Central Bankers Are Not Omnipotent

A generation of market participants has grown up knowing only the era of central bankers and the 'Great Moderation' of (most of) the last two decades elevated their status significantly. While central bankers are generally very well aware of the limits of their own power, financial markets seem inclined to overstress the direct scope of monetary policy in the real world.
If markets fall, investors need only to run to central bankers, and Ben Bernanke and his ilk will put on a sticking plaster and offer a liquidity lollipop to the investment community for being such brave little soldiers in the face of adversity
Monetary policy impacts the real economy because it is transmitted to the real economy through the money transmission mechanism. This has become particularly important in the current environment, where, as UBS' Paul Donovan notes, some aspects of that transmission mechanism have become damaged in some economies. Simplifying the monetary transmission mechanism into four very broad categories: the cost of capital; the willingness to lend; the willingness to save; and the foreign exchange rate; UBS finds strains in each that negate some or all of a central bank's stimulus efforts. In the current climate, it may well be that the state of the monetary transmission mechanism is even more important than monetary policy decisions themselves. Some monetary policy makers may be at the limits of their influence.

Manufacturing's Mean-Reversion And Another Summer Slump

While not being cool enough to warrant instant-QE, the June employment report reinforced the sense that US growth has slowed further and that the labor market recovery remains sluggish. Besides the underwhelming employment report, this week’s releases offered more signs of slowing in the US manufacturing sector. The ISM manufacturing index falling below the symbolic 50 threshold for the first time since JUL09 and hard data on manufacturing activity, such as factory orders, have also cooled. Goldman's Zach Pandl notes that deteriorating external (Europe and China) demand is likely one factor behind the slowdown (with ISM new export orders index -11.5 points between APR and JUN) but suspects domestic factors could be at work as well. In particular, the slower growth in the US manufacturing sector could simply be that activity has already rebounded substantially since the recession (dominated by the channel-stuffing, China-dependent Autos sector). If the relatively fast growth in the manufacturing sector over the last few years reflected a “catch-up” from exceptional weakness in 2008-09, then this tailwind should gradually diminish and this led them to lower their Q2 GDP estimate to +1.5% as we face another sluggish summer.

Steve Keen On Why Debt Matters "All The Time" And The Need For "Quantitative Easing For The Public"

Following his somewhat epic blog debate with Paul Krugman, Steve Keen appears on Capital Account with Lauren Lyster to debunk more Keynesian propaganda and the kleptocratic status quo 'debt doesn't matter' arguments. Poking holes in the stable/exogenous shock equilibrium 'model' versus the real-world's dynamic systems, the Aussie economist warms up with the zero-interest rate conundrum and liquidity trap; moves on to the empirical falseness of the debt-to-unemployment relationship - implying 'debt matters all the time' as Keen explains common-sensibly (but not Neoclassically) that the 'change in debt adds to demand' and that involves banks which breaks modern economic theory (since lending is credit creation not savings transfer). Echoing the deleveraging from the Great Depression, it could take 15 years of unwinding this epic debt bubble before its all over - but not if the status quo of deficit spending is maintained - as Keen somewhat controversially concludes: "you can't just cure this with deficit spending [since debt is already beyond the black-hole's 'event horizon'], you have to abolish the private debt as well" by "quantitative easing for the public".

Google Sadly Joins The Anti-Gun Brigade

by Frank Miniter, Forbes:

Google is censuring information on guns and other products from Google Shopping. Sure, we know they once gave in to the Chinese government, but why are they censoring products used for self-protection by America’s gun owners?
Google announced this new policy on May 31. Now firearms manufacturers and others are pointing out Google’s hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the media has mostly ignored the story.
Ironically, Google’s own policy for “Freedom of Expression” says, “We’ve pressed governments to make combating Internet censorship a top priority in human rights and economic agendas.” And they say, “We regularly assist research efforts like the Open Net Initiative, the premier monitor of global trends on Internet censorship, by providing funds for their work.”
Maybe so, but they don’t think the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is acceptable in the U.S.
Specifically, they’ve banned results related to firearms and other products that they don’t deem to be “family safe.” Until recently, gun-related products appeared with other products in search results on the shopping section. Many of America’s 80 million gun owners have used Google as a powerful price-comparison tool. Not anymore.
Read More @ Forbes

