
IPFS News Link • Federal Reserve
From Fed to Farce as Yellen Continues to Pitch a Rate Hike
• http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/from-fed3 Signs of a Recession Janet Yellen Is Ignoring … The Fed Chair's upbeat speech glossed over key warning signs. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was upbeat on Monday in a speech at The World Affairs Council, where she largely dismissed the negative implications of Friday's jobs report, which showed that the U.S. economy added just 38,000 new jobs, the worst monthly reading in nearly six years. -Fortune
We wrote an article some time after Yellen's appointment as Federal Reserve Chairman that suggested she'd been elevated to her current position in order to take the blame for the coming worldwide economic implosion.
We see no reason to change our mind.
Increasingly, the signs of disaster become clearer. And Yellen, meanwhile, looks like she doesn't know what she's talking about.
(Not that she ever did.)
More and more, she sounds like an equity pitchman. Of course, the Fed is nothing like what it is portrayed to be. But in the past it's been less obvious.
With Yellen, it's ridiculous.
Late last year she was positive the US economy was "recovering."
Then she hiked rates by a mere 25 basis points and world stock markets imploded.
She never apologized of course, and the mainstream media gave her a pass.
But it was obvious she'd been wrong, disastrously so.
Now it is June – mid year – and Yellen has begun to talk up a rate hike again.
It was supposed to happen later in June after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.
But recent employment numbers turned sour.
And again Yellen looks silly.
Now even the mainstream media cannot keep up the pretense.
This Fortune magazine article (see excerpt above) is a good example.
It points out that the rate of job creation is falling. "Businesses are not firing many people, but they've also cut back significantly on hiring and other expenditures."
Capital investment is down as well. "The decline in companies' willingness to invest in people is matched by its lack of interest in investing in new capital equipment."
Payroll data shows a slowing economy. So does data from the Institute for Supply Management. This data, released Friday, "showed the growth in the services sector slowing in May, with the employment component falling into contractionary territory."
There is no sign, here, of an impending "boom." Not even the tiniest sniff.
Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly obvious that one of Yellen's main goals is to sustain stock market growth, at least for now.
Presumably until after presidential elections.
Conversely, she is to ensure that the dollar doesn't move down too hard and too quickly against gold.
Yellen is fighting a losing battle in this regard. The world is at the end of a long fiat-money expansion driven by zero interest rates.
Central bankers have nowhere to go now.
That's the reason for less-than-zero interest rates and speculation about a cashless global society.
Stocks are going down. Gold is going up.
The world and the US especially are more likely to face stagflation than a further economic boom.
Central banks themselves are buying gold.
Billionaires like George Soros and Carl Icahn are taking positions in gold and gold derivatives.
Gold miners are moving up.