While the markets have been generally lacklustre in the past two days, much of the enthusiasm associated with the last hour spike on both Monday and Tuesday had to do with optimism involving a significant relent by Janet Yellen during her semi-annual 2-day testimony in Congress starting tomorrow at 8:30 am.
Two months ago the Australian media, which unlike its US counterpart refuses to be spoon fed ebullient economic propaganda, called bullshit on the spectacular October job numbers, when instead of adding 15,000 jobs as consensus expected, Australia's Bureau of Statistics reported that a whopping 58,600 jobs had been added. We covered this in "Australian Media Throws Up All Over 'Stellar' Jobs Report: "Don't Believe The Jobs Figures!"
Moments ago S&P continued its downgrade cycle, this time taking the axe to the regional banks with the highest energy exposure due to "expectations for higher loan losses." Specifically, its lowered its long-term issuer credit ratings on four U.S. regional banks by one notch: BOK Financial Corp., Comerica Inc., Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., and Texas Capital Bancshares. The outlooks on these banks are negative.
It also revised the outlook on BBVA Compass Bancshares to negative from stable and affirmed the 'BBB+/A-2' issuer credit ratings.
Michael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier make a predictably horrible plea for more military intervention in Syria:
It all started in mid/late 2014, when the first whispers of a Fed rate hike emerged, which in turn led to relentless increase in the value of the US dollar and the plunge in the price of oil and all commodities, unleashing the worst commodity bear market in history.
The immediate implication of these two concurrent events was missed by most, although we wrote about it and previewed the implications in November of that year in "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed."