Friday, September 5, 2014

THE MUDDLE THICKENS

Interest rates are not low enough," Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Narayana Kocherlakota said at a Town Hall meeting in Montana, citing subdued inflation and "unacceptably high" unemployment as evidence.
Here's one of the reasons things are getting more muddled at the Fed. Unlike beauty and many other things in life, inflation is not in the eye of the beholder but in the pocket of those of us who pay it. And there's plenty to go around.
The recent drop in gasoline prices is a concerted attempt to pry consumers' money from whatever might still be limping around in their wallets, Toss in what is now an official attack on consumers for cash hoarding by Fed officials and MSN and you're starting to get the picture.

Heroes, regulators and bureaucrats always need a villain.

Desperate is as desperate does. Flooding the market for nearly six years with zero interest rates without their desired results proved one thing: their tool shed is nearly empty. 

Selling off the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserves to ostensively right many of the current global geopolitical disturbances is among them
http://blogs.platts.com/2014/09/05/sell-oil-spr/ 

 What's even more scary is that many of these ideas come from those in so-called high places.


That the U.S. currently is enjoying a glut of energy, most of it from fracking, a procedure that's hardly the most welcome guest at dinner for a growing number these days, clouds the picture. There are some smart folks out there--you define the term for yourself--who believe this glut is temporary. 


And many of those geopolitical hotspots may turn out to be anything but. 

t. man hatter


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