The US Fed has delivered a nice blow "Christmas present" to Main Street businesses. The US Fed has NEVER cared about Main Street, it ONLY cares about Wall Street. The collapse of the US economy will accelerate, while the Fed pushes out fake statistics pretending things are OK...Yellen says policymakers have raised rates now "to keep the economy moving along the growth path its on ... we would like to avoid a situation where we have left so much accommodation in place for so long that we overshoot those objectives", meaning they are forced to "tighten abuptly" and risk undermining the recovery.  She says that while policymakers are "reasonably close" to achieving one part of their mandate: full employment, she recognises they are "significantly short" of achieving the second part: keeping inflation at 2pc. Policymakers will monitor the data closely in the coming months, though there is no formula on how policymakers would proceed with future rate hikes. Inflation stood at 0.2pc in October, well below the Fed's 2pc target. Yellen repeats that much of the recent downward pressure on inflation has come from "transitory factors" such as falling oil prices "that we expect to abate over time".  She says "diminishing labour slack" is expected to put "upward pressure" on inflation in the coming months. Yellen also reminds everyone that it takes time for monetary policy to filter through to the economy.  If policymakers delayed rate hikes for "too long" they may have to tighten "relatively abruptly to keep the economy from overheating and inflation from overshooting". This could push the economy back into recession, she says. She says "even after today's increase the stance remains accomodative", with the FOMC expecting "gradual increases in the Federal Funds Rate.

 

It's all good news....

Cheaper oil has initiated a historic wealth transfer effect of about $1 Tillion a year between net oil importers and oil exporters reversing decades of historical trend. The US alone gets $200 billion, and Europe and Asia (especially India and China) are even bigger beneficiaries of this massive wealth transfer by cheap oil.  This is what's called an economic stimulus - but from cheaper oil prices. The Middle East and Russia with constrained sovereign funds are the ones getting stuck with the bill.  Thank you cheap oil and carry on "drill baby drill!"  The crisis of 2008-9 is far from over. The policies of Neoliberal extremist ideology have created the worst inequity in human history and essentially a form of neo-feudalism.  What has been shown beyond doubt is the existential crisis of the economics profession. Not Stiglitz nor almost any other economist predicted the crisis. All their phony fake "scientific" "economic models" have failed because - as much as economists try to make it look differently - economics is at best a soft social science - not another form of physics.

Thousands of main stream economists have clearly sold out to the very powerful Neoliberal establishment and simply produce papers and models to suit power.  The economics profession has completely discredited itself and can't be trusted to produce accurate economic analysis. The profession is clearly operating under false assumptions and, for example, refuses to engage with psychologists and socialists to take into account actual human behavior rather than just postulating that everyone is rational all the time.  Stiglitz is the darling of the left just now but he is just as discredited as the rest and his views are a result of study in a field which has no basis in reason or rational thought.  Look for example at the Chicago School, when the crisis hit they said -- so what our work has nothing to do with predictions or accurate analysis of the economy - we just do theories and the crash of the economy is not our problem. Statements of this magnitude of self-aggrandizing baloney abound if the field of economics.  The issue of the total failure - in the most fundemantal ways - and refusal to accept their failure reaches the very core of Western thought and is corruptly eating away and the very foundations of Western economics.

The ominous edifice on Avenue de Cortenbergh has been identified as a suitable venue for a closed-door meeting of European leaders ahead of the next EU summit, scheduled for the middle of December. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lövfen and his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras are going to be present, as are French President François Hollande, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leaders of the Benalux countries and the Austrian chancellor. So that the rest of the EU member states don't feel left out, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will also take a seat at the negotiating table.  Once again, the subject of the meeting will be the refugee crisis and the fragile alliance that Merkel is currently relying on to bring the ongoing flow of migrants from the Middle East under control. Together with Turkey and a number of countries in the heart of Europe, Merkel is hoping to seal a complicated deal she recently agreed to with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at the last EU summit.  Essentially, it calls for Europe to provide billions in aid to Turkey in exchange for Ankara doing all it can to prevent Syrian refugees from traveling onward to Europe. Once those conditions have been fulfilled, however, the plan calls for the EU to accept a contingent of Syrian refugees, the size of which would likely be several hundred thousand. The scheme even has a provisional name: Merkel's Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier recently referred to it in an interview with SPIEGEL as the "Coalition of the Willing."

My understanding of the status of a central bank is that it is allowed to act with whatever tools are at it´s disposal, as it is backed by a consenting tax payer base.  The Tax paying base is on the hook if it should go wrong - which it invariably does - see the UKs exit from the ERM...That the tax paying base is not specifically asked to endorse the Authority of a central bank lays in the fact that whilst independent, the Bank is to all intents and purposes, an instrument of the government of the day, which indeed HAS been endorsed as the tax paying base has been invited to participate in the forming of the government of the day through the usual democratic mechanism of the general election.  This Government, by virtue of being democratically elected, is obliged to execute duty of care to the electorate and it´s interests and welfare. For this, it needs a Central Bank to oversee the prudent use of the currency of said electorate.  The ECB is an instrument of the EU, and is bound by the Treaties.  None of us have ever been asked to vote for the EU - at most on some document of fine points which did not in themselves change anything that the EU had not already pre-ordained - the French, Dutch and Irish referendum being cases in point.  Only the Danish Euro opt out referendum carried any significance.  None of us can vote the EU out - it is a government, but a government of technocrats that do not stand on a regular basis for election.  The ECB and the court the EU also created - the ECJ, are there to serve the EU and it´s treaties - and nothing else....now we see a British PM, drawing a red line over the length of time before in-work benefits are paid to EU citizens who work, add value to the UK economy and pay taxes to the UK economy....and on this point he is prepared to leave the EU, but not on the point I refer to above.

