Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
While the world patiently waits for Janet Yellen to raise interest rates this month, the markets have been unable to decide as of yet whether such an event is good or bad thing.
One month ago, when Austrlia released job numbers that too ridiculous to believe - they were a 6 sigma beat - the local mainstream media - very much unlike that of the US - threw up all over the numbers.
This is how Australia's primary media outlet, ABC, slammed the number with the following excoriating reaction of the economic propaganda, which would certainly have been censored in the US.
A fall in the unemployment rate from 6.2 per cent to 5.9 per cent in the space of one month? Be sceptical. Treat with extreme caution.
On June 29, 2006, the Fed did something it would not do again for (at least) nine and a half years: it hiked rates by 25 basis points, its 17th consecutive rate hike. Everyone knows what happened after.
On December 16, 2015, the Fed is expected to do something it hasn't done for 3,457 days: hike rates by 25 bps, ending the longest period in US history (84 months) of zero interest rates.
How has the world changed in the interim? Some quick observations from BofA:
Now that everyone is finally looking at junk bonds with hopes to buy, sell or short as one's inclination may be, everyone is realizing something we have been warning about since 2012: when times of stress emerge, either the Bid/Ask spread is gargantuan (good luck with those "subject" quotes from dealers who have no inventory), or there is simply no market as the first hint of a buyer or seller make bond traders the carbon-based equivalent of an HFT algo, and pull their quotes. In short: there is no liquidity.
Earlier this morning we got another glimpse of reality behind the smoke-and-mirrors, mainstream-media-sponsored last-pillar-standing lovefest that is US auto sales when the business sales data showed a disheartening tumble in sales in October. So where are all the sales going that automakers report? The answer is simple... (and painful).