Fed Watch: When They Call for the Bailiff You Know You’re Winning
You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?”
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”
— Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”
In the face of the Fed’s intransigent hawkishness we are now on the verge of exposing the worst lies of two generations of people in power. I’ve maintained for more than a year now that the global oligarchy known here as The Davos Crowd thought they’d run the table on the US and the UK with COVID-19.
The various bailout packages, Pelosi’s CARES Act and pending legislation — Build Back Better, etc. — were supposed to destroy the fiscal position of the US once and for all. These were political blackmail to force the Fed not to raise rates when it clearly needed to.
That Pelosi et.al. were only able to pass neutered versions of these bills is a sign that powerful forces behind the scenes are not down with this plan.
Now, in light of the near-complete coup attempt against UK Prime Minister Liz Truss (more on that later this week) we are looking at big power plays to decide whether Davos will retain control over Western policy. Truss’ difficulties point to Davos having a few markers to call in here.
But, I want to go back to a couple of weeks ago and also talk about Credit Suisse. At the same time there was a coordinated effort to stop Truss implementing a very non-Davos fiscal program. There was a coordinated whisper campaign to start a bank run on Credit Suisse.
Clearly this attack failed, but it’s equally clear Davos activated the next level of their assault on any institution not aligned with them.
Is is any wonder that the two big European financial centers outside of the EU came under coordinated attack, Economic Hitman style, in the days following Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and the coronation of Globalist Charles III as King?
After that, and subsequent statements by FOMC Chair “Baller” Jerome Powell, Davos had to bring in the UN begmanding (begging masquerading as demanding [H/T Joachin Flores for that one]) all central banks stop raising rates to avoid a global recession.
This was promoted all across the Davos-controlled media space. Even Rupert Murdoch’s War Street Journal got in on the action to sway GOPer’s a month out from the mid-terms. And I asked the big question last week, “Can the Fed Afford to Pivot,” with the US $31 trillion in debt?
The answer from the Fed has been a consistent, no.
And that means Davos is in serious trouble. As I’ve tirelessly pointed out, the Fed controls global dollar liquidity in a way they haven’t in decades. And that is why the screams of pain from all the usual suspects are so loud.
That said, Davos continues to execute a script they have no way to augment if they want to achieve their stated goals. Taking out the UK was the right move. But, is it a move that puts them on the path to winning or just an attack of opportunity in a series of rearguard actions?
The Bailiff Moment
Bullies always know when they are caught. Bullies are also generally the worst form of liars, ones who shout down opposition rather than engage in conversation.
In interrogations the goal is always to get the liar to trap himself and leave him calling for relief. This is why you should never talk to cops without a lawyer, FYI.
They are easy to trap because the lies are so transparent. All it takes is the slightest application of the Socratic Method — using one’s own argument to find flaws in it through counter-example — and you can get them “calling for the bailiff” in a matter of minutes.
The title of this post is my best remembrance of the title I first saw this video posted under at Lewrockwell.com back in 2009. I know this is 7+ minutes of having to watch Nancy Pelosi, but trust me, it’s worth it.
This is the only video of Nasty Nancy I can stomach to watch, because Jan Helfeld crushes her on minimum wage in less than 3 minutes. The squirm is almost like music. It’s a masterclass in evasion, deception and bullying. It lays bare the malignancy of her narcissism.
It is a real, tangible benefit to humanity revealing this horrific human being. Notice how when Pelosi really understands what’s happened she resorts to multiple threats, “You made a mistake!” she repeats glaring at him.
She became his enemy in that moment.
If you despise Pelosi as much as I do this is a treat for new readers, a thank you for joining us I’ve dredged up from my memory and the bowls of the YouTube algorithm.
I brought this out to show you how easy it is to expose the duplicity and fragility of the narratives surrounding our political and financial reality.
The Reflections of Vampires
It was this interview which helped crystallize my filter I use to view these false narratives. It’s why it was so easy for me to see the Fed’s raising the RRP rate by 0.05% above the Fed Funds Rate at last year’s June FOMC meeting as a watershed moment.
It was no different than Helfeld showing Pelosi that her intern argument was nonsense. That move exposed the weak US dollar which had been created during the Trump administration as a supremely false move in historical context.
