Yellen decides to “let ‘er ride”

Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks during her semiannual report on the economy to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 16, 2015. Yellen said the Federal Reserve is "highly focused" on the risks of raising interest rates too early. Photographer: Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks during her semiannual report on the economy to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 16, 2015. Yellen said the Federal Reserve is “highly focused” on the risks of raising interest rates too early. Photographer: Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Fed decided yesterday to let the interest rate remain unchanged.

For now.  And the market today, Friday, is jittery as hell.

It was expected that the rate would likely rise come September, and here we are.  Yet there were those who said the rate wouldn’t rise this year because the Fed was out.  Empty.  Kaput.  Bereft.  Meaning: there really wasn’t anything else they could do to try to prop up the economy; they’d tried everything else.

Except perhaps QE 4.

Do I hear footsteps?

Do I hear the sound of another stock market crash?  Negative interest for your savings like Europe?

After all, Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the rate must be raised.

BZ

 

Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke can’t get a re-fi

Ben BernankeAnd likely you can’t either.

As a reminder, Ben Bernanke is a former two-term Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  He, like many others today, made an astounding discovery:

He couldn’t qualify for a mortgage re-fi.

From TheHill.com:

Why you and Ben Bernanke can’t get a mortgage

by Andre F. Shashaty

If you are one of the millions of Americans with a good household income and reasonably good credit who cannot get a mortgage to buy a home, I have bad news:  The lawyers, lobbyists and politicians in Washington, DC have no intention of making a mortgage loan available to you or even Ben Bernanke anytime soon. The former Fed Chair recently said he got turned down in an attempt to refinance his mortgage.

Don’t blame the bankers, though.  It is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

Revisit that: it is your government and your elected officials who stand between you and your dream house.

It’s been exactly six years since former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan described the housing crisis and the collapse of the mortgage finance systems as a “once in a century credit tsunami.”

While the storm may have passed, the damage remains.

After being taken over by the federal government, the American mortgage finance system still hasn’t been fixed, and it may not be for several more years.    

No one argues that mortgage lenders should be left to their own devices. But respected leaders are now saying that Washington has swung from reckless disregard of what lenders were doing to extreme micromanagement of the lending process. 

Micromanagement.  Yeah.  That always works.

Note to Ben Bernanke: boo-fucking-hoo, asshole.

Get in line.

BZ

 

Buried in the news: “Tenth death in six weeks in the global financial services sector”

Financial Deaths 2014At first glance, I saw the following article from the UKDailyMail.com:

American Bitcoin exchange CEO found dead in her Singapore home after suspected suicide at age 28

The American CEO of an exchange for the troubled bitcoin digital currency has been found dead after a suspected suicide at her home in Singapore.

1390550_10152396648239782_1189719612_n.jpgWisconsin native, Autumn Radtke, 28, was discovered inside her apartment on February 28 and officials in the South East Asian city state are now waiting for toxicology test results to determine the exact cause of death.

Now, anyone with a modicum of brain tissue in their wheelhouse knows that having anything to do with “Bitcoins” was akin to expecting wealth from buying a pet rock.  Only a hyrax or a paramecium bet on that losing proposition — to the tune of “$400 million dollars gone missing” or “hackers robbed $600K.”

So let’s go back to February 26th, as documented again in the UKDailyMail.com:

‘Where’s our money?’: Bitcoin investor may have lost £200,000 in £225million ‘virtual bank job’ on currency exchange as chief executive breaks his silence

A Bitcoin investor fears he has lost nearly £200,000 after an apparent £225million ‘virtual bank job’ on a leading currency exchange.

Kolin Burges, 40, believes that his money was stolen from the Tokyo-based Mt Gox exchange which has shut down its website after 744,000 Bitcoins were reportedly stolen.

The crisis has shaken confidence in the virtual currency which has seen its value plummet from an all-time high of nearly £700 in December to nearer £300 today.

And there you go: “virtual currency” gets you virtual value.  Virtually.  Not completely, but almost.  And “almost” doesn’t quite make it in the Land of Cash.  When you invest in air, sometimes all you get back is air.

Are you starting to recognize a pattern here yet?  And are you beginning to realize that someone, or a series of someones, may not have immensely enjoyed investing in air?

I think even ol’ clotted, addled and intemperate BZ can do the math on this one.

But here’s the part few seem to have noticed from the first article: Radtke’s “passing” was the “tenth death in six weeks in the global financial services sector.”  Please see the graphic at the top of this post.

Really?

And this from PoliticalBlindspot.com on February 11th:

Now FIFTH Banker In Two Weeks Found Dead, Ruled ‘Suicide’ by Nail Gun

“Suicide by nail gun.”  Wowzer.  I can’t wait to read this one.

Last week we reported on the bizarre deaths of four major international bankers within less than a week. Now a fifth has joined them, and police are once again ruling it a suicide. Richard Talley, 57, the founder and CEO of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, has reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head – multiple times – with a nail gun.

Nail GunThat’s right, Talley was said by coroners to have shot himself in the head with a nail gun, even after the first nails had entered his brain.

Talley joins four other top officials from JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and the Federal Reserve have all turned up dead over the course of the past two weeks.

Anyone besides me thinking that “suicide by nail gun” might be just a hair bit suspicious?

Makes me think of:

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again.

Do, don’t you want me to love you
I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you

It’s all coming down fast.  I suspect a disturbance in The Force.

And I stand reassured that each and every one of these deaths is simply a coincidental suicide.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.  These are not the bankers you’re looking for.

BZ

 

Fed’s Tarullo details plans to counter bank runs

Berlin, Bankenkrach, Andrang bei der SparkasseFrom CNBC.com:

Global regulators need more policy tools to counter the risk of devastating bank runs and should have powers over a wide array of market participants, U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Dan Tarullo said on Friday.

“There is a need to supplement prudential bank regulation with a third set of policy options in the form of regulatory tools that can be applied on a market-wide basis,” Tarullo said at a conference on shadow banking.

I can see the statement formulating in your brain even as I write.

And that is this: why would such a regulation be needed unless there were a serious chance of bank runs globally?

Further: why might there be global bank runs?

Answer: because it is recognized that the American economy will crash sooner than most believe, and the waves created by that will affect the economies of every country on the planet.

Plans are being made, ladies and gentlemen, by the banking industry, to keep you from your money when that crash occurs.

Not if, when.

BZ