THIS IS HARD, MAN

I will not write about politics, I simply will not except to the extent they affect global finance.  But that's all that's out there; Syria, Iran, Obamacare, debt ceiling battles.  Even the Who Runs the Fed argument if off the front pages.  It's funny, everyone expresses to know the outcome of all these events so one would think that it would be business as usual, but the equities Over Here have traded down  for six days in a row and the ten year, just a week ago flirting with a 3 handle closed today at 2.71,...that's 30b.p. in a week!  The reason given?  Political uncertainty.

There can be humor in all of this.  Some clown from the IMF speaking from Bogota expressed relief on the part of Latin America that the long awaited tightening by the Fed did not occur because the prospect of higher U.S. yields would have pulled money out of Latin America needed for investment.  Say what?  Ever try to keep inflation at the door in an emerging market economy when the biggest money printing machine in the world keeps churning it out and it all seems to wind up with YOU, not for investment but for yield?  And this is the mob that tells people how to do what is right.   Most countries in L.A. would breath a huge sign of relief of tapering began today but it will not.  An interesting development over the past week has been that people are beginning to look much more closely at Janet Yellen, Central Banker, rather than Janet Yellen, feminist dream and discovering that

1. She's not quite as universally loved as believed, and

2. If anything she's more "Brace yourself Bridgett, here comes more liquidity" than all, save for Little Paulie Krugman.

But, it looks more and more as if she is the choice as The Leader will soon tell us when he gets over the butt-kicking he's received over the past few weeks by various foreign scuz-buckets and his home town constituency.  He wants to get this one exactly right. He wont of course, but a proclamation of victory is good enough these days.

Another thing that has been going on out there are the questions being raised as to whether J.P. Morgan is really a collection of bad guys or whether it is just a convenient whipping boy on the part of politicians and regulators who can develop great street creds without accomplishing a damn thing.  Nice to see that someone is reading the blog.