Karl Denninger explains this latest hoax in a recent entry on his site Market Ticker:
"So what's going on here?
Simple: An enormous number of banks are holding loans at or close to "par" that really aren't. They're holding mortgages at massively-inflated values, even on defaulted properties, and this is why you are not seeing more foreclosure sales - that is, why inventory is being held back. If they sell it the accountants will force recognition of the loss, which will render them instantly insolvent, but so long as they "extend and pretend" they are marking these loans way, way above recovery value. The upshot of this is that these firms' balance sheet claims on asset values are massively inflated, regulators know it, and they're intentionally ignoring it."
Bingo! It's all 100% fakery conducted right under the nose of the Fed, the Treasury and the FDIC.
How many hundreds of banks are being kept on life-support because the FDIC is down to its last few farthings and doesn't want to ignite a panic?
Stay tuned.
The banking system is insolvent and the fact that the politically-connected big banks talked their their friends at the Fed into pumping liquidity into equities so they could access the capital markets, doesn't change matters for the hundreds of local and regional banks that will be caught in next year's downdraft. Prepare for massive consolidation with G-Sax and JPM left to pick up former competitors for pennies on the dollar.
FIRING UP THE PRINTING PRESS
Keep in mind that Wall Street veterans knew from the very beginning that Bernanke's quantitative easing (QE) was a load of malarkey intended to justify keeping toxic asset prices artificially high while pumping trillions into the stock market. Here's former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler's analysis way back in May:
"On March 18, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase up to $300 billion of long-term bonds as well as $750 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Of all the Fed's moves, this "quantitative easing" gets money into the economy the fastest -- basically by cranking the handle of the printing press and flooding the market with dollars (in reality, with additional bank credit). Since these dollars are not going into home building, coal-fired electric plants or auto factories, they end up in the stock market.
A rising market means that banks are able to raise much-needed equity from private money funds instead of from the feds. .....It's almost as if someone engineered a stock-market rally to entice private investors to fund the banks rather than taxpayers." (Andy Kessler "Was it a Sucker's Rally" Wall Street Journal)
What a swindle.
Bernanke's had a good go-of-it, juicing the market through the backdoor and concealing--as much as possible--who is still buying US Treasuries. (who knows; maybe it's the Fed buying its own paper offshore?!?) But what good will it do? The US consumer is broke; the tank is on empty. Household equity has declined by 94%, jobs are scarce, personal savings are rising, and families are cutting back and hunkering down. It will take a decade or more before household debt is whittled-away to a point where people can consume at pre-crisis levels. Another stock market bubble won't change a damn thing. This Depression is just beginning.