Ms. DiMartino Booth, why is the Federal Reserve bad for America?
Because of its intellectual dishonesty. The Fed noticed around 2009 that if they had had a more reliable and realistic inflation gauge on which to set policy, they would have seen the crisis coming. But despite that recognition, they chose to do nothing about it.

Are there more realistic inflation gauges?
Several Federal Reserve Districts have come up with alternative gauges. The underlying inflation gauge from the New York Fed for example also includes asset price inflation. And it runs about one percentage point higher than what the Fed measure is – they prefer the core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the core PCE.

How would monetary policy look like with a more realistic inflation gauge?
Monetary policy would be much different. The Fed would not have been able to maintain a monetary policy as easy as it has done over the last couple of years. Central bankers are hiding behind the core PCE being at 1,6%. The

Chart: Retail Apocalypse 2017

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

The steady rise of online retail sales should have surprised no one.

Back in 2000, less than 1% of retail sales came from e-commerce. However, online sales have climbed each and every year since then, even through the Great Recession. By 2009, e-commerce made up about 4.0% of total retail sales, and today the latest number we have is 8.3%.

Here’s another knowledge bomb: it’s going to keep growing for the foreseeable future. Huge surprise, right?

Signs of a Reckoning

Retailers eye their competition relentlessly, and the sector also has notoriously thin margins.

The big retailers must have seen the “retail apocalypse” coming. The question is: what did they do about it?

Well, companies like Sears failed the shift to digital altogether – in fact, it is even widely speculated that the former behemoth might file for bankruptcy later this year.

The majority of other companies, on the other

Most economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected Federal Reserve officials to begin winding down their $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets this year.

Nearly 70% of business and academic economists polled in recent days expected the Fed will begin allowing the portfolio, also called the balance sheet, to shrink by allowing securities to mature without reinvesting the proceeds at some point in 2017. Of the economists who expected a shift in the Fed’s balance sheet strategy this year, the majority predicted the process would begin in December.

In last month’s survey, just 22.2% of economists expected the Fed to begin shrinking its portfolio this year. Fewer than a quarter of economists in the latest poll expected the Fed to wait until the first quarter of next year to start to whittle down its portfolio, compared to a third last month.

In recent weeks, Fed officials have said they are discussing plans to start gradually reducing the large bondholdings the central

Energy defaults have been heavy on my mind as their Bankruptcies are expected to increase greatly in the second half of 2016.  I didn't even touch on farms and other exploding debt. Clearly I'm not alone in this concern.  It's not housing this time; it's much worse.  If rates rise, what will happen? Emphasis in bold mine.  Read on.

This could not have come at a more perfect time, with the Fed once again flip-flopping about raising rates. After appearing to wipe rate hikes off the table earlier this year, the Fed put them back on the table, perhaps as soon as June, according to the Fed minutes. A coterie of Fed heads was paraded in front of the media today and yesterday to make sure everyone got that point, pending further flip-flopping.

Drowned out by this hullabaloo, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve released its delinquency and charge-off data for all commercial banks in the first quarter – very sobering data.

So here a few nuggets.

Consumer loans and credit card loans h

The global economy has regained some composure, according to asset management firm Schroders. In their view, markets have regained a risk appetite following action by central banks, the normalization of commodity prices, and a lack of materialization for tail risks such as a U.S. recession or a Chinese hard-landing:

NYSE margin debt fell again during the month of February. After the selloff in stocks that kicked off 2016, this should come as no surprise. Investors are usually forced to reduce leveraged bets during these sorts of episodes in the stock market. In fact, this forced selling can actually exacerbate the volatility. And because margin debt is only now beginning to come down from record highs, surpassing those seen at the 2000 and 2007 peak, this should be of concern to most equity investors.

To fully appreciate this risk, I prefer to look at margin debt relative to overall economic activity. When leveraged financial speculation becomes large relative to the economy, it’s usually a sign investors have become far too greedy. As Warren Buffett would say, this is usually a good time to become more fearful, or conservative towards the stock market.

Not only did margin debt recently hit nominal record-highs, it hit new record-highs in relation to GDP, as well. In other words, over the past s

Presented without commentary other than ask yourself, "how much longer?"

By James "bad hair" Altucher

Under the category of "duh, no shit" comes a report from the St. Louis Fed office admitting what everyone already knew.  Typical households have not recovered from the credit crisis.  In fact, they're only halfway there.  Of course showing the full truth doesn't sell newspapers (or ad space).  The typical Joe who saw his job outsourced after 20 years with a company, 401k drained and whose kid (s) have moved back home because they can't afford to live on their own any long ALSO WHILE and working TWO wonderful $7.50 an hour jobs could've told the Fed that.  Seriously, how much do they pay these guys?  Read more-

It's not just about big business being able to borrow and refinance debt at low (ZIRP) rates.  It also impacts home buying affordability, consumer spending, higher chargecard APRs for the little guy who can barely afford it and yes, yield for the big dogs.  From an investment standpoint, large investors will pay attention.  As an example the 10 year yield is now at 2.15.  Yesterday, it crossed the dividend yield of the S&P 500. This means it is now more profitable to buy bonds than to invest in the stock market.  An interesting perspective.  Check it out at MrTopStep

For those who found themselves busy fertilizing their lawns and Spring cleaning this weekend, you missed a market-moving decision as Cyprus announced (quite conveniently after Fridays close) an unprecedented levy on all bank deposits of 6.75% for accounts below $100,000 euros, and 9.9% for $100,00 euros and above.  OUCH

Adding insult to injury, if you lived in Cyprus and needed cash from an ATM machine, you were out of luck as  Cypriots awoke to find bank transfers already frozen as the government prepares to seize the assets when their banks re-open on the 19th although the glimmer of hope exists the final vote tomorrow could fail (there must be a joke there somewhere about PIIGS and flying).

All the talk from EU politicians.  All the promises that the Euro would be fine.  All of the money printing.  All of the haircuts already taken.  Blah blah blah blah.......and here we go again.

My hats off to whomever bought the enormous volume in VXX end of Feburary.  (click on chart to

Originally posted by Doug Noland @ http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/creditbubblebulletinview?art_id=10543 on how *extend and pretend* are the new normal and why Greece could very well be the tip of yet another Lehman Moment.

Isn’t it incredible that the failure of one firm, Lehman Brothers, almost brought down the global financial system?  It is equally incredible that, less than three years later, a small country of 11 million has the world teetering on the edge of another systemic crisis.  Today’s circumstance is a sad testament both to the instability of the international Credit “system” and to the lessons left unlearned from the previous crisis.

For about 15 months now my analysis has attempted to draw parallels between the initial subprime eruption and last year’s Greek debt crisis.  Both were the initial cracks in major Bubbles (“Mortgage/Wall Street Finance” and “Global Government Finance”).  These two weakest links – due to their role as the marginal borrower exploiting