Ben Bernanke Versus Your Retirement

Last week Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke reaffirmed the commitment of the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low for years into the future. The Fed's zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) is designed to feed the profits of Wall Street banks and corporations at the expense of savers and retirees.

Interest income is at the lowest level in 43 years. Bernanke has declared war on retirees by trying to force them to invest in riskier assets like stocks or commodities.

Cramming Fed central planning down the throat of the American public will fail exactly like Soviet Union style central planning eventually failed in the 1980's. But in the end the American public will pay a dear price for following Bernanke economics.

related:
The Mess That Greenspan Made:
Will Ben Bernanke’s War On Savers Kick Off The Long Awaited U.S. Gold Boom? -- 

The Federal Reserve sparked a huge rally in precious metals markets on Wednesday when it forecast super-low interest rates for the next three years and hinted at more money printing to come; the gold price surged more than $50 an ounce within about an hour and silver jumping almost $2 an ounce...

Daily Reckoning:
How Ben Bernanke Rationalizes “Exceptionally Low” Interest Rates -- 

So Mr. Bernanke is fiddling the levers again, promising to keep rates lower than a sea snake’s belly until 2014. He might have just taken out an ad in the front page of the paper:

“Fed to Savers: Go to Hell!” ...

Bernanke’s commitment to holding interest rates “exceptionally low” for an “extended period,” reeks of exactly the kind of insanity required to double down on a bad bet, of repeating the same experiment and expecting a different result...

Bloomberg:
Dollar Tumbles on Fed’s Interest Rate Pledge --

The dollar fell against all its most-traded counterparts after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates low for at least three years, spurring investors to seek higher-yielding assets...

Flying People Spotted over New York City

TechCrunch:
Flying People Spotted Over New York City…Film At Nine -- 

In a recent publicity venture for their new movie “Chronicle”, 20th Century Fox enlisted the help of viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to design and execute a rather unique campaign element that surely caused several doubletakes over the New York City skyline.

If you thought you saw some flying humans in the sky over parts of New York City and New Jersey in the last couple of weeks you are, in fact, not crazy. You were merely exposed to a new kind of avant garde marketing technique brought to you by the same folks that unleashed the iPad Head Girl a few months back....

Vaporizing $1.2 Billion in Customer Accounts

There was a shady dude named Corzine,
Who took customer money and put a minus sign,
The Feds were baffled by the caper,
They said the money had turned to vapor,
Sorry poor folk you were screwed by design.

----

The Wall Street Journal reports the shocking story that after three months of investigation federal officials have come to the conclusion that $1.2 billion of customer money at MF Global was "vaporized" when the firm collapsed into bankruptcy on October 31, 2011.

The money was supposedly held in segregated and safeguarded accounts.

Wall Street Journal:
Money From MF Global Feared Gone --

Nearly three months after MF Global Holdings Ltd. collapsed, officials hunting for an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer money increasingly believe that much of it might never be recovered, according to people familiar with the investigation.

As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so far suggest that a "significant amount" of the money could have "vaporized" as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company's Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation...

Many officials now believe certain employees at MF Global dipped into the "customer segregated account" that the New York company was supposed to keep separate from its own assets—and then used the money to meet demands for more collateral or to unfreeze assets at banks and other counterparties as they grew more concerned about their financial exposure to MF Global.

Investigators also are examining other scenarios that have gained traction in recent weeks, such as the possibility that MF Global suffered steep losses on investments made using customer money. Officials investigating the case have looked into whether such investments were appropriate under rules at the time.

As money poured out of MF Global, much of it likely passed through J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other banks where the securities firm had accounts, as well as trade-clearing partners such as Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd., people familiar with the matter said.

Those companies have denied being knowingly in possession of any missing MF Global money, and any efforts to make them fill the hole would face daunting hurdles. And because the firms usually were middlemen between MF Global and other counterparties, the funds they touched were then scattered widely, complicating the search...

discussion:
Zero Hedge:

So one hand, nobody at MF Global was responsible because every member of lower, to middle to upper management was responsible (and certainly not Jon Corzine), secondly, not one regulator was responsible, because every regulator was equally oblivious of the grand theft occurring right under their noses. Finally nobody on the receiving end of this fund flow was responsible, as the money could have ratably gone to one of an infinite number of destinations. And here we were thinking that dilution is only applicable to what the central banks do to their currency. Little did we know that it is the de facto global modus operandi for the systemic fraud endemic in modern finance, whereby not one person is held accountable, as otherwise everyone would be held accountable.

Brilliant...

Zero Hedge:
MF Global Customer Funds Were Not "Vaporized" - Stanley Haar Takes WSJ to Task --

As a individual trader and CTA whose accounts are owed several million dollars by MFGI, I would like to express my shock and disappointment with [yesterday's] front page article; I expected better from the WSJ. Your article gives the appearance of having been ghost written by Andrew Levander and/or the JP Morgan legal department. Among the key errors/omissions:

Client money in segregated bank accounts was not "vaporized"; it was stolen via illegal transfers to support MF's proprietary trading positions and to repay creditors such as JP Morgan. Those transfers are and always were illegal…….even "under rules at the time". Your use of that irrelevant and misleading phrase twice only serves to deflect attention from the criminal acts committed by Corzine, et al....

Jesse's Cafe Americain:
MF Global: A Despicable State of Affairs --

And as we have heard, quite a bit of that money was also diverted in the last few days into the pockets of MF Global's bank, JP Morgan, which still reportedly holds much of it. Now whether they are legally entitled to keep that money is another matter. But this entire charade has been cloaked with a public relations campaign using terms like 'missing,' 'vaporized,' and 'mystery' to describe the customer assets as if no one really knows where the funds had gone, which the CFTC has explicity stated months ago is not the case. And that the handling of the bankruptcy and the method of ordering customers with creditors is in violation of the rule 190 and precedents which established it...