PrintIn bed with the Fed: The 'unholy nexus'
The one TBTF (too big to fail) "bank" which unabashedly admits it is just a taxpayer backstopped hedge fund printing money for its owners (while supervising the NY Fed and all other central banks with various former employees in charge) with no actual lending or depository operations, Goldman Sachs, just hit it out of the park, when moments ago it reported Q1 earnings that smashed both top and bottom-line expectations, with revenues of $10.62 billion, up 13.8% from last year, and EPS of $6.00 printing far above the expected $9.31bn and $4.26. This was the best revenue generating quarter for Goldman since Q1 2011, or in four years.
What a comeback! Lemons of ’07 and ’08 now wonderful lemonade here in 2015.
And what a Christmas bonus season this will be. Keep pumping, Janet Yellen; it’s tough out here.
And in another related item, Citadel, the largest hedge fund on the planet and a big player in High Frequency Trading (skimming), has a new employee. It’s former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.
Gone is the outrage over what is mistakenly called “trading” and is nothing other than nanosecond front running. In fact, Bernanke’s new job gives a subtle and suggested acceptance to High Frequency Trading (skimming) and most likely assures that nothing will be done to curtail the money machine.
As such, with Bernanke’s move one can finally see the unholy nexus of central banks and HFT algos in precisely the light we have described it since 2009: central banks manipulating markets from the top, HFTs manipulating markets from the bottom.”
It is safe to assume, and assume I do, that Yellen seeks Bernanke’s input from time to time. Concluding on that assumption, one can then see that what Citadel has done, other than deferred compensation for previous services, is acquire a very good advanced warning system for any Fed action.
We can clearly see the beneficiaries of this seven-year-long “emergency” plan by the Federal Reserve, a plan that cleverly self-expanded the Fed’s powers and altered their mandates and mission statements. After all, it is still an emergency, right?
And so the Citadels, the Goldmans, and the leveraging, and the stock buybacks continue. The circular board of director games (ever notice how the same people sit on so many boards of corporations?), where giant stock options are awarded, then kick in, as cheap money funds stock buybacks, inflate the stock prices, and reap massive paydays, all proceed in conjunction with the need to “provide liquidity” and other idiocies from the Fed.
According to Zerohedge, “…when it comes to unofficially executing trades in the equity market the NY Fed - through a slightly more than arms-length arrangement - does so using Chicago HFT powerhouse Citadel.” The Goldman connection to the NY Fed is well-documented and legendary, not to mention Treasury secretaries.
This is the consequence of central planning. Some will enjoy information to which others do not have access. Some will be certain to find out what and when before others. Decisions by friends and former employees (or future employees) in high places, in the central planning machine, are the unholy nexus. But look how profitable.
