Click here to listen to some great mood music while you’re reading today’s report: Bank of America, Home of the Fee…
Yes, moving your money to your local credit union is a great idea, and just one step in depriving the rabid animals of food.
After losing nearly 600 DOW points in the past two days, equity futures are higher ahead of today’s manipulate you some more FOMC “Fedspeak,” designed to impress you with lies and manure, while giving HFT operators the movement in the markets necessary to rob that portion of the population who remains unaware of just how unreal the markets are. Just to be clear, those who are creating money from nothing in this society are the very same people who own the stock exchanges and also own the HFTs. The dollar is down, bonds are down, oil is back above $93, gold & silver are higher, and food commodities are trading higher within their recent range.
The very conflicted and definitely hypocritical Mortgage Banker’s Association (MBA) reports that Purchase Applications rose by 1.8% in the past week – hey, at least it’s getting close to the range of a believable figure for a change:
Highlights
Purchase applications for home mortgages rose for a second week, up 1.8 percent in the October 28 week on top of the 6.4 percent gain in the October 21 week to nearly reverse the prior week's 8.8 percent drop. The refinance index is down 0.2 percent in the latest week. Rates in the week were little changed with 30-year conforming loans ($417,500 or less) down two basis points to 4.31 percent and 30-year jumbo loans (greater than $417,500) up one basis point to 4.69 percent.
The Challenger number of mass layoff announcements fell significantly last month from 115,730 back down to 42,759:
Highlights
Layoff announcements eased in October to 42,759 from an outsized 115,730 in September that included a big cut in the US Army. The October level is near the low end of trend and offers a mildly positive indication for Friday's employment report. Government layoffs fell to 2,785 from September's 54,182 though the report notes the pending risk of big cuts in the postal service. Consumer products show the heaviest layoffs in September with 7,169 followed by retail at 4,254.
The ADP Payroll report rose from September’s 91,000 to 110,000 supposed private payroll jobs “created.” ADP revised the 91,000 from September higher to 116k. This report, from my perspective, is notoriously inaccurate but it is used to set expectations for this Friday’s Employment Situation Report where the consensus is looking for a 90k nonfarm payrolls number (manipulation no extra charge unless you play with their HFT machines).
The MF Global debacle is looking very much like a Ponzi scheme was in progress where they were using customer funds to speculate in the market to fuel their “returns” (losses). This morning their lawyer is claiming that all the money is there, but Interactive Brokers who backed out of a deal to buy MF Global seems to think otherwise. Just go to Bloomberg and you will read about one fraud after another. Most of the frauds during the boom years are just overlooked, regulators and politicians captured, everyone simply looks the other way while carrying on with their own fraud. But when the easy money tide goes out, we now have accusations flying, it seems the accounting wasn’t quite up to snuff and now only the attorneys are going to profit.
Speaking of fraud, we’ll get to hear the FOMC drivel at 12:30 Eastern today. Hey, don’t feed the animals.