promised balance sheet unwind stopped in early September, never getting it even remotely close to pre-Great Financial Crisis levels. Maturing securities then began to be used to purchase more of the same again, increasing the balance sheet, as plainly shown in the graph.

Now that will get even worse as the Fed begins buying $60 billion a month outright in new Treasury securities on top of this reinvesting of maturing securities. The Fed claims this is not QE because they're only going to buy Treasury Bills, not longer dated Notes. Money market rates, where many investors had parked lots of cash to take advantage of better returns than they could get on long dated securities, have already fallen. Now there will be no place left to get any decent return without tying up your money for ten years paying 1.76% and thirty years just 2.22%.

Thanks for nothing Trump! 

 

The FOMC voted unanimously to begin to purchase Treasury bills at an initial pace of about $60 billion per month starting Tuesday. The purchases will last at least into the second quarter of next year.

Read more here. 

FOMC minutes from November 2011 show Federal Reserve presidents laughing at us, quick to blame unemployment on the unemployed

Including at the time Dennis Lockhart, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Charles Plosser, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Jeffrey Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Story here.

Plosser

Lockhart

Lacker

Today's advance estimate of GDP for 3Q2016 at 2.9% actually looks pessimistic

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in June reduced their forecast of 2016 GDP from 2.1-2.3% in March to 1.9-2.0%.

Today's estimate means the average report of GDP in 2016 is now 1.7%.

It'll take a lot more than today's 2.9% to get us up to 2.0% for the year.

The Fed is subsidizing all banks to the tune of $100 billion per quarter in artificially depressed income to depositors

Chris Whalen, last November, here:

Chief among the data points to be noted is that net interest expense, which is the money paid to depositors at banks, continues to fall.  While all banks earned about $118 billion in interest income last quarter, they paid just $13 billion to depositors, a graphic example of the “financial repression” used by the Fed to subsidize the US banking industry.  Via QE, the Fed is subsidizing all banks to the tune of over $100 billion per quarter in artificially depressed interest cost and income to depositors of all stripes.

Bernanke Contradicts Himself

So says Jeffrey Snider, here:

Chairman Bernanke stole the show yesterday, certainly by his accommodative and now contradictory stand. I suppose that is the danger in trying to talk “markets” toward “targets”, much like Greenspan in the late 1990’s. Toward that end, he made at least one prediction that will likely come true (in sharp contrast to the Fed’s history), namely that the unemployment rate understates the weakness in the jobs market. ... As to the potential for tapering, that has always been about the rock and the hard place; the rock being asset bubbles in housing, credit and, yes, stocks vs. the hard place of lackluster, at best, economic performance. Given the problems of real time economic tracking and the dubious record of ferbus and other econometric models in use it would make sense that the FOMC appears to subscribe to each and every possible outcome concurrently. The committee both backs the accommodative approach (employment might be weaker than indicated) and the taper approach (things are getting much better) all at the same time.

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Still, it's an odd way to behave if you are being shown the door in a few months.

Bernanke Claims Large Scale Asset Purchases Of $3.35 Trillion Yielded 2 Million Jobs

Among other farcical things.

Transcript here:

[I]n late 2008 the Federal Reserve initiated a series of large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs). In November, the FOMC announced a program to purchase a total of $600 billion in agency MBS and agency debt.  In March 2009, the FOMC expanded this purchase program substantially, announcing that it would purchase up to $1.25 trillion of agency MBS, up to $200 billion of agency debt, and up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury debt.  These purchases were completed, with minor adjustments, in early 2010. In November 2010, the FOMC announced that it would further expand the Federal Reserve's security holdings by purchasing an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over a period ending in mid-2011.

About a year ago, the FOMC introduced a variation on its earlier purchase programs, known as the maturity extension program (MEP), under which the Federal Reserve would purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury securities and sell an equivalent amount of shorter-term Treasury securities over the period ending in June 2012. The FOMC subsequently extended the MEP through the end of this year.  By reducing the average maturity of the securities held by the public, the MEP puts additional downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and further eases overall financial conditions.