Banks’ Defenses to Potential Trillions in Libor Claims Fail

from Washington’s Blog:

The big banks have been manipulating the world’s central economic indicator – Libor – for decades, harming homeowners, students, credit card holders, small businesses, cities and many others.
The sums involved were huge. As the Economist notes:

The sums involved might have been huge. Barclays was a leading trader of these sorts of derivatives, and even relatively small moves in the final value of LIBOR could have resulted in daily profits or losses worth millions of dollars. In 2007, for instance, the loss (or gain) that Barclays stood to make from normal moves in interest rates over any given day was £20m ($40m at the time). In settlements with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Britain and America’s Department of Justice, Barclays accepted that its traders had manipulated rates on hundreds of occasions.

The Independent notes that potential liability from the Libor suits could wipe out Barclays, RBS and other banks … and that the big banks have taken inadequate reserves against litigation risks.
Read More @ WashingtonsBlog.com

LaRouche Responds to Britain

from laroucheyouth:

Lyndon LaRouche issued the following remarks regarding the breaking developments coming out of Britain and their proposal that the United States join them in establishing a classical Glass-Steagall banking reorganization of the transatlantic financial system immediately.

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Pragmatism warms Russo-Japanese relations

By Kosuke Takahashi, Asia Times.com:
TOKYO – Spooked by China’s persistent assertiveness in confronting its Asian neighbors at sea, Japan and Russia are beginning to seek rapprochement to promote cooperation on security and economics in East Asia.
Despite little progress on a decades-old territorial dispute, the two nations aim to achieve closer military cooperation to counter China’s naval expansion. They are also accelerating bilateral moves to strengthen ties based on economic and energy pragmatism.
There is no shortage of anecdotes and events about this warming of bilateral relations between Japan and Russia. Most recently, General Shigeru Isawaki, head of the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF), visited his Russian counterpart Nikolai Makarov in Moscow on June 27. The two nations’ top military officials shared the view that bilateral defense cooperation was good for stability in the Asia-Pacific region and agreed to continue cooperation in providing safe navigation.
The following day, the Japanese military delegation led by Iwasaki visited a motorized infantry brigade and a military pilot-training center near Moscow. His trip to Russia is the first in four years for a chief of the JSDF Joint Staff.
“The territorial dispute will go nowhere for the time being,” Akihiro Iwashita, a professor of the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University in Japan, told Asia Times Online. “While shelving the territorial dispute, the two nations will likely enhance cooperation pragmatically.”
Read More @ ATimes.com

No Jobs: The Result of Wizard of Oz Economics

from Econophile via, Zero Hedge:
If there is one thing we should have learned from recent data is that you can “juice” the economy by inserting more money into it because when the money works its way through the economy, certain economic data will become more positive.
This is not a difficult concept to grasp. For example, if in a hypothetical economy there is a $1 trillion money supply and then it is increased by, say, 10%, assuming that new money is spent in economic activities, GDP will ultimately rise more or less by 10% because GDP measures spending. More money equals more spending, thus higher GDP.
During this phase one might see manufacturing and consumption increase and even employment grow. This happened with QE1 and 2. However, one might ask, if money stimulus actually revives real economic growth, why did we need QE2? Of course this is the flaw in the above argument. It doesn’t work.
Read More @ ZeroHedge.com

Does anyone think voting for Mitt Romney will bring real change to the USA?

from Dark Politricks:

If you hate Obama – I agree with you. He is a warmonger, a liar, a tool of the globalists and banksters he continued to bailout after following in Bush‘s footsteps.He has brought in laws that destroy American citizens liberty like the NDAA, indefinite detention of US citizens without due process as well as normalising the killing of US citizens by Presidential decree.
He attacks supposed allied countries like Pakistan and kills hundreds by remote control through the expansion of the drone programme that has now been expanded to be used inside the USA itself. Feel threatened? You should.
He has expanded the war on terror and the war on main street all whilst looking after his buddies in Wall Street.
His major “win”, Obamacare is nothing more than a sop to big business that forces people to buy insurance they may not want or cannot afford. Instead of doing what a true liberal would and bring in a public or taxpayer funded option he chose a halfhearted middle of the road option no-one really wanted apart from the health insurance companies.
Read More @ DarkPolitricks.com

