Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

U.S. Treasury And Fed Put Out Cash, Raising Fist Pumping Crowd For Ben

Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates May 01, 2011 - 06:25 AM GMT

By: PhilStockWorld

Interest-Rates

Courtesy of Lee Adler at the Wall Street Examiner : The market waltzed through a week of heavy Treasury auction supply, but it did not have to pay the piper until Friday and Monday, May 2, when all the new paper was due to settle. Thursday’s settlement actually saw bills paid down by $11 billion. That and $16 billion in POMO gave the markets plenty of juice for Ben’s coming out party. The US Government, just like Colonel Kadaffy, sent out wads of cash to its minions to insure that cheering, fist pumping crowds would show up for Ben’s appearance before the scripted, adoring mob of ink stained wretches. It was sickening. And I’m not even talking about the so called reporters in the room with him. I’m talking about the security market apparatus. Anyone who dared protest that the market show had gone too far was beaten to a pulp. Even venerable bear David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff was cowed into submission.


Friday and Monday the market has a big pile of new paper to settle. We have to wonder whether having spent every last penny they had in propping things up earlier in the week, the dealers have anything left come Monday. The markets “should” sell off, if not today, then Monday.

The indirect bid at the auctions continues to weaken, suggesting that foreign central bank (FCB) players continue to withdraw from the game, but the Fed’s custodial data on FCB holdings went the other way, showing an explosion of FCB buying the prior week.

It can’t be Japan and probably isn’t China, which has its own problems, so by process of elimination, the only ones with that kind of cash are the oil producing nations. That game can only go on as long as the Fed keeps pumping up the price of gas. It’s a market double whammy. What happens after June? Poof! It’s gone. But until then, the potential for this light show to go ballistic should not be discounted.

As I reported last week, corporate tax collections were negative versus last year but not as bad as the earlier indications suggested they would be. The big squeeze I expected from materials cost increases hasn’t shown up, probably because materials aren’t that big an input for most businesses. So corporations are doing great; it’s just people who aren’t doing so hot, and that, dear friends, is completely irrelevant when it comes to the market. Withholding taxes are now barely higher year over year, with a stall particularly evident over the past 2 weeks suggesting that the economic “recovery” has probably stalled. As tax refund stimulus rapidly subsides and emergency stimulus spending recedes, the economy could weaken rapidly, causing revenues to fall. Even though government spending should be reduced, the deficit, and hence Treasury supply, would start growing again right around the time the Fed stops propping up the market with its money pumping.

When the Fed withdraws the pump feed at the end of June, as the Bernank has essentially confirmed it would, there’s every reason to believe that the markets will face a liquidity crisis. (4/22/11) I don’t think that any of that $1.5 trillion in bank reserves on deposit at the Fed will be pried loose to backstop the markets. I remain stumped as to how the Fed might fund that, even if the banks wanted to do it. The only alternative I can imagine at this point is a rapid, perhaps cataclysmic rise in interest rates and yields. I look at these conditions, and all I can see is a black hole.

Lord Bernanke’s press conference broke no new ground. Dr. Quiver Lip You Can Tell He’s Lying Because His Lips Are Moving told all the standard lies and revealed all the same delusions that I have catalogued here month after month since his tenure began 5 years ago. The part that I found most laughable was his use of the FOMC members’ and district bank presidents’ economic forecasts as some kind of holy grail. After all, I showed last year just how hopelessly incompetent these boobs are at even understanding the present, let alone predicting the future. Bernanke emphasized that the Fed bases its policy decisions on these forecasts. How insane is that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to base it on something more esoteric like, say… reality?

The most frightening aspect of this is how few people seem to “get it.” None of the reporters seriously questioned Bernanke about the Fed’s track record of badly misunderstanding the economy. None confronted him about the Fed’s money pumping causing the runaway gas price inflation which Bernanke blames on worldwide demand. Well, there was a lot of demand for housing in the US in 2005 too. There’s real demand and there’s speculative bubble driven demand. The Fed refuses to admit the difference and the mainstream financial media blindly supports that delusion. Virtually everyone is happy to ride down Bernanke’s Highway to Hell without so much as a vaguely serious question about the Fed’s competence, even after it has proven itself to be totally, and probably willfully, ignorant of the facts on the ground time and time again.

(This is an extended excerpt from the Wall Street Examiner Professional Edition Treasury Report, normally for subscribers only. I thank our subscribers for allowing the publication of this excerpt, and for their longstanding support.)

Stay up to date with the machinations of the Fed, Treasury, Primary Dealers and foreign central banks in the US market, along with regular updates of the US housing market, in the Fed Report in the Professional Edition, Money Liquidity, and Real Estate Package. Try it risk free for 30 days. Click this link to subscribe and get access to all current proprietary reports.

Phil

www.philstockworld.com

Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)

© 2011 Copyright  PhilStockWorld - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in