The Fed did what was entirely expected today, and did it with a pedestrian view towards the future increases. Slow and steady.

And so the markets were ‘surprised’, the dollar dumped hard, stocks rallied, and gold and silver got some legs higher.

Today was more a ‘technical event’ than anything else. In other words, it had all the looks of a setup designed to skin the buy side.

This is what the financiers do when the real economy is lagging badly, and they have little incentive to make productive, long term commercial and industrial loans. 

Their preferred methods of making fat profits are centered on collecting more consumer fees and finagling financial assets up and down in a series of bubbles.

Until the banking system is reformed, there will be no sustainable recovery. 

We are still in the first one hundred days of Trump’s presidency, so I am trying to restrain making any strong forecasts based on his performance. But it does seem like an administration with a split personality, saying one thing and setting up to do others. And if I had any hopes for the outcome, it is fading rapidly. 

If and when failure comes, the blame game and paranoia is going to get almost unbelievable.

Speaking of inept leadership, in a recent poll the Democratic establishment (party leaders) were rated LOWER than Trump, Pence, and the mainstream media. They were roughly on par with the GOP.

But on the brighter side, they did poll slightly higher than Hillary herself, and the Congress. You may look at it here, with a video commentary on this poll from Jimmy Dore here. 

I mention this simply because one might think that the fruits of this epic failure in leadership in general is going to coalesce around the next collapse of the financial asset bubble.  And if so, it could get rather messy.

Rutte is projected to beat the far right Wilders in the Dutch elections.  We’ll see the results tonight.

Let’s see if gold and silver can extend their gains.  I suspect that with some back and forth action that they may do so. 

As for stocks, the Cafe is becoming watchful for another short term bearish entry point.  This will not sustain and cohere around the policies, both fiscal and monetary, that the philosopher-kings are providing for us.