France - " eletions, Doctored"- the Bruxelles natzies win....huoooo !!!

The far-Right Front National was thwarted in its bid to clinch a historical electoral victory in France on Sunday after failing to secure power in any of the country’s 13 regions, early results suggested.

The ruling Socialists of President François Hollande appeared to have fared better than expected, taking six regions, while the opposition centre-Right also took six, including the Paris region for the first time since 1997.  Voting had taken place under high security with France still under a state of emergency exactly a month on from the jihadist attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives – a climate that helped the FN reap historic gains in round one a week ago. But in a major upset - IT IS CLEAR THAT THE ELECTIONS HAVE BEEN "DOCTORED" by the organizers (fake results) , Marine Le Pen, the FN leader, failed to take power in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, losing heavily to Xavier Bertrand, the candidate of Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-Right party The Republicans (formerly the UMP). The results will come as a major relief to the Socialists, who had controlled all but one of France’s regions before the elections and had expected a pendulum swing to the opposition.

President Hollande clearly hopes his party’s decision to pull out of two regions where the FN stood a chance of winning will give it the moral high ground ahead of 2017 presidential elections and bolster its claim to being the “only rampart against the far-Right”.  The organizers, and I mean the thieves represented by a young stupid gigolo named Manuel Valls, the prime minister, who had warned of future “civil war” should the FN take power, said: “Tonight there is no relief, no triumphalism. The extreme-Right threat has not been averted. I have not forgotten the first round results.” They will do all they can and more to prevent the people from expressing their ream choices.

 

Generally speaking, France remains a centralised state. Notwithstanding a recent territorial reform that has expanded their competences, French regions continue to have relatively limited powers compared to, for instance, their Spanish counterparts. However, a strong showing in this regional election would allow Le Pen to strengthen her local powerbase with a view to the Presidential election in 2017. This regional election was indeed the first test after the terrorist attacks in Paris. However, it would be simplistic to see the gains made by Front National as just the fruit of French voters’ knee-jerk reaction to last month’s tragic events. President Hollande saw a rather spectacular rebound in his approval rating in the wake of the attacks. Yet, this did not spare him another pretty disappointing election night. The reality is that Front National has been on a crescendo for a while. The party was the most voted for in last year’s European Parliament election, and had also made important gains in the departmental elections earlier this year. Ballot after ballot, my view is reinforced that a growing number of French voters are starting to see Front National no longer as just a "protest party" – but rather as a party they would be happy to be governed by, at least at the local level. Interesting and game changing fact: Folks go on ad infinitum about the Nazis, without having a clue about the other side of the coin, once you know this, you start to really search and the scales fall away from your eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...Genrigh Yagoda, who built and ran the Gulags (concentration camps) Lenin and Trotsky (who were all Jewish) and their Jewish Commisars and  bands of Jewish thugs murdered over 50 million innocent people in Soviet russia.  How strange that young Jewish people are not being forced to feel guilty about this and bear the burden of what their ancestors did. How odd  that the Germans to date have paid over £60 billion in compensation to the Jewish people and yet the Jewish people have not paid a penny to those  relatives of the 50 million murdered by their own in Russia.  Why do we never hear about the worlds worst EVER atrocity? This one peice of information will take you to the bottom of the Rabbit hole and everything starts to make sense.  Who controls everything, including Hollywood and mainstream media, the banking system etc? If you want to know who rules you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise - Voltaire.

The Euro is a project of idealists. But idealists live in a hypothetical world - a place where they desperately want to be, not where they are...This latest move (one of sheer desperation) to prop up the Euro as well as the Eurozone will achieve absolutely nothing, especially if you consider every other move to protect it so far has been remarkably unsuccessful and only achieved economic chaos within the Eurozone, with peripheral effects on the non Eurozone countries within the EU. The EU leaders and the leader of the ECB have learnt nothing from previous experience and simply continue in the same old ways. Far better just to let the Euro go, and return to the former currencies. One size hardly ever fits all, something that is very clear with the artificial political construct that is the Euro.

"Policymakers could have used that period to address the structural reasons for high levels of unemployment, and a lack of flexibility in other markets, he argued. "They could, but given that they (the European Commission) are the most structurally inflexible, bureaucratic, and control and red tape obsessed of the lot (remember "Brussels spouts" ?!), and given that Turkeys never vote for Christmas, they are simply incapable of doing this!  The only hope for all of Europe is that they are effectively abolished from without by one country after another leaving their club to the point where even they have to recognise - once their empire has contracted right back to just those ghastly communist-looking buildings in Brussels - that their raison d'etre has vanished.