Denninger: Translating the Fed's Actions Today

From Denninger's Market Ticker:

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FOMC in English

Tickerguy's English translation of the FOMC statement:

Release Date: November 4, 2009

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up.

We successfully talked some people into rebuilding inventory and spending money they don't have. Suckers.

Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period.

We don't count the 29.9% interest rates that Citibank decided to charge its credit-card holders in this computation; but if we did that would be considered a good thing, since raping the consumer is positive for banks. Oh, and we're a bank.

Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months.

Four year olds and cats are cashing the $8,000 homebuyer credit, as the IRS has recently disclosed. This of course supports housing.

Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit.

A huge number of people are out of work, those who have jobs are having their wages and hours cut, your house is still going down in price and Citibank just raised your credit card interest rate to 29.9%. This is all bullish for the economy, of course.

Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales.

We suckered a few of you, but most businesspeople have IQs larger than their shoe size, and refuse to play our game any more. As a consequence our attempt to hose them isn't working out so well.

Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

Fraud always works for a while. We can buy trash MBS, for example, and by doing so make things look better than they are. We can also ignore the real capital position of the banks that are under our jurisdiction, including those really big ones that shorted Gold in the futures market at $1,000 and now are way underwater. Never mind that little man behind the curtain, I AM THE GREAT AND WONDERFUL OZ...
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Read the rest.

Don't worry, though.

The recession is over, remember?