Janet Yellen told us at her first testimony in front of the lawmakers that she would likely continue in tapering as long as at least two criteria will be met.

The first one was employment rate dropping below 6.5% and the second was inflation rate. As per a few of her mentions the FED is targeting inflation at least at 2%.

For more than a year, the Fed’s policy committee has said it wouldn’t consider a hike in the short-term interest rate until unemployment dipped to 6.5 percent, as long as inflation didn’t exceed 2 percent. Today, with the jobless rate already down to 6.6 percent, Fed officials including Yellen are saying the 6.5 percent rate is not a “trigger” for raising rates. Christian Science Monitor? – by Mark Trumbull

As Real time Economics commentator Victoria McGrane points out: “She [Yellen] was a longstanding proponent of the Fed adopting a 2% inflation target, and was closely involved in the decision to do so in 2012.”

If we are supposed to believe it and Yellen and her cohorts are telling us that the inflation is that low, I must say, they are lying, or totally out of reality.

From those reviews it is apparent that government with Yellen believes that the US is currently experiencing inflation lower than 2% !! (per US Inflation rate website usinflation.org released on January 16, 2014 the official declared inflation was 1.5%).

Looks like those officials haven’t been shopping groceries or other necessities as middle class Americans are struggling every day. Otherwise they would experience themselves that the inflation is a lot higher than what they are telling us.

Watch the video above to find out a struggle by a mom of two teenage boys trying to keep her ends meet while when shopping realizing that basic things such as ground beef rose by staggering 16.8%, chicken by 18.4%, or college tuition up between 6-8%.

Where is the problem? It is a rigged measuring method. As is typical for politicians to make themselves look better they take any approach and any method to hide the reality and feed citizens with inaccurate data.

Typically inflation is calculated using CPI (consumer price index), which in the past tracked prices of food and energy. Today, these items are ignored:

In the U.S. food, along with energy are stripped out of our CPI, and the result is a more tame inflation reading. Notably, 30 years ago when Ronald Reagan entered the White House, it was precisely the spike in food and energy – ignored today – that had Reagan and others so concerned about inflation. “Low” U.S. Inflation Is a Function of Clever Calculation, by John Tamny

As our government has us for idiots and sheep we are supposed to believe in a recovery initiated by bigger spending instead of saving, bigger debt instead of paying it off, rising consumer prices, which would stimuli economy by encouraging spending, and zero interest rates destroying savers and truly encourage spending over savings.

Where did they get the idea that rising prices will encourage spending from is beyond my layman’s economy understanding. Since when rising prices encourage spending? Who would be willing to pay more money?

See what Peter Schiff has to say about this stupid policy of our FED and government:

In order to survive our government, as investors we need to look for investments which would protect us against this reckless policy. What are you doing to protect your hard earned cash?

 
At first, I wanted to post this video in my sidebar videos, but then I decided to post it here as a new post. It’s because this video deserves a short comment. Or actually not, no comments at all.

Watch for yourself what idiots are overtaking this country and turning it into a land of retarded idiots. I cannot say more about it.

When people realize, that thru the hard work, freedom, equal opportunities and free market they will prosper and as they will prosper, the entire society will prosper?

Some will never realize it.

America, no matter how screwed it may be, is still a country of freedom and equal opportunities which are unseen anywhere else. Believe me. I lived on both sides of the world and still remember and compare.

And here is the paradox.

As governments slowly, drop by drop, are taking our freedom, free market, and opportunities away thru regulations and laws, people fail to see it and blame somebody else. Usually they blame corporations, entrepreneurs, employers, businesses for all sorts of reasons and problems. The most common is that employers are paying them less and keeping all the profits for themselves and do not share and do not pay their fair share. And as much these people complain, that much they mistakenly turn into a government for help. And government wants to help by adding more regulations, more laws, and more restrictions. And those restrictions further limit freedoms of others (businesses, corporations, and entrepreneurs) so they stop hiring, trying to pay even less to save their business. But people do not see this vicious circle. They wish for more “help” from the government.

 
Comcast is gobbling up its main competitor Time Warner Cable. The $45-billion-dollar deal gives Comcast the potential to completely reinvent the media landscape. By wiping out its major rival, Comcast would have 33 million cable subscribers, and just as many broadband users, giving it huge leeway in setting market prices, negotiating licensing fees, and deciding what shows you can watch. Erin Ade reports.