How effective are balance sheet policies? After nearly four years of experience with large-scale asset purchases, a substantial body of empirical work on their effects has emerged. Generally, this research finds that the Federal Reserve's large-scale purchases have significantly lowered long-term Treasury yields. For example, studies have found that the $1.7 trillion in purchases of Treasury and agency securities under the first LSAP program reduced the yield on 10-year Treasury securities by between 40 and 110 basis points. The $600 billion in Treasury purchases under the second LSAP program has been credited with lowering 10-year yields by an additional 15 to 45 basis points.  Three studies considering the cumulative influence of all the Federal Reserve's asset purchases, including those made under the MEP, found total effects between 80 and 120 basis points on the 10-year Treasury yield.  These effects are economically meaningful.

Importantly, the effects of LSAPs do not appear to be confined to longer-term Treasury yields. Notably, LSAPs have been found to be associated with significant declines in the yields on both corporate bonds and MBS. The first purchase program, in particular, has been linked to substantial reductions in MBS yields and retail mortgage rates. LSAPs also appear to have boosted stock prices, presumably both by lowering discount rates and by improving the economic outlook; it is probably not a coincidence that the sustained recovery in U.S. equity prices began in March 2009, shortly after the FOMC's decision to greatly expand securities purchases. This effect is potentially important because stock values affect both consumption and investment decisions.

While there is substantial evidence that the Federal Reserve's asset purchases have lowered longer-term yields and eased broader financial conditions, obtaining precise estimates of the effects of these operations on the broader economy is inherently difficult, as the counterfactual--how the economy would have performed in the absence of the Federal Reserve's actions--cannot be directly observed. If we are willing to take as a working assumption that the effects of easier financial conditions on the economy are similar to those observed historically, then econometric models can be used to estimate the effects of LSAPs on the economy. Model simulations conducted at the Federal Reserve generally find that the securities purchase programs have provided significant help for the economy. For example, a study using the Board's FRB/US model of the economy found that, as of 2012, the first two rounds of LSAPs may have raised the level of output by almost 3 percent and increased private payroll employment by more than 2 million jobs, relative to what otherwise would have occurred.  The Bank of England has used LSAPs in a manner similar to that of the Federal Reserve, so it is of interest that researchers have found the financial and macroeconomic effects of the British programs to be qualitatively similar to those in the United States.

What rot.

Eight million fewer full-time jobs exist today than in 2007. Is he saying there would be ten million fewer had the Fed not intervened?

That's only $1.675 million per job.

Wouldn't it have been more efficient simply to have dropped the cash from helicopters in our backyards?

That way all ten million of us could have enjoyed a cool $335K each. A prudent man could easily live on that for 10 years or more.

Instead we're all suckin' wind out here.

NY Fed Study Shows S&P 500 Near 600 Subtracting Fed Interventions Since 1994

Many have been thinking and some have been saying for quite some time now that assets are egregiously overvalued because of Federal Reserve policy which manipulates the cost of money, the problem with which is that this short-circuits the process of price discovery.

Barry Ritholtz is especially famous with me because he came out at a critical time and wrote that perhaps the most important investing lesson you can learn is "don't fight the Fed".

Now we have proof of this of a sort from the NY Fed itself, showing that minus Fed witching-hour moves in the markets, the Standard and Poor's 500 index would stand nearer 600 today instead of 1300.

The almost laughable story is here:

The FOMC has released eight announcements a year at 2:15 ET since 1994. The study took the gains in the SP 500 from 2 pm the day before the announcement to 2 pm the day of the statement and subtracted that market move from the SP 500’s total return over that time span.

Without the gains in anticipation of a positive Fed action, the SP 500 would stand at just 600 today, rather than above 1300.


575 looks as good to me now as it did in August 2011, here.

