THE FED AND FOOLS

Three days away but the whisper number for the jobs report on Friday is a rise of over 200,000.  Now if this occurs, at some point as happened last month, someone will probably realize that these new "jobs" aren't quite what they are supposed to be consisting primarily of short-hour hiring rather that permanent jobs of a 40 or 30 hour week depending whatever the hell the administration needs to make Obama Care work.  Nevertheless, at the Fed policy meeting which began today, the number will probably be discussed and among the assembled gathering will probably be a good deal of what Sir Alex Fergie referrs to as "squeaky bum time" as the thoughts of "how the hell do we get out of this" resonates through the hallowed halls.  Therefore, everyone is waiting for the report tomorrow which, while reflecting (maybe) the consensus, could also be a pretty good indicator of the winner in the Chairman Sweepstakes: if the view is aggressive it will be taken to mean that Ms. Yellen has carried the day and that is exactly what The Leader will be looking for.  There's little secret in the fact that a Chairman Summers would get out of this thing as fast as the train would leave the station which, whilst the right decision, will spell kaput to a whole lot of things in an election year.

And speaking of The Leader, he was on the campaign trail again and while we all know he is possessed with one of the greatest intellects in history, from time to time he does mouth some curious utterances which, without the prior knowledge of his genius, might be taken for stupidity at work.  Today it was tax policy time in which the corporate tax rate was proposed to be cut to 28% leaving it at still the highest corporate tax rate  among first world nations (that means the competition) which will, we are told, result in the repatriation of some $2 trillion in cash from Over There to Over Here.  It will not.  Thank you for that Dear Leader, it is worse than useless.

Next up was the assertion that the XL Pipeline which makes so much sense not only economically but in a strategic a foreign affairs sense as to not really be worthy of discussion, would create only about 2000 jobs for a short period and no more that 50-100 jobs for the long haul.  It took about 30 seconds for a befuddled Canadian Resource Minister to point out that our Department of State in its official report to assess jobs creation at 40,000 and wonder whence this new found knowledge arrived?  He also managed to suggest that Canada might be a better partner that Venezuela and that we already import a million barrels of tar sand crude from Canada as The Leader was educating the world on this matter.  Gosh, just who can one believe these days?

But the best one of the day was the front runner for the Office of the Comptroller of the City of New York, Eliot Spitzer--you remember him, Client #9--telling Wall Street that if they play by the rules they have nothing to worry about.  That is Code for "You support me in whatever my next political campaign is and I'll leave you alone."  It is exactly the same game plan he used as the state's attorney general that got him into the Governor's mansion and his run-in with the Mann Act for which he was never prosecuted on the understanding--or so I am told--that he would never run for public office again.  This piece of garbage should be in a jail cell, but he just might win.  With the example of Detroit showing them what corrupt politicians can accomplish, the people of NYC will still vote for this guy.  Go figure.