Evacuation Nation: Traders Flee in Final Hour; Fed Buys Euro Bonds

Dudley also said the central bank holds a very small amount of European sovereign debt and that he sees a “high bar” to additional purchases.

That line came from this story on Bloomberg and it leads off today because buying sovereign debt - other than US debt - is not in the Fed's charter.

Not that it will matter at all. Our brain-dead congress probably won't even notice, but it does raise some questions, like:

1. Aren't there enough buyers for all that Euro-debt?
2. How much did the Fed buy, and in what denominations?
3. With its balance sheet already over $3 trillion and stuffed full of MBS and Agency Debt, why are they buying ANY euro sovereign debt?

The most basic question, still, is, "how desperate are the world's central bankers?"

Probably pretty desperate.

Other than that, oh, and Case-Shiller showed that residential real estate values have fallen again, for the 9th straight month, bringing median US home prices back to 2003 levels (talk about a "lost decade," just a guess, but home prices have a lot more downside in them).

ON Wall Street, stocks meandered along the unchanged level most of the day (except for the NASDAQ, which had a small gain thanks mostly to Apple (AAPL)), but dropped like a rock in the last hour of trading.

Volume was dismal, but that's been the case for so long, everyone just thinks it's normal. (it's not)

Lastly, this blog's editor posted this comment over at Zero Hedge and it got some attention:

I'm 58, making me a baby boomer. I like Ron Paul, but I know he's never going to get elected, so nix that idea.

Most of my friends are BBs as well, and, as a group, they're idiots. They say things like, "we need at least $80,000 a year just to maintain our standard of living," while they have $800K in stocks and investments.

So, instead of retiring early and taking their money out of their 401ks, IRAs or whatever - many of them are past 58 1/2 - they keep on working, padding their "nest egg."

The folly of this is that by the time they retire, the world as we knew it will have ended. It already has. They'll lose in the next market downturn and keep working until they're 70 or longer to "make up the difference."

Me, I've been semi-retired in my own business since i was 43. After my business went bank-o - with plenty of help from asshat employees and dishonest corporate competitors - I decided the rat race just wasn't worth it.

I am now happy, though not content, make enough to get by and even save a little - PMs, cash, tools, necessities - and figure that I'll work my 4-5 hours a day at my own pace until I die.

Retirement, like a lot of other stuff thrown at us by the MSM, is a myth. People relying on pensions and especially SS are going to be sorely disappointed. I've already been disappointed, so it doesn't matter to me.

As for the younger crowd, they're nothing but wage-slaves. That covers about all of the demographics in America. We're royally screwed, but don't even know it and continue to keep thinking it will get better at some point.

This country has some severe deficits - in education, imagination, entrepreneurism and free-thinking. As far as I can tell, it's all been downhill since Duane Allman died, but, like I tell anyone who whines, be a warrior, and a happy one. You have to fight for everything these days. Might as well enjoy the fight.

My sister has three girls in high school and they all plan on going to college. They're all so screwed, but they don't listen to me much unless there's a crisis, so I don't talk to them much, though I do give them silver on their birthdays.

I have a feeling they'll be seeking out my counsel as time goes on.

Dow 13,197.73, -43.90 (0.33%)
NASDAQ 3,120.35, -2.22 (0.07%)
S&P 500 1,412.52, -3.99 (0.28%)
NYSE Composite 8,239.28, -49.51 (0.60%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,637,697,375
NYSE Volume 3,474,379,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2214-3380
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 359-24
WTI crude oil: 107.33, +0.30
Gold: 1,684.90, -0.70
Silver: 32.62, -0.13

Timing the Market with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke

Timing the market is a difficult enterprise, according to just about any trader or analyst, or even the sage Bob Brinker of syndicated radio show Money Talk fame.

However, timing has gotten easier if you just follow the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke around and watch for the proper signals, which, unless you're deaf and blind, are hard to miss.