Laughs at Fed Meetings Peaked With Housing Bubble in 2006

So says The Daily Stag Hunt here, where the data show that laughs suddenly surged in 2006.

Compared with the average of 20 laughs per meeting in the previous six years, laughs in 2006 bubbled up to an average of nearly 44, an increase of 115 percent.

Call it "irrational exuberance."

The meeting with the fewest laughs? October 1, 2001, with just 7 recorded laughs during the Federal Open Market Committee meeting.

ZIRP is Legalized Theft

The line of the day comes from Chris Whalen, writing at Reuters.com here about the damage the Fed's zero interest rate policy is doing to the country:

Fed Chairman Bernanke and the other members of the FOMC are killing the real economy to save the banks — but none of the benefit flowing to the banks is reaching US households. In fact, the Obama Administration has been providing political cover for the Fed to conduct a massive, reverse Robin Hood scheme, moving trillions of dollars in resources from savers and consumers to the big banks and their share and bond holders.

Read the rest at the link, at your peril.

The Stench From Geithner's New York Federal Reserve Bank

Commentary from David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors yesterday:

It is important to understand that the narrative of this financial crisis period is not being properly written. It is being colored either by insufficient information on the part of writers and analysts, or it is being managed by those whose agendas conflict with telling the truth.

Let’s back these allegations up with some examples. Truth first! Has the behavior that occurred inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York been fully revealed? There are hundreds of people working in the markets area of the NY Fed. What did they know and when did they know it? What did the leadership of the NY Fed know and when did they know it? Geithner specifically. And what about the directors? Fuld was on the NY Fed board. As Lehman CEO, is it conceivable that he didn’t know about repo 105? Does anyone believe that he didn’t know it would change his balance sheet? Can we accept that the CEO didn’t know that he had a UK legal opinion because a US firm wouldn’t give one? If he did know, was he in a conflict position while sitting on the board of the agency that was his potential savior and with whom he had primary dealer status? When Lehman had a $3bn repo rejected by another Fed primary dealer because it was worthless, did the Fed catch it? If yes, what action was taken? If not, why not?

By the way, another primary-dealer CEO also sat on the NY Fed board at the same time. What was his obligation as a Fed director? What was his duty when he saw a $3bn piece deemed worthless by his own people? Once they rejected Lehman and protected their firm, was their obligation over? Maybe yes if the CEO didn’t sit on the board of the NY Fed. But he did sit there, and therefore he wore two hats. The NY Fed continues to stink up the joint by trying to avoid transparency unless and until it is forced to do so. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for disclosure and finally succeeded after a judge found in favor of journalism.

The New York Fed now has listed the CUSIP numbers of the assets in the limited partnership created during the Bear Stearns Affair. Maiden Lane number 1 is now public. This pile of junk even includes short positions in AMBAC and MBIA debt instruments. Check the NY Fed website for details. Query: is a short position in AMBAC the proper use of a section 13/3 emergency loan of the central bank, authorized by the Fed’s Board of Governors and implemented by the NY Fed?

Remember that it is an accident of history which places the NY Fed in a unique position among the twelve regional Fed banks because it houses the Fed’s portfolio. The NY Fed president is also in a unique position in the Fed’s policy decision-making structure. He is a permanent voting member of the FOMC unlike his eleven other regional bank presidents who have to rotate their voting status.

In this writer’s view the behaviors at the NY Fed during Geithner’s reign were appalling and need full Congressional examination. The nest needs to be opened and any infestation of rats needs to be exhumed. Repo 105 and the special year-long examination of Lehman offer the first clues. And think about it: these revelations came about because a bankruptcy judge ordered it. They were not found by the Fed; they were not dereived from any criminal investigation. Where was the oversight of the NY Fed? Where were/are the legal arms of criminal investigation? And how much of this will be discussed and debated and placed into consideration BEFORE some new legislation commits this country to a financial regulatory system that we will have to live with until the next crisis?