Business

Since its current world-beating bull run began in late 2015, bitcoin has surmounted a series of pitfalls that were supposed to kill the market.  The list is remarkably long. The DAO hack. The PBOC crackdown. The ICO craze. The SEC’s rejection in March of two proposed bitcoin ETFs. And, most recently, the network split that spawned bitcoin cash. All were supposed to burst the roaring valuation bubble, yet in almost every example, a temporary pullback was followed by another leg higher.

In the aftermath of a surreal Janet Yellen press conference, in which the Fed chair admitted that Fed "no longer understands" the "mystery" that is inflation, we did our best to explain to Yellen that the reason why the Fed's search for inflation has been fruitless, is because for nearly a decade it has been looking in the wrong place: the "real economy" where the Fed's impact has been negligible, as opposed to "asset prices" where the Fed has unleashed near hyperinflation.

Sadly, we doubt the Fed will understand what the above chart means.

Every year the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) comes out with a report card on the condition of America’s infrastructure. We got a D+ this year. According to them, “Deteriorating infrastructure is impeding our ability to compete in the thriving global economy, and improvements are necessary to ensure our country is built for the future.”

A few short years ago, it was considered tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to say that the goals of the Fed and their QE programs were to boost stock prices, real estate prices, and basically almost every other asset class. Then slowly, years later, the MSM and others began to realize that it was the truth. You even had the likes of former Fed Governors saying so, Richard Fischer, Thomas Hoenig, Charles Plosser, and Jeremy Stein.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

As initially reported by the Census Department, motor vehicle sales were up 1.2% in July following a 0.9% gain in June. At the time, I commented, “This is unbelievably bizarre in the face of actual auto sales reports.”

The Census Bureau revised sales estimates much lower in September as noted in Retail Sales Unexpectedly Decline, Huge Negative Revisions in June and July: Reflections on “Bizarre” Sales Reports.