The signals are easy to discern, even for those not well-versed in matters of the economy, as is our fearless Chairman.

Here you go:

Ben opens mouth, speaks. Buy stocks.

That's it, and that's what happened today when Mr. Bernanke - he of the printing press and money-dispensing helicopters - spoke at an early-morning gathering of the assemblage at the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). It didn't really matter what Bernanke said - he says pretty much the same thing all the time - but, rather, how Wall Street interpreted his words, which they interpreted exactly the same way they have his last eight or ten speeches: He's printing more, not raising the federal funds rate for a long, long time and QE3 is on the Fed's rader. Buy, buy, buy. Don't look, don't analyze, just buy.

And it worked like a charm. The dollar was down, the euro up, but, most importantly, stocks eviscerated all memory of last week's worst-in-2012 decline. Done. Easy. Inflationary. Profit.

Dow 13,241.63, +160.90 (1.23%)
NASDAQ 3,122.57, +54.65 (1.78%)
S&P 500 1,416.51, +19.40 (1.39%)
NYSE Composite 8,288.80, +108.74 (1.33%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,625,670,875
NYSE Volume 3,467,794,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4326-1350
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 409-28 (Thanks, Ben!)
WTI crude oil: 107.03, +0.16
Gold: 1,685.60, +23.20 (Yes, thanks, unca Benji!)
Silver: 32.75, +0.48 (Zounds, Ben, thank YOU!)

March Market Madness: BofA's Own to Rent Plan; Apple Flash Crash, BATS batty IPO

College basketball's 68-team NCAA national championship tournament (AKA March Madness) has nothing on US stock markets in terms of sheer insanity and hair-raising antics.

Just when you think it can't get any weirder in our manipulated, over-hyped markets, along comes a day like today to convince you that the absurd is now the new normal.

To start things off, Bank of America announced a plan to "invite" roughly 1000 homeowners in default on their mortgages the chance to rent the home they formerly owned.

Think of it. BofA can now use the catchy, "Rent a Piece of the American Dream" as the tag line for what they're calling, subtly, the Mortgage to Lease Program. No lie. The bank that bought Countrywide Financial and all their horrible sub-prime, Alt-A, no-doc and NINJA loans, now wants to slither out from under the rock of the robo-signing scandal, fraudulent mortgage documentation and a host of other evils, by forgiving the original loan and renting the house back to the (former) mortgagor.

The absurdity of this plan, whereby people who can't afford their mortgage payments, are somehow supposed to be able to afford rent, or even want to, in the very same home they've been living in for free for two or three years or longer, is so over the top, some people might even buy into it. The Bank of America plan is to take title to the homes, tear up the old documents (supposedly before said homeowners rush to the nearest federal courthouse, documents in hand, and file fraud charges), pay the property taxes, rent the property back to the homeowners (or squatters, if you like), at - get this - rent that's less than the original monthly mortgage payment, then flip the house, along with the paying (below market rates) tenants to some investment gang. Are there real estate investors that dumb out there?

There are so many flaws to this abhorrent plan that it is hardly worth discussing, though actual landlords - real people who own and manage rental properties - have been laughing about it all day long. And, of course, the bank won't sully its pristine reputation by dirtying its hands with the mundane tasks of landlording, like maintaining the lawns, fixing leaks and making modest improvements. No, for that, they'll hire professional property managers, adding even more cost.

The plan is supposed to roll out shortly in the states of Nevada, Arizona and New York as a pilot program. Pilot, indeed. This plan is going to crash and burn on the runway. All of this sound and fury is designed for only one purpose: to save face and costly lawsuits, now that people have awakened to the criminality and fraud that Countrywide started and Bank of America openly perpetuated. They'd be much better off and propbably millions of dollars ahead if they'd just give the properties to the people living in them and simply walk away.

With that as a background, the housing market made more ugly noises on Friday when the Commerce Department reported that new home sales fell for the second straight month, dropping 1.6% in February, despite unusually warm weather, great for home-hunting and generational low mortgage rates.

