Many are eagerly awaiting Bernanke's opening speech at the 2012 Financial Markets Conference "The Devil’s in the Details" which just like last year had nothing in the prepared remarks about the market, or about current labor or inflation conditions. Instead, Bernanke speaks about (what we deem far more important) Shadow Banking, repos, money markets, and other things which the market does not care about at all. And since he will not address monetary policy at all in the prepared remarks, the only hope is if a random question at the Q&A will provoke him to tell the world if the NEW QE is coming. We are not holding our breath.
Speech highlights from Bloomberg:
- BERNANKE BACKS CURB ON INTRADAY CREDIT IN TRI-PARTY REPO MARKET
- BERNANKE SEES NEED FOR MORE REGULATORY CURBS ON SHADOW BANKING
- BERNANKE DOESN'T BACK SPECIFIC STEPS ON MONEY MARKET FUNDS
- BERNANKE BACKS AIM TO MAKE MONEY MARKET FUNDS MORE RESILIENT
- BERNANKE CALLS FOR CLOSE TRACKING OF FINANCIAL INNOVATION
The only potentially actionable soundbite is the following:
- BERNANKE SAYS ECONOMY FAR FROM RECOVERING FROM CREDIT CRISIS
Of course, this is not news... What should be news is that Bernanke disclosed that tri-party repo lenders (read JPMorgan as it is the only one of two that matters, the back up being insignificant BoNY) provide daily average intraday short-term liquidity of $1.4 trillion. But that apparently is not news either.
Q&A begins:
- BERNANKE: FED TAKEN STEPS TO AVERT A NEW HOUSING PRICE COLLAPSE - more CTRL-P
- BERNANKE SEES VARIETY OF NEW TOOLS TO AVERT A NEW CREDIT CRISIS - all those CTRL-P macros...
- BERNANKE: FED WANTS TO CREATE GLOBALLY CONSISTENT CAPITAL RULES - CTRL-P for everyone
- BERNANKE SEES SPIRIT OF COOPERATION AMONG GLOBAL REGULATORS - just let them watch porn and they will all cooperate
- BERNANKE: STEPS TO WIND DOWN FIRMS AREA OF GLOBAL COOPERATION - see midget porn
- BERNANKE: DODD-FRANK LIMITS FED LENDER OF LAST RESORT POWER. The only thing limiting Fed power is global toner supply
- BERNANKE WELCOMES FED `ORDERLY LIQUIDATION' POWER - promises to use it whenever big boss Jamie tells him to
- BERNANKE SAYS `STABILITY OF THE SYSTEM' IS MOST IMPORTANT. It's not most important to make the business cycle into a business straight line?
- BERNANKE SAYS VOLCKER RULE `RAISES A LOT OF COMPLEXITIES' - like how to rape the middle class cleanly and efficiently
- BERNANKE: VOLCKER RULE GLOBALLY WON'T BE `LEVEL PLAYING FIELD' - well JPM has to build up $100 billion prop positions SOMEWHERE
- FTW: BERNANKE SAYS A SAFETY NET RAISES DEGREE OF MORAL HAZARD. And shorting raises concerns of felony offense
- FTW 2: BERNANKE SAYS NEW REGULATION LIMITS MORAL HAZARD PROBLEM - whatever this Princeton economist is smoking... we'll have a twofer.
- And here it comes: BERNANKE: FED AIMS ENSURE VOLCKER RULE DOESN'T IMPEDE LIQUIDITY
Full prepared speech here (pdf)