Sunday, May 12, 2013

Example #7,345 of Diabolical, Incestuous World of Finance: Secretly pulling back QE so only Investors benefit

So many reasons to hate Wall Street.. to hate the Federal Reserve..

To hate Benjamin S. Bernanke specifically...

Would take far too long to list them all, so in today's post we will focus on one specific reason why we hate all three entities so deeply...

They all directly tamper with and manipulate True Capitalism.
In True Capitalism, people survive, thrive or perish on their own.   Make a good investment choice and  congrats to you..  Make a poor one and its up to you to essentially wipe the figurative 'dirt' off and get up and try again..

Or stay on the ground in a fetal position...  Up to you..

But Capitalism in its Truest sense is about fairness.  You put an idea or product or service into the marketplace and compete with everyone else.  The better the idea, product or service, the more you profit..

Everyone benefits.

But that's not what you have currently of course..  Everything is rigged..
Let's take Quantitative Easing-- we explained many many times that this is a catchy term for pouring fresh liquidity into a stale stock market via buying of toxic mortgages and other assets which cause the values of stocks to artificially raise to give appearance of a 'recovery' that does not exist for 99%

Now that the Dow hit 15,000, everyone assumes it will last forever..  So mom and pop and other everyday gullibles are putting their precious money into that market expecting a nice profit ultimately..

Except...  Did you hear?

Oh you didn't?

Oh.. well..  The Fed plans on stopping QE ultimately.
Its true.. came from the Fed's official media regurgitator, spin-meister and dirty whore at the Wall Street Journal himself-- Jon Hildenbrath..

"Federal Reserve officials have mapped out a strategy for winding down an unprecedented $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program... they plan to reduce the amount of bonds they buy in careful and potentially halting steps, varying their purchases as their confidence about the job market and inflation evolves"

In other words, like a cowardly academic which Bernanke is, the Fed will reduce its monthly purchases starting at an undecided point and the first sign.. the slightest little Whiff that the Investors and Banks and Profiteers are unhappy and losing money, will turn on the spigots again.

Yep..
In a perfect world, the market would drop so dramatic and precipitously that professional Investors would take a blood bath and cause people to finally wake up and start pulling their money from banks instead of naively assuming all is always to be well

Sorry but people are just too damned complacent and its exasperating...

Anyways.. wonder why you didn't hear about it?

Simple.. All news of genuine importance to the market where the big wigs and power players need time to digest is released on a late Friday afternoon after market closes for weekend..

God forbid there's a panic where they make end up taking any sort of loss..

Yep, everything is tailored for the Investor and the financial sector.
A very brief history of QE and how the bearded bastard has used it for maximum effect--  QE 1 started in March, 2009 and by mid 2011, QE 2 was completed..  and the market rose.

But Bernanke wanted it to continue to rise without having to keep using QE, so for the next 12-14 months, he successfully got all the greedy, selfish rats and roaches who profit off the market to push up the Dow simply by rumor, hope and assumption that the next wave of QE was coming..

Ultimately, Benny had to give the mongrel dogs their 'meat' so he enacted QE3 in mid 2012, then unlimited QE 4 & 5 combined and now the Evilest entities to share breath with good, decent people are raking in the profit.
And don't look to Obama to rectify this.. No no no..

No President would dare do anything to stop this meddling especially if it is to help the market bubble expand and expand...

This is a modern phenomenon actually.. started with Clinton back in the 1990s with that phony dot.com bubble where everyone thought they could become a multi-millionaire simply by creating a website.

In January 1993, while he just beginning Clinton's first term, the S&P 500 stock market index was at 437.  It then propelled upward until it breached 1,500 in March 2000, a 243% gain.
The wealth effect bamboozled people into borrowing against the fruits of their stock-market wisdom. Some became day-traders (disgusting barnacle feeders).  And as this money was spent, it cranked up local economies. Sales-tax revenues jumped.

Companies like Cisco used their inflated stocks as homemade currency to acquire other companies, sometimes paying billions for tiny startups. Unemployment dropped below 5%. Income-tax revenues soared. And suddenly there was a mirage on the horizon: a federal budget “surplus.”

Then it crashed.

When President Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the NASDAQ was evaporating, and the S&P was down to 1,342. But for Clinton, it was still up over 200% compared to Jan, 1993 so he was pleased as punch to have his Legacy
Bush rode the S&P down to 800.   Then the recovery started – the first “jobless” one.

Wall Street was goosed by the Fed’s easy money, and housing was performing miracles thanks to a massive bubble where no one bothered to check or care if lendees had adequate means to ever pay back the mortgages they were taking out..

And then of course, those despicable house-flippers who artificially would buck up housing prices by 10-15% with each greedy self-centered 'flip' sale...

Stocks marched upward and upward, and in early October 2007, Bush was already working on a rough draft of his legacy while the S&P set a new record, oblivious to the hissing from the housing bubble and the stench around banks.
Then on November 7, Cisco CEO John Chambers, during the earnings call, said that growth in the US would be “very lumpy.”

Markets went south. The rough draft of Bush’s legacy went up in smoke.

By the time he handed the scepter to President Obama, the S&P was at 831.

The government that had for the briefest moment seen the mirage of a surplus at the beginning of his term was running a deficit of over $1 trillion. During Bush’s time in office, the S&P had plunged 38%.

A catastrophic legacy.  And we're not even mentioning the two needless wars and the tax cuts and passing the Bankruptcy Overhaul bill making it more difficult for struggling Americans to declare Chapter 7, etc..
And here's the big irony of it all:  If the Fed had printed a few trillion in 2007 and 2008 to delay the blowup and drive the S&P to 2,000 or such, Bush would be bragging to this day in a Clintonesque manner about how his economic policies made Americans better off.   He would have handed President Obama the bubble to let it blow up in his face.

Instead, on March 2, 2009, less than two months after Obama had become President, the S&P bottomed out. The Fed had been handing trillions to Wall Street to re-inflate asset prices and bail out the banks.

Now the S&P is once again setting records on a near daily basis. The Federal Government is raking in tax revenues from income and capital gains. It had the largest April surplus since 2008. Even California is stepping away from the brink of declaring bankruptcy (for now at least..)
And though three and a half years is an eternity in the markets, you best believe Obama will do all he can to manipulate and ultimately mask a popping bubble until the next person takes office.

All that ever matters to second-term Presidents is legacy..

That and securing funding for their egotistical Library.

So yep, politicians love a good asset bubble...

And this god-damn stock market, with margin debt at a near record, no longer knows any limits even though corporate revenues have been lousy and employment has barely kept up with population growth.
No one seems to care about That anymore..  The populace either is clueless or oblivious.

You know the adage.. recession if your neighbor lost his job, a depression if you lost yours and if you are not affected, then *shrug*

Its so scary-sad how many have been so indoctrinated to admire and fawn over the wealthy; to actively root and cheer for their continued success.. The more wealth you hold, the more you're respected and few care How you earned it...

Some even give moral justification why its completely alright for men and women who possess wealth in the hundreds of millions, if not billions to wake up each morning and seek out acquiring more..
Some admire the Warren Buffetts of the world..

We see them as they are i.e. 'an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment and gives nothing back in return'

Parasites.

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