Why Wall Street Loves Low Interest Rates and Inflation

by Vedran Vuk, Casey Research:
Wall Street and Main Street often have extremely divergent views on inflation. Talk to the average Joe about inflation and he’s very concerned, even when inflation is low. Listen to a Wall-Street guru, and they’re almost certain to downplay inflation. Why is there such a difference of views?
What most people don’t understand is that inflation is all about timing. Prices don’t rise simultaneously across the economy. Consider this analogy. Imagine that there’s a printing press giving away a wheelbarrow of cash to whomever wants it. Naturally, printing a pile of money will lead to inflation; however, all the money doesn’t enter the economy at the same time. The first guy to get his wheelbarrow of cash is pretty well off. He can go to the market and purchase items for normal prices. As more and more people show up with their wheelbarrows of cash, prices will rise. Hence, the last guy in line for his wheelbarrow of cash is not in the same position as the first person was. By the time the printing press gets to the last person, that wheelbarrow of cash won’t be worth very much – but to the first person, it can be a fortune.
In real life, the person earning a regular salary is way at the back of the line, while the banks, big corporations, and folks on Wall Street are toward the front of the line. Naturally, those toward the front of the line have no problem with this state of affairs.
Read More @ CaseyResearch.com

LIBOR fixing implicates government as well

from Gold Money:
The LIBOR scandal has been hogging headlines of late, with questions raised again about the extent to which big banks are now a law unto themselves; the focus on Barclays obscures the fact that other banks are likely to be found guilty of the same offence. The practice has been going on seemingly since at least 2005. The scandal has not only attracted fines, but it exposes the banks concerned to customer refunds and civil actions of amounts potentially in multiples of their core capital.
It lends support to the view that banks have lost sight of their responsibilities to their customers. This was the inevitable outcome of London’s “big bang” in the early 1980s, when the banks muscled in on securities-trading and derivative markets. The reason the rot started in London was that the Glass-Steagall Act restricted the ability of commercial banks to mix investment and banking activities in the US, so Wall Street was ready to “move” to London. The Conservative government in the UK took the hint and forced the London Stock Exchange to open up its membership to banks.
Read More @ GoldMoney.com

U.S. Army course authorizes use of deadly force, internment camps during U.S. civil disturbance

by Madison Ruppert, Activist Post
In a damning new 115 page self-learning course from the U.S. Army Military Police School at Fort McClellan originally issued in April 2006, we learn that the military has a detailed and brutal plan in store in times of mass civil unrest in the United States.
This likely comes as no surprise to readers who are familiar with my work on the military’s Internment/Resettlement Operations manual (video is also embedded below), my coverage of the designation of civilian internee in military literature, my coverage of KBR’s so-called “National Quick Response Teams,” and the FEMA “National Responder Support Camps.”

Read More @ Activist Post

Transparency vs. Money Laundering: Catholic Church Fears Growing Vatican Bank Scandal

A new scandal threatens to engulf the Catholic Church and this time the focus is money. Senior Vatican officials are battling over the future of the Vatican bank. While some would like total transparency, dubious transactions from the past and present could harm the Church’s image.

by Andreas Wassermann and Peter Wensierski, Spiegel International:
The Vatican scandal over shady bank accounts and millions in suspect transfers began shortly before sunrise on June 5 on Via Giuseppe Verdi, a picturesque street in the old part of Piacenza, a town in northeastern Italy. An elderly gentleman in a tailor-made suit had just left his house with a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. He was on his way to his car.
It was to be an important day for Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had recently been fired as the head of the Vatican bank — even if it turned out differently than he’d expected. Tedeschi was planning to go to the Vatican on that morning, but he never got there. The 67-year-old banker missed the high-speed train to Rome, meaning he couldn’t, as he had planned, get into a taxi at the Italian capital’s central station for the short journey across the Tiber River to the Vatican. There, he had hoped to take the documents out of his briefcase and hand them over to a confidant of the pope.
Instead, Gotti Tedeschi found four men waiting for him in the street — not a hit squad as he feared at first, but investigators with the Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police force. Even before he reached his car, they presented him with a search warrant and escorted him back to his house. For several hours, they searched through his sparsely furnished, cloister-like home office. At the same time, other officers were searching through Gotti Tedeschi’s office in Milan. Among the objects they confiscated were two computers, two cabinets’ full of binders, a planner and his briefcase.
Read More @ Spiegel.de

