HOW THE FED STOLE CAPITALISM

                                  Your Government At Work

The world breathlessly awaits the new round of money printing & currency debasement easing from Weimar Ben today. Like kids tucked in their beds awaiting Christmas morning, thoughts of sugarplums dance collectively in the hearts of most market participants.

It doesn’t matter anymore to the collective crowd that the entire system of finance as we have known it has ceased to exist; all we are left with is the “up or down thumb signal from the emperor”. One guy, who has a track record that couldn’t land him a job as a greeter at Walmart, is going to decide what the economy needs and just how much it needs it. Markets used to decide such matters.

Remember, this is the guy who said back in 2008 that everything was fine regarding the housing market. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling.

What we are left with now is crony capitalism and the prop desks at JPM and Vampire Squid with more money to ramp stocks higher to make you feel good. In the real world, a place most Fed members rarely if ever inhabit, the situation is far, far worse.

My sense is that all that is happening now is a gigantic CYA exercise, so that when SHTF months from now, everyone can point the finger at someone else and say it wasn’t my fault.

I’m writing and posting this before the “magical” moment the world finds out what “The Bernank” has up his sleeve. In a very real sense, in the long run I don’t think it will matter much. The Fed wants interest rates as low as it can get them, thinking this is just what the economy needs. These people are stuck in the 1950’s.

What the economy needs is for Government, at every level, to get the hell out of the way and let people do what they want; this paradigm just isn’t programmed into the elites running things. No, I absolutely need for you to tell me what to do.

So, we wait for the skinny bald guy to tell us which way the wind is blowing and how he is going to make everything OK. Please, I can't stomach the Q & A session with the fawning financial press after the rate decision. Listening to guys like Steve Liesman makes me want to puke. I don’t know about you, but as for me, every time these guys lips move they are lying.

Only sure thing I know is that the math doesn’t lie. We are one day closer to that moment when the entire system collapses from its own weight. Debt doesn’t grow an economy; productivity grows an economy.

In the government dictionary, productivity is defined as money that someone makes that we can confiscate and then pass around to our political pals, who then donate back to us so we can favor those who “see the light”.

Welcome to the Ponzification of Amerika.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas

AND THE WINNER IS …?

                             “Vanna, Show Chip What He Won”

What if they had an election and it didn’t matter? Kind of like an NFL Super Bowl overtime coin flip that lands on the ground on “edge”; and you flip it again and still it lands on “edge”. The Greeks couldn’t collectively decide this past weekend who they wanted in charge to sell the country down the proverbial rat hole to the banksters.

Well, nobody asked me … but ….

They could let the Neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” party run security and law enforcement; the radical leftist party “Syriza” could be in charge of education [just like in Amerika] and welfare; the communists could just hang around and cause trouble and offer nothing; and the “New Democrats” conservative party can run the country and be in charge of finance. What’s not to like here?

Like Butch Cassidy once said, “I got vision and the rest of the world’s wearin’ bifocals.”

Then there’s gold; as nasty a market as the political rhetoric coming out of Europe. After what happened to me on Friday …I can’t tell you when the next time I will trade this. To recap, for those of you who don’t know, I was up 5% and then I was down 12% within seconds. Did I mention I hate gold dealers?

Watching Greece is like watching a soap opera on TV; no matter how long you watch nothing ever gets solved. It just keeps going on with infinite iterations of adulterous affairs, back stabbing, and people selling out for the money. Geeeeesh, what else is new? Sooner or later you just have to walk away because you can’t take it anymore. It’s just the same old crap.

So, no new coalition is going to be formed to run Greece and “new” elections in 2 months to do it all over again. Meanwhile in Spain, yields on 10 YR. toilet paper are over 7% and rising; in Italy, yields on 10 YR paper is over 6% and rising; and in Ireland they want to “renegotiate” their bailout.

As it says in the Bible; “Nothing new under the sun.”

The markets now are in no mood for “happy talk” from the bozo’s running things; they want concrete plans, not spin. Expect the half-life from spin to get shorter as time passes this week.

Oh, and let’s not forget Wednesday “the Bernank” is up on tap, and he better show the markets some love with QE3 or else. Markets are looking for at least $150 billion in new money printing stimulus for the prop trading desks at JPM and Vampire Squid.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas

WAITING FOR MR. MARKET

                                                Mr. Market

Another useless trading day as pretty much every heavy hitter is biding time waiting for tomorrow’s Fed report. Yea, we got the usual squeeze the shorts; crush the longs; go to sleep in 3 …. 2…. 1 …. drift into the close today. Thanks for showing up.

And lest you think gold has been a nightmare to trade lately, it could be worse; you could be trading EURUSD which had a whopping 73 pip range [as I write] and is firmly stuck between 1.30 and 1.3250 for what seems like forever. You want to see real market manipulation? What’s going on in the Euro makes gold look like child’ play.

All eyes are on The Bernank as he decides tomorrow whether to print faster or slower for the next few months. Expect nothing, range wise, into the minutes which will be released sometime around 1:15 P.M. [Chicago time]. At that point we are either on our way to testing 1612 – 1600 or about to melt up to the 1670 area; depends on how aggressive the Fed wants to be in printing money monetizing upcoming Treasury auctions.

My best guess is that they stay right where they are at, but include some language that gives them wriggle room if things get “worse” [stop laughing]. At some point the Central Planners come in and let loose with some heavy sell orders and gold gets smacked down. Sell stops get set off; the charts look horrible; they sit back and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Of course, maybe Weimar Ben likes his job and figures Chalky is going to need a little help in November, so he speeds up the printing press. Hey, it can happen, and if it does watch the glorious fireworks on the upside.

Regardless, the aftershocks will probably last at least for the rest of the week and into the next before the market fixes its eyes on something else. We’ll see what happens.

Have a good day everyone.

-vegas