Powell raises RRP by 0.05% and the whole world freaks out. The euro collapses, gold’s nascent rally is snuffed out and US bond yields begin rising, forcing euro-bond rates out of the negative-yielding basement.
“It puts the positive yield on its skin or else it gets the rate hike again!”
Since then it’s been nothing but a series of ever-escalating actions to force the Fed to pivot off Powell’s ‘Volcker-esque’ policies. I’ve chronicled all of the twists and turns of this story, beat for beat, since last June.
These last sixteen months have played out like this seven minute interview with Pelosi. Jerome Powell is Helfeld and Davos is Pelosi. They kept making the case their plan for the US to spend spend spend when inflation was here here here.
The most obvious corollary to this interview and Powell was when Obama et.al. launched that insider trading scandal of the Fed governors last fall and forced three hawks off the FOMC.
“You made a mistake!”
Note we have a sequel this week with Atlanta Fed Chair Raphael Bostic having to do a mea culpa over more insider trading at the Fed.
Don’t Look Up!
This week Truss finally caved. It will be the end of her and the any dreams Elizabeth II had of an independent Britain.
I told you Truss was a moron and clearly overmatched for the job. But it goes beyond that. After the BoE toys with markets for a couple of weeks, the message to the world was to avoid bad stuff (“RECESSION!”) is get the evil US Fed to pivot.
Will Powell pivot? I don’t think so. Why? He’s not a moron. Nor is he alone like Truss was. Truss was set up to fail.
For months, I’ve been alone in saying the Fed is going to be aggressive. For months I said the Fed is not raising rates to tame cost-push inflation which it doesn’t have the tools to fight.
Now, I’m not alone anymore. Neither John Hussman or Danielle Dimartino Booth thinks the Fed will pivot. Others are still trapped at denial in the Kubler-Ross model.
Hussman points out that the Fed has never pivoted on hiking rates with the PCE deflator, currently 4.9% (with modifiers, see the linked article), above the Fed Funds Rate, 3.25%. He makes a powerful argument.
This is what Powell et.al. mean when they say they can’t leave the job undone.
But in a recent interview with Hedgeye’s Keith McCullough, Ms. Booth kept saying what I’ve been saying, “The Fed isn’t trying to stop inflation.” She uses the Fed’s massive TIPS portfolio as part of the reason, but it’s also something, when pressed, she’s, “not able to say.”
Watch the whole interview, it’s fascinating.
So, against this dark background, we have one non-EU European financial center crushed. Let’s go back to the other, Switzerland. The Fed’s intransigence is why I think the whisper campaign against Credit Suisse was another of these operations.
I’m not saying that Credit Suisse isn’t vulnerable. Of course it’s vulnerable. The reason it almost worked is because they are vulnerable, just like the UK pension system was Truss’ Achilles’ heel.
All I’m saying is that I have a hard time believing that all of the EU’s continental competition coming under extreme pressure in quick succession doesn’t have a strategic component to it.
Everyone acted like the Fed pivoted when they did a couple of $3+ billion tranches of swap line liquidity to the Swiss National Bank this month. Notice how there was no money for the Bank of England and almost no money for the ECB.
What if this is just more battle lines being drawn?
Because the UN coming out and decrying the central banks raising rates is a massive tell that the wrong people’s oxen are being gored. It isn’t just these two events.
We had the public meltdown of Jeremy Seigel on CNBC which was amplified beyond all recognition. Jeffrey Sachs stopped CNN cold with the pronouncement that the US was behind the bombing of the Nordstreams.
These people are all close allies of George Soros and the Democratic party machine. The fear over the mid-terms is real now. Even Nate Silver at five-thirty-eight.com is worried the Democrats are about to get Rick-rolled.
UN Cries Uncle
So, Davos using deep assets at the UN through UNCTAD to issue warnings against the Fed and Volcker-like policy is no different than Pelosi calling for the guard to remove Helfeld from her office.
They demanded easy money and price controls in typical Davosian communist fashion. We need to coordinate monetary policy worldwide to stop the collapse of the old system.
It was a classic appeal to the common good and for internationalism over nationalism.
This is also a moment of the purest weakness.