Then there was Apple's flash crash, blamed on a fat-finger trade for 100 shares well below the market price on a trading platform known as BATS, which, incidentally, went public today, but after all of one trade, shut itself down due to technical difficulties, canceling its IPO indefinitely, which, if today's performance was any indication of the quality and integrity of its service, will likely be forever.

As if that wasn't enough, today marked the absolute thinnest volume in the last ten years. It was completely dreadful, yet stocks still finished with meagre gains, though down for the week. Ouch!

Dow 13,080.73, +34.59 (0.27%)
NASDAQ 3,067.92, +4.60 (0.15%)
S&P 500 1,397.11, +4.33 (0.31%)
NYSE Composite 8,180.05, +38.72 (0.48%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,400,164,125
NYSE Volume 3,395,163,250
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3848-1709 (that's WACK!)
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 133-28
WTI crude oil: 106.87, +1.52
Gold: 1,662.40, +19.90
Silver: 32.27, +0.93

Data Suggests Economies Weakening Worldwide

Mainstream media has tried - somewhat unsuccessfully - over the past few years, to convince the American public that all is well with ours and the world's economies. Of course, the rich media stars have a vested interest in maintaining the status of the status quo, because if they have to report the truth for a change, their political masters might think of replacing them, as has been the procedure for members of the elite media who don't play along.

That's why it's important to tune out the TV blur artists and tune into internet and alternative sources, who try their best to tell it like it is, without cheerleading for the corporatists and globalists who dominate the money.

Today's news out of China and Europe was nearly matched for awfulness by more sour data on the US housing market, sending stocks uniformly lower in one of the better routs of the year so far.

Early in the US morning, China reported the HSBC flash Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 48.1 in March, a four-month low, compared with a final reading of 49.6 in February. It was the fifth straight monthly reading that showed contraction, another worrisome sign that the the world is entering what looks like a global recession.

In Europe, the miss was huge in the EU PMI data, with the composite PMI for the Eurozone declining for the second consecutive month, to 48.7 in March from 49.3 in February. The rate of decline was also accelerating, stoking fears that the recession that is well underway in many Eurozone countries is spreading fast. Rosy expectations from expert economists (one should know well by now that said "experts" only know money printing and inflation, and not reality) called for a rise to 49.8. They were sorely disappointed and stocks fell across the european bourses. Any reading on any PMI under 50.0 signals contraction and the european economies are contracting more rapidly than the optimists in Brussels and London can imagine.

In the US, the bad news was exacerbated by a trifecta of gloom from the housing sector. Mortgage rates jumped above 4.0% for a 30-year fixed mortgage, home prices remained flat for the month of January (despite excellent house-buying weather) and the December gain of 0.7% was revised radically lower, to a gain of just 0.1%. Additionally, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage applications fell 7.4% for the week ending March 16, compared with the week before.

As many skeptics have been saying for months, as US stocks posted incredible gains since October, there really isn't any recovery to be seen, anywhere.

And that's the nub of the argument. Government data is so overtly massaged, mangled, managed and misappropriated to meet the demands of the political and financial crowd that it can barely be trusted. The best advice is to just chop two percentage points off any data to get a realistic reading, rather than rely on the bogus statistics provided by the professional guessers in the governments' capture.

Of course, middle class Americans do have choices, though for the most part they are painful. Second jobs, kids at home, driving less, and eating a leaner more nutritious diet (you feel better and eat less) rather than the junk served at fast food and mid-priced restaurant chains are choices that are being made routinely by Americans forced to tighten their economic belts.

But of course, you won't hear that on either Bloomberg of CNBC, where everything is going up all the time, no matter what. It's been 3 1/2 years since the crash of '08. Nothing's changed, except that the lies have gotten larger.

Stocks were down hard until the closing hour, when, sure enough, a rally saved the major indices from finishing a heck of a lot lower. The day will come when all the pumping and pimping by the insiders won't be enough to save our precious stock markets from complete implosion. As usual, volume was non-existent.