Afterwards, Peter Schiff is back on at Boom Bust. It’s no secret that investor and financial commentator Peter Schiff thinks the US Dollar is going to fall off a cliff and that he also thinks interest rates are going to skyrocket. But what does he make of the latest US economic figures? And what is his view on the outlook for the economy and investing? Schiff explains to Boom Bust’s Erin Ade.

Then, we give you a few of the best clips from this past week’s interviews, all of which concern banks. First is Paul Craig Roberts on bank bailouts, administered via quantitative easing. Then, Anat Admati gives a fresh take on the health of banks. And Chris Whalen finishes on how executives at large US banks have avoided accountability for the financial crisis.

Wrapping up with “In the Margins”, Erin Ade and Edward Harrison look at viewer feedback, answering questions from you, our viewers. We thank you for your comments and questions.
 
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Our impotent government along with FED has been feeding us with fake job data since 2008. Everybody knows it, but nobody does anything about it.

Where are all those “shovel ready jobs” Obama was feeding the nation during 2012 election? Did he mean shovel ready hamburger flipping at McDonalds?

Our nation is suffering from goofed up recovery. We will pay a dire price for “too big to fail” theory and a fatal Keynesian misunderstanding of economy and beliefs that spending and increasing debt would improve our economy. Since when taking more debt to pay the old debt did ever help you or your family? What, then, makes our politicians to believe it will help the country?

It is a great example showing that our country is led by dilettantes who have never held a job, created a job, or run a company.

As Peter Schiff says, “we didn’t undergo a real recovery, but only postponed the catastrophe”. We just kicked the can further down the street, took away a future from our kids and spent it today on something what will fail anyway. Well, not you or me, but our politicians.

If you think otherwise, then why the job participation is slumping? Why job creation is worse than mediocre? Why we have a hidden inflation (just compare prices of a gallon of milk now versus 3 years ago)? Or why housing prices are drifting lower or stagnating?

In the video above, Jim Rickards is right pointing out, that our job market has different problems and that Janet Yellen is again, like her predecessor, going to use a wrong cure.
 

Today, I found an interesting video. It is not interesting because of the announced overconfidence on the markets that all the dividend growth and value investors probably know of, but there was one very interesting point about market participants’ behavior, which sparked my attention.

Many times, I was stunned by how irrational investors can be and how stupidly they can act when trading and investing in the markets.

If you ever wondered why sometimes markets react so wildly, Eric Jackson in this video explains it clearly. As he mentioned, last week investors were moving from the stock market into bonds, just to move back from bonds into stocks this week.

Such moves must be extremely expensive! Aren’t they? No wonder that investors usually lose money or are unable to beat S&P 500 index over time and their performance is mediocre.

So, the task is to act as a contrarian. Sometimes, you need to stomach those scary looking moves investors perform out there and stay calm, wait for them to stop overreacting, and then start buying your stocks.

I try doing it that way. When I see panic spreading around, I do not buy right away. I usually wait a few days. If you have time watching markets during the panic period, you will be able to notice and feel when the panic starts slowing down. Some other tools such as VIX index, or Greed & Fear index will help you to gauge the intensity of the fear and when it is slowing down. Then, I use my contingency orders to trail my stocks of interest down and buy at a major reversal from the bottom.

What about you? Do you watch market closely during panics out there to get best price and best value for your buck when buying stocks on sale or you do not care? Share with us your strategy.

In today’s headline story, all eyes were fixed on Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who delivered her first public remarks to the US House Financial-Services Committee. In addition, in a lawsuit filed on Monday, the non-profit group Better Markets has challenged the constitutionality of the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase mortgage settlement with the US Justice Department. And in Washington, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives agreed to advance legislation, raising Washington’s borrowing authority without conditions. Erin Ade reports.

Then, Erin conducts a wide-ranging interview with economist Paul Craig Roberts, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and a co-founder of Reaganomics. He has voiced his concerns about the strength of the US economy, US politics, and US civil liberties. Roberts also believes the US is playing fast and loose with the monetary system and the value of the dollar. He speculates that, as the German Bundesbank has begun repatriating its gold from overseas out of storage in places like the Federal Reserve, the Fed will not be able to make delivery because it doesn’t physically possess the gold. Similarly, Roberts does not believe Gold ETF funds have enough physical gold to back their exchange traded fund shares.

Wrapping up our money theme, in today’s “Big Deal”, Erin and Boom Bust producer Edward Harrison discuss the outlawing of Bitcoin wallet apps on iOS, Apple’s mobile platform, and the rise of ePayments in the mobile world.

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