The first thing to go will be the success of manipulations like the 12:00
PM EST “cap of last resort” – which strangely, has “morphed” closer to 11:30
AM EST in the past year or so, after a decade of showing up at the “same
Bat-time, same Bat-channel.”
…as opposed to tried-and-true “2:15 AM” raids – as we’ve
seen on 612 of the past 702 trading days; Precious Metal “flash
crashes” in the wee hours of the night; and to the contrary, the “dead
ringer” algorithm on the “Dow Jones Propaganda Average” I first wrote of four
years ago – which shows up roughly three-quarters of all trading days,
including eight of the last nine. Let alone, the “DLITR,” or “don’t let
it turn red” algorithm – which you can see below, was used eight times yesterday
alone. This, on a day in which the day’s biggest news was a
downward revision of January personal spending as dramatic, and “unexpected,”
as last week’s revision of January retail sales.
Which, in turn, caused the Atlanta Fed’s first quarter “GDP now” estimate
to plunge all the way to +0.6% – versus the comically overstated, but still
pathetically weak, 1.4% increase in the fourth quarter. This, just one
week after the Atlanta Fed’s own President, Dennis Lockhardt, said an
April rate hike was possible due to his “confidence in a 1Q GDP bounce”; and two
weeks after the Fed not only didn’t raise rates as expected, but
published a policy statement so
dovish, even I was taken aback.
To that end, Lockhardt’s comments were such obviously egregious lies, I
wrote an entire article about them, titled “the
most transparent lie of all time” – and followed it up this weekend with
“part
II,” when the Atlanta Fed’s 1Q forecast plunged to “just” 1.4%.
Come to think about it, the first article was not devoted solely to
Lockhardt, but San Francisco Fed President John Williams as well.
“With each Fed failure to raise rates – despite unrelenting propaganda
of ‘recovery’ – without fail, it has taken no more than 24 hours for
propaganda of rates being raised at the next FOMC meeting to emerge.
And this time was no different, with not one, but two Fed governors claiming
this week that ‘rising inflation’ and ‘falling unemployment’ suggest a rate
hike is possible as soon as next month. Both of whom, I might add –
Dennis Lockhardt of the Atlanta Fed, and John Williams of the San Francisco
Fed – voted to keep rates at 0.25% last week!
In Lockhardt’s case, his inane ramblings of being ‘confident in a 1Q
GDP bounce’ – when the quarter is already over, featuring the ugliest economic
data yet, sound like the words of a delirious lunatic, who will literally say
anything he is told. As for Williams, who smugly predicted four rates
hikes in 2016 in January, after the Fed’s first ‘rate hike’ in a decade
nearly destroyed the world, there may not be a more two-faced politician on
the planet, which is saying quite a lot.”
Which, mere days later has been proven true, in spades;
which has got to be some kind of record for Fed futility, even amidst its
long, sordid history of failure – such as this gem from “Maestro” Greenspan
himself, at the 2010 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings, when asked
about the Fed’s role in the 2008 crisis.
“We didn’t forecast better than anyone else…We regulated banks that got
in trouble like anyone else. Could we have done better? Yes, if we could
forecast better. But we can’t.”
As for Williams, only the title of yesterday’s Zero Hedge article could do
him justice; i.e., “Is this Fed President an idiot? Read these two
headlines and decide.” The first, from –January 4th, in the
very CNBC interview when he predicted four rate hikes this year…
…and the second, yesterday; in Zero Hedge’s immortal words,
“presented without comment.”
By the way, no Fed lambasting could be complete without former Dallas Fed
President (as of January 1st) Richard Fisher – who just one day
after Williams’ “idiotic” January 4th speech, admitted the Fed
“frontloaded a tremendous market rally starting in 2009…to accomplish a
wealth effect”; and is a “giant weapon with no ammunition left”; before
taking his lunacy to hyperdrive two weeks ago, in
espousing “we (the Fed) injected cocaine and heroin into the system (starting
in 2009), and are now maintaining it with Ritalin.” By the way,
yesterday’s Dallas Fed manufacturing index reading of -13.7 – it’s fifteenth
straight negative monthly reading – was so bad, one respondent espoused
“anyone that says we’re not in recession, is peddling fiction.”
This, my friends, is when you know the “countdown to total, irreversible
Central bank failure” has begun –not just at the Fed, but everywhere.
I mean, since Fisher’s “giant weapon with no ammunition left” rant, the ECB
has taken interest rates to negative 0.4% and increased its QE program
to €80 billion/month; the Bank of China “unexpectedly” lowered rates yet
again; and the Bank of Japan took Central bank lunacy to whole new plateau –
in first saying it would not take rates negative; only to do so a week later;
and two days later, say it could go lower than the ECB if required.
Which, if yesterday’s report of the weakest Japanese retail sales since the
2010 tsunami and 2014 sales tax hike is any indication, will come sooner
rather than later. Let alone, the “massive stimulus package” – paid for
by massively fabricated currency units – the “Land of the Setting Sun” is
expected to unveil next month. But don’t worry, as Paul “Atlas
Shrugged” Krugman told Shinzo Abe this weekend that Japan’s nearly 300%
debt/GDP ratio ‘doesn’t matter.’
In other words, signs that the “end game” has arrived could not be more
obvious, or plentiful – like most currencies trading near, at, or below
all-time lows (and conversely, gold trading near, at, or above all-time
highs); as well as record high, parabolically growing debt; the weakest global
trading activity since the Depression; and of course, “infallible” Central
bankers looking less so with each passing day. Regarding the latter,
the “countdown to total, irreversible Central bank failure” has begun”; and
when the fuse finally burns down to the powder keg – perhaps, much sooner
than most can expect – the time to PROTECT oneself from the catastrophic
aftermath will be long past. By the way, I simply cannot wait to hear
what Whirlybird Janet says at her 12:20 PM EST speech at the New York Economic
Club, as her own data says the U.S. economy is on the brink of
recession.