A Eurozone Crash Is Baked In The Cake

by Doug Casey, Whiskey and Gunpowder:
Louis James: So Doug, you’re off to FreedomFest 2012 shortly, where people will be able to hear your latest thoughts on many subjects. Maybe you can give us a sneak preview on whatever is uppermost on your mind today.
Doug: FreedomFest should be especially outrageous, since I’ll be tag-teaming with my friend Jeff Berwick of the Dollar Vigilante for a featured lunch. I’m not sure exactly what topics we’re going to discuss, but I hope we aren’t prosecuted for breaking too many federal, state, and local statutes at one sitting.
Anyway, lately I’ve been thinking about the EU’s rising tide of troubles. We talked about this last January, when I said it was coming, but it seems to me that at this point it’s rapidly coming to a head. A major financial and economic catastrophe in Europe is unavoidable. From there, it’s likely to spread out to the whole world.
Read More @ WhiskeyAndGunpowder.com

Gerald Celente – The Biggest Story of the 21st Century

from KingWorldNews:
Today top trends forecaster Gerald Celente discussed with King World News what he termed, “the story of the 21st century.” He also talked gold at length, and stated, “…it’s rigged (the gold market). Again, go back to the LIBOR scandal, they were lying about the severity of the crisis by rigging the numbers.” Celente is the founder of Trends Research, and the man many consider to be the top trends forecaster in the world. Here is what Celente had to say: “Eric, the big news is the formation of a European Central Bank, in the same fashion as the United States central bank. Of course there’s the ECB now, but what’s really going on now, it’s not about bailing out the banks of Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland or Portugal, no, that’s not what that last G-20 meeting was all about.”
Celente continues @ KingWorldNews.com

What If Nothing Happens?

by David SafeWater, SHTFPlan:
Yesterday, I spoke with a gentleman in New York who tried to educate me on preparedness. He mentioned so many different concerns, many of which were legitimate and some were just out there. With so much going on in our Nation and throughout the world at large, it’s tough to ignore so much writing on the wall.
Now, let’s take that conversation into context for my focus of writing an article this morning: What if nothing happens? That’s exactly the question I’ll ask you. You, the prepared individual. You, the prepper who purchases food to have in the event your employment situation loses its revenue temporarily, or a minor movement of the earth closes local markets and grocers. You, the healthy student of nutrition. You, the responsible parent who works to provide the necessities of life for your children and grandchildren and works to secure those ongoing needs. You, the involved citizen who talks with your neighbors and cares about the safety of your neighborhood.
Read More @ SHTFPlan.com

 

Debt crisis: Spain poised for further spending cuts

by Angela Monaghan, and Louise Armitstead, The Telegraph:
Speaking at a conference outside Madrid on Saturday, he said that Spain’s 17 autonomous regions must also accelerate their efforts to cut spending.
Mr Rajoy is expected to unveil additional budget measures to Spain’s parliament on Wednesday. They are likely to include a rise in VAT, as well as benefit cuts for public sector workers.
He urged the eurozone to rapidly implement a rescue plan for Spain’s troubled banks and measures agreed at the leaders summit at the end of June to ensure credibility among policymakers.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk

Who is on the Wrong Side of History?

by Anthony Wile, The Daily Bell:
Because of the Internet’s success, numerous attempts have been made to weaken it and make it less of a problem for the power elite that it is inconveniencing and exposing.
We call the process the Internet Reformation and we’re creating a society to formalize support for a free and open Internet among other things. The Internet itself is only one part of a larger inevitable freedom movement that has been stimulated by the Internet Reformation – just as the Reformation itself eventually shifted the parameters of power and authority throughout Europe.
This is surely what the power elite fears today, even though many on the Internet writing for the alternative media maintain that the top elites are implacable and even all-powerful in certain ways.
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com

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