Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
An increasing number of politicians have joined the call for an audit of the Federal Reserve, including several presidential contenders - most surprisingly, Donald Trump.
Just at the market began its torrid ramp higher today at 11:15 am on the dot, something else was expected to happen: the Fed's open market buying, or POMO, of Agency MBS (yes, those still continue despite the end of QE because the Fed has to keep the level of its balance sheet flat and offset maturities).
Only today this did not happen. Instead, this is what the NY Fed said:
Wed, February, 24, 2016
A growing number of investors are beginning to realize that Central Banks are effectively out of ammo (for now).
Last week I noted that the Bank of Japan’s implementation of NIRP only generated a brief rally in Japanese stocks. That rally has since been obliterated as Japanese stocks collapsed 10%.
This collapse has finally prompted the mainstream financial media to question NIRP. It’s a shame no one bothered to question NIRP, ZIRP, and QE when the markets were still rallying!
HSBC: Sweden's Experience Shows Negative Rates Haven't Worked
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,
Perverse Incentives
We haven’t written about Australia’s residential real estate bubble for some time (readers may want to check out last year’s post “Australia’s Bubble Trouble”, which contains numerous relevant charts and data).
Property auction in Sydney
Following last night's major build (from API), DOE reported a bigger than expected Crude build (3.5mm vs 3.25 exp). Crude prices jerked higher on this news as it was less than the API print of +7.1mm build and Gasoline and Distillates inventories dropped. However, the gains are not holding as Cushing inventories rose 333k barrels (the 15th build in the last 16 weeks.
API:
DOE: