"We need to raise rates while there's still time"
Rumours of an imminent rate hike started over a year ago. The dollar soared on the news.
Emerging Markets (EM) and commodities were monkey hammered due to a six year cheap money binge, sponsored by the Fed at 0%. China, pegged to the dollar, was decimated. Chinese stock gamblers celebrated imminent collapse by throwing all of their money away at the casino. With the full help and encouragement of the Chinese government.
ZH: Dec. 31, 2014: Hugh Hendry Is Taking The Blue Pill Now:
"China is set to record its weakest growth in GDP in 25 years. Yet it seems to have entered a bull market and may be where we deploy much more of our risk capital next year. That's because the recent exuberant run up in onshore Chinese equities seems to me to amply demonstrate the power of imagined realities"
The weakness in EM culminated in the Yuan devaluation which shellacked ALL global risk assets in late August. Third world deflation was flooding the entire world.
The Fed decided on September 17th, that it could not raise interest rates to .25% after six years, due to the weakness in Emerging Markets. Which they caused.
Shortly thereafter (this past Friday), the weakening U.S. jobs market signaled that a rate hike would be postponed until 'never'. Investors celebrated by piling back into stocks and covering all shorts.
Holy fuck. We're beyond Idiocracy now.
"The magical powers of imagined realities"
This is the post-Lehman fake TARP rally, October 3, 2008...
