Ridiculousness

We’ve often documented here the obvious Fed Goon strategy of jawboning and lies in an effort to prompt the “markets” to do what they’d like them to do. The ridiculousness of yesterday may have set a new standard by which future verbal interventions will be measured.
With some time to spare this morning, I thought I would just double back and summarize the events of yesterday:
IT WAS COMPLETE AND TOTAL BS!
So, the world waits with baited breath for Mother Fellen to give her all-important speech at Jackson Hole. The text of the speech was released and Mother began speaking at 10:00 am EDT. The headline-scanning algos had a field day for the first few minutes as the message The Fed wanted to portray was in the headlines. The Pig rallied. The USDJPY spiked. Bonds sold off sharply and gold was clipped for 1%.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the market manipulation. It took a few minutes but, eventually, some actual human beings read the body of the speech and noted that the title was deceiving. Oh sure, The Fed “stands ready to raise rates again soon” but how about the stuff about also standing ready to feed another few TRILLION into the markets at the first sign of the next crisis? Suddenly, everything reversed. The Pig fell. The USDJPY puked. Long Bond rates rallied 6 bps in a matter of minutes from 2.27% to 2.21% and gold shot from $1325 to $1344.
At that point, I was typing a new post and, rather prophetically, added this passage:
“After spiking on the initial “news” at 10:00 am, the USDJPY has fallen backward and, as you can see, it is once again clinging to the 100 level. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if Mother has a bud in her ear giving here tick-by-tick updates so that she can adjust her massage on the spot. Absent that, perhaps this sucker will actually finish the week perilously close to 100?”
Well, of course, Mother doesn’t have a bud in her ear as just simply sticking to and reading the prepared text is about all she can handle. So, what did The Criminals do in order to reverse the action since the weren’t getting their desired response? They immediately called up LIESman and had him interview Goon Fischer. The sycophant CNBS jumped at he opportunity to have the Fed #2 on its air and the rest is history.

This post was published at TF Metals Report on August 27, 2016.