Wall Street Sulks as Fed Is Not Dovish Enough

In the aftermath last month's federal funds rate hike - the first in eight years, and, a paltry 0.25% at that - the Fed held their first FOMC rate policy meeting of the year and the reaction from Wall Street was nothing short of derisive.

While the Fed governors did their level best to hem, haw, and dance around their policy "mistake" - which has taken US stocks roughly seven percent lower and cratered confidence - market participants apparently wanted more, as in a complete roll back of the hike and a return to ZIRP, the policy that had prevailed since the fall of 2008.

Stocks were trading close to the flatline until the 2:00 pm announcement by the Fed. After a small amount of see-sawing, sentiment turned radically negative, with all indices taking a punch to the gut that extended into the close.

The Fed cannot escape its fate. It will be overseeing the utter calamity of a global currency crisis, brought about by their excessive credit policies from the Greenspan and Bernanke eras. Janet Yellen, the current Fed Chair, will be scapegoated, and rightfully, as she is completely tone deaf to the needs of the US and global economies, which are screaming deflation at every turn.

The best Ms. Yellen can hope for in her sure-to-be-short tenure as Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve is for Japan or Europe to somehow come to the rescue with additional QE in coming weeks and months, which will buy her additional time to exit in an orderly manner.

The handwriting is on the wall and the handwringing can be seen on the faces populating the video screens from CNBC and Bloomberg TV. Nobody wants stocks, and soon enough, nobody will want dollars, at least not for long. But first, the powerful grip of deflation will have to work its way through the system, crushing the investor class while shoring up those at the bottom of the societal and economic ladders.

That process has been underway for at least a year, as shown by the price of crude oil. It will eventually infest all consumer goods, crushing corporate profits in manufacturing and retail. The systemic underutilization will commence until governments fall, first in emerging markets, then developed ones.

There is no escaping a monetary event such as what is coming. Gold continued to ramp up. Silver is lagging, but will eventually follow and then surpass the gains made by gold.

Today's closing quotes:
S&P 500: 1,882.95, -20.68 (1.09%)
Dow: 15,944.46, -222.77 (1.38%)
NASDAQ: 4,468.17, -99.51 (2.18%)

Crude Oil 32.19 +2.35% Gold 1,124.90 +0.42% EUR/USD 1.09 +0.32% 10-Yr Bond 2.0010 +0.35% Corn 369.75 +0.14% Copper 2.06 +1.08% Silver 14.50 -0.44% Natural Gas 2.15 -0.51% Russell 2000 1,002.75 -1.50% VIX 23.11 +2.71% BATS 1000 20,083.96 -0.92% GBP/USD 1.4245 -0.72% USD/JPY 118.63 +0.18%