Rosenberg Presents The Three Ways Bernanke Disappointed The Market, And Why It Is Dumping

Zero Hedge
Sep. 23, 2011

1. By radically flattening the yield curve in this Operation Twist program (where the Fed sells short-dated securities and buys maturities between six and 30 years), net interest margins in the banking sector will likely be negatively affected.
2. The dramatic decline in the 30-year bond yield is going to aggravate already-massively actuarially underfunded positions in pension funds
3. The Fed says it is going to extend this Operation Twist program through to June 2012. This is a subtle hint to the markets that barring something really big occurring, there is no QE3 coming — not over the near term, in any event, and certainly not at the next meeting on November 1-2. So a stock market that has continuously been fuelled on hopes doesn't have any in this regard for at least the next month and a half.

There is now likely to be very little talk about another round of Fed stimulus, and as such, one less crutch for the bulls to lean on. If the Fed, for instance, had said that the OT would have a December 2011 expiry date, the markets would be salivating over what would come next. But June 2012 is a good nine months away (it was deliberately drawn out). It would seem strange at this point, barring a cataclysmic event, to have the Fed embark on a new QE strategy at a time when OT is still in play, not that it can't happen. What is key is that the Fed did find a way to say to the market that this is it for a while, perhaps until we are well into 2012.

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