And if you think Europe isn’t weak here and that the Fed is still not in Helfeld’s seat asking uncomfortable questions of narcissist bullies with questionable taste in clothes I give you the EU’s latest trade data. (H/T Robin Brooks on Twitter)
Trade surpluses are gone. Inflation raging. Producer prices rising faster than inflation. Bond volatility at levels not seen since COVID.
Europe’s Energy price spikes are demons of their own summoning. They had a cozy deal with Russia and chose fake free markets for natural gas to create a volatility playground to bankrupt their middle classes.
So, they want this inflation, even if they say they don’t. They want the inflation to force the Fed to subsidize it, like it did when Globalist Ben and his Auntie Janet ran the place.
What they never planned on was having to do this and fight the Fed simultaneously. In broad strokes, they could freeze capital in Europe’s banks, grab back City of London and add Zurich, while putting the US on a path to true insolvency to neuter the power of New York.
Now all they have left is playing power politics with its junior EU members who were only interested in ensuring their people didn’t starve, e.g. Hungary. Lashing out at cripples is not a good look.
All arguments that the US dollar doesn’t deserve its strength or that the Fed has a responsibility to Europe when all they’ve done is engage in fiscal and monetary hara-kiri via negative rates for nearly a decade are pathetic as they are stupid.
You can see that this call was an extension of the anti-US psy-op that ran wild after the Nordstream bombings. There is a concerted effort now to at once push for open war between the US and Russia while also blaming the Fed for the crash in the global markets.
“You made a mistake, here!”
The BoE pivot was done to isolate the Fed. The Reserve Bank of Australia only raised by 25 basis points to support the BoE.
The ECB is silent during all of this, because they are the Elephant in the room that’s been pushed off the mountain and is about to go splat.
The UN’s response? Don’t Look Up!
Fake Rally, Fake Markets
The reward to the world is a massive rally in stocks, bonds and safe-havens. While this is clearly just a bout of short-covering in most of these markets which were stretched to the downside, it’s also timed with the global call for central bank dovishness and price controls from the UN.
The narrative now is the Fed is being petulant and rapacious, just like the US foreign policy establishment. The victim narrative is reaching a crescendo right in time for the mid-terms.
That’s why the whisper campaign against Credit Suisse didn’t materialize into a bank run. They were a warning and used as a weapon to pressure the Fed. As pointed out to me on Twitter the Fed opened a new repo facility for commercial banks.
Do you notice who ISN’T on this list? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. No major European banks. Nataxis doesn’t count when Deutsche Bank, Unicredit, or ING are not on the list.
Just US, Canadian, Hong Kong and Japanese banks.
Guess who got money? The Swiss.
Who didn’t? Europe.
A lot was made of that meeting, and it served as good fodder for the attack on Credit Suisse. Will the Fed come in with an emergency rate cut? Will they pivot?
And for the Fed to call a meeting for the same day that Credit Suisse was attacked and the UN to begmand them to pivot only to comment on debit card payment systems, is a massive tell.
The Fed updated the new rules for debit card transactions to have at least one backup processor in place. If anything, this means Davos can’t lean on VISA to deny your grocery purchase unilaterally because of mean tweets or because you’re Alex Jones.
This clearly says to me that they are fighting this crap at the foundational level. It also says that the FOMC’s silence on UK Gilts, Credit Suisse, etc. is deafening.
Since then there’s been nothing but more acquiescence to the coming 75 basis point hike on the eve of the mid-term elections. The Bank of England got their pound of flesh, all puns intended, and for now things are stable. It won’t be for long.
As Ms. Booth said and I agree, every rally in the stock market, every wiggle by someone to increase offshore liquidity and calm things down, is another opportunity for the Fed to keep repeating their position.
“Why can’t we raise rates?”
“Why can’t we charge what we want for the money we provide?”
“Why do we have to define the value of US labor by your rules?”
“Why do we have to enforce a minimum wage for offshore dollar speculators?”
“Bailiff!!”
But, the big unanswered question no one is allowed to answer is the one that Ms. Booth kept avoiding in that interview, “If the Fed isn’t fighting inflation with rate hikes, then what are they fighting?”
You know my answer. Davos does too.
What’s hilarious is watching Europe call for the bailiff and everyone finally realizing that the Fed told him to take an early lunch break.
