Liveblogging Lagarde's LuckySeven Bedlam!

[elfismiles]

Bravo

[smiths]

Lagarde's opening line is pretty interesting as well

"Thank you so much merci beaucoup, as you can tell I do as I'm told and I thought I had to stand up at the time when my immediate predecessor would sit down and er clearly I've failed"

and the lunar calendar is introduced right up front

"Now let me first of all, of course, begin by wishing you all a happy New Year, I guess it's still time to do that given that we are just exactly half way through between our western new year and the lunar New Year Which will loom in a few weeks time"

[smiths]

the numbers really are spookily loaded,

the bizare and almost hypnotic performance of Christine Lagarde around the magic of the number 7 and what a 'milestone' 2014 would be

and then ...

on 17th day of the 7th month, 2014 ... Flight 17 ... a Boeing 777 plane ... shot down at 33,000ft ... ... with that exact plane having flown its first flight on 17th day of the 7th month, 1997 ... exactly 17 years before the incident


what are the fucking odds guys? shot down on exactly the day it first flew 17 years earlier

[JackRiddler]

So you think MH17 was, in effect, the trigger event. 7/17 is close enough to 7/20 and somehow even more sevenish. But that doesn't work if it's going to be forgotten in another month, it has to turn into the Archduke Ferdinand moment (or perhaps the Lusitania is the more appropriate parallel?) or otherwise spark a global shift. How about it leads to a Ukrainian settlement and world peace breaks out? Ha ha, don't laugh. A "global reset" needs another, bigger shoe to drop. Market crash. Cyber crash. Or sudden large-scale chaos in one of a handful of places, given this slice of time's precarious constellation. Israel, Moscow, or, shit, where else but my hometown again. Now that's really not funny any more! Back to work...

(Just remember, I'm the Riddler, not the Joker! Non-violent at heart, I have reasons, rationality, style!)

JackieRiddler2.gif

[semper occultus]

Via: http://notquant.com/is-the-fed-going-to ... -collapse/

As most Fed watchers know, last week was interesting because Janet Yellen, speaking at IMF came out and said something quite surprising. In a nutshell, she said “It’s not the Fed’s job to pop bubbles”. While many market participants immediately took this to mean, “To the moon, Alice!” and started buying equities hand over fist, there’s another possible explanation for Mrs. Yellen’s proclamation of unwillingness: The Fed could be preparing to do exactly what it said it wouldn’t.

Here’s a quick re-cap of events: In the recently released Annual Report of the BIS: Bank for International Settlements (commonly thought of as the “central bank’s central bank”) the BIS made a rather ominous recommendation to it’s member banks: Pop this bubble now. Their specific language wasn’t quite so direct, but the message was just as clear.

...

As we noted last week, there are a couple of fascinating things to note about this recommendation. First, for anyone who thinks that the concept of intentionally crashing the stock market is the stuff of conspiracy theorists, that notion is now dead and buried.

It’s extremely clear from the BIS’ language, that the concept of initiating a collapse is openly discussed as a policy measure. This was a direct recommendation to bring on the crash – or as they say so colorfully, to “bring forward the downward leg of the cycle”.

But what else is fascinating is that just days after the BIS report was released, Janet Yellen seemed to counter the BIS in her presentation to the IMF:


“At this point, it should be clear that I think efforts to build resilience in the financial system are critical to minimizing the chance of financial instability and the potential damage from it. This focus on resilience differs from much of the public discussion, which often concerns whether some particular asset class is experiencing a ‘bubble’ and whether policymakers should attempt to pop the bubble. Because a resilient financial system can withstand unexpected developments, identification of bubbles is less critical.”

What Yellen seemed to be saying — quite possibly in direct response to the BIS’s recommendations — is that the Fed isn’t in the business of popping bubbles, nor does it see a reason to intervene in their development.

So to summarize: The BIS publicly recommended popping the bubble now… and Yellen said no.

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=546734#p546734

...f**ing Yellen spoiling the party...mebbe she’s pissed off at the competition to play High Priestess at the next convocation & not getting to receive Strauss-Khan’s mighty rod of power…

[smiths]

there was some speculation that this speech by Yellen formed a kind of cover for when she does exactly what the BIS said to do, that is, initiate the pop

[Wombaticus Rex]

Reading that people are saying the Iranian Dinar is going to become a global reserve currency made me sad; sad that someone can be sufficiently uninformed to not only believe that, but worse, to believe they were saying anything at all.

Let's begin here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

Wiki objectively refers to this as an "alleged benefit" -- as if 1+1 = 2 were an allegation that our courts of law are still hammering out to this day. Still, the point remains that US Dollars are superabundant in the global economy, and since so many international & fundamental transactions get priced in those same US dollars, we don't pay any real economic penalty for this superabundance.

So to claim that the Iranian Dinar will be shelter in a global economic storm is more or less exactly like saying we're going to replace every motor vehicle on Earth with a Tesla in 2015.

There might be some supply issues.

Also, Janet Yellen isn't running the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer is. Yellen is one of the most underwhelming human beings I have ever met, an animatronic stage prop. Madame Lagard surely "does as she is told," but does so with her own ambition, smarts and charisma. Janet Yellen is what she is told.

[semper occultus]

....Yellen is one of the most underwhelming human beings I have ever met, an animatronic stage prop......

....Ok we'll just leave that one hanging in the air then.....be fair though, none of us are exactly at our sparkling best first thing on a Saturday morning at the back of the long queue for the supermarket deli counter ...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Sorry, I thought my active role in The Conspiracy™ was known to everyone here.



I should add a "ONE OF THEM" tag to my signature, yeah? It's simply unfair to be lurking about without a neon sign affixed to my forehead.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Markets are having a rough open, but nothing remotely apocalyptic yet.

FT published a piece this morning about how geopolitics doesn't really affect investors anymore because central banks have defeated volatility.

I find it interesting that even RTS (Russia's exchange) isn't being pummeled very hard by these new sanctions. It was doing worse a few months ago than it is today.

Edit: a good take on why ==> http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8592

Market chatter is very banal so far, just talk about various M&A activity/rumors, speculation about ECB's next move.

[elfismiles]

IMF Wrapper by Day / HipGnostic Rapper by Night ... one if by landline, two if by seacable, thrice if by satfone.

Sorry, I thought my active role in The Conspiracy™ was known to everyone here.



I should add a "ONE OF THEM" tag to my signature, yeah? It's simply unfair to be lurking about without a neon sign affixed to my forehead.

[Wombaticus Rex]

...and markets closed with nary a peep.



Guess we're just going to continue our long slouch towards Bethlehem at the usual shuffle, eh?

[zangtang]

If i'd known i was going to waste my life waiting for the other shoe to fall,
I'd have learnt how to play chess.................

I want my money back !

good job there's no months with 33 days in 'em

[stefano]

Interesting, thanks. Some thoughts: first, the mention of the G20 is hardly gratuitous. It includes the BRICS countries, which have just started their own development bank, and clearly the massive Chinese reserves are going to have to play a role in inflating the next bubbles. Lagarde has said that she will be 'delighted' to work with that institution, and I don't doubt it.

Second, it's not that strange for her to riff on numbers, a lot of mathematically inclined people begin to see number patterns everywhere. A lot of technical traders use the Fibonacci series in their strategies, for instance. So it could have been her version of starting the speech with a story about an Englishman and a Scotsman.

Third, that bit about her predecessor and doing what she's told - in the context she's obviously talking about her predecessor on the stage but I couldn't help thinking about her predecessor in the job, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

[justdrew]