With one more trading day ahead, stocks are poised for their worst weekly showing of the year.

Dow 13,046.14, -78.48 (0.60%)
NASDAQ 3,063.32, -12.00 (0.39%)
S&P 500 1,392.78, -10.11 (0.72%)
NYSE Composite 8,141.33, -78.01 (0.95%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,524,230,750
NYSE Volume 3,664,415,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 1559-3952
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 94-41
WTI crude oil: 105.35, -1.92
Gold: 1,642.50, -7.80
Silver: 31.34, -0.88

US Economy an Express Train to Nowhere

Where to begin...

Let's start with housing, which continues to be a complete bugaboo for the friends of the Fed (FOF), meaning governments at all levels, financial institutions, public sector employees (overpaid, irresponsible), welfare and entitlement recipients and anybody who spends beyond their means.

This morning, the NAR released their almost-fully-discredited monthly report on existing home sales, which, despite marvelous weather across most of the country, fell 0.9% in February as compared to January's figures. The NAR was quick to point out that sales rose 8.8% from a year earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.59 million.

Median prices were nearly flat, at $157,100, just 0.1% higher than February 2011.

It wasn't such a disheartening report, overall, but points to the idea that any uptick in activity is usually short-lived and not sustainable. Prices have remained mired in the mud, and, with interest rates on mortgages rising recently, March may have come in like a Lamb, weather-wise, but it may go out like a hungry lion in terms of real estate.

Then there was the brilliantly-timed commentary by Goldman Sachs chief global equity strategist, Peter Oppenheimer, titled "The Long Good Buy" which postulates that "the prospects for future returns in equities relative to bonds are as good as they've been in a generation."

Not to throw much cold water (a bathtub of ice might be more appropriate) on this particular bit of financial wisdom, but Mr. Oppenheimer and his buddies at the giant squid must think the muppets are prime for a fleecing. Stocks have not been at these current levels for more than 3 1/2 years, the major indices have pretty much doubled since the bottom of March '09 and he thinks NOW, today is a good time to buy stocks?

Not to be too pushy or overburdened with facts, but isn't the oldest bit of market timing knowledge to buy low, sell high? Oppenheimer seems to want to stand that time-worn adage on its head, which, considering the extent to which Goldman Sachs will go to defraud the public, the government and even its own clients, is about par for the course. (A video, assessing the relative value of Mr. Oppenheimer's call appears at the end of this post.)

As far as stocks are concerned, they are currently stalled out at high levels and while they floated along in bifurcated fashion through most of today's session, there was some significant selling pressure at the close. It probably means nothing, but if you think a quick selloff in stocks at the end of the day is a sure sign to buy more gold and silver, nobody around these parts is going to do anything to dissuade you from that line of thinking.

As usual, volume was unseen and at levels indicating a lack of interest, sponsorship or near-panic, but we've been over that bridge too many times already. Let it just be said that there are many, many, many fewer individual investors playing stocks than there were five years ago. Some went broke, some profited but are scared to death of the markets, others are merely awaiting a return to normalcy, something that isn't likely to occur until there's a crash, a credit "event", a war or something very ugly to shake the stranglehold of the banksters and politicians to their core.

Doug Casey offers three variations on the definition of a depression, plus some valuable insights in an interview, titled Doug Casey on the Illusion of a Recovery. It's an intelligent read. (Hint: Doug likes gold)

Dow 13,124.62, -45.57 (0.35%)
NASDAQ 3,075.32, +1.17 (0.04%)
S&P 500 1,402.89, -2.63 (0.19%)
NYSE Composite 8,219.33, -21.95 (0.27%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,551,352,875
NYSE Volume 3,534,241,000
Combined BYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2776-2764
Combined BYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 174-32
WTI crude oil: 107.27, +1.20
Gold: 1,650.30, +3.30
Silver: 32.23, +0.39