LOLFED

A two-day gathering of tied hands! Bring your cameras!

CNBC is dancing around this morning, talking about inflation and Dow Chemical’s extensive price increases, then talking about increased unemployment, and food prices… if it wasn’t 8AM I’d make this into a drinking game and be waiting for someone to use the word “stagflation” to take a shot.  Futures look a little “meh” this morning for everything except (surprise!) oil.

YRC swears that they are moving things about the country, but FedEx, not so much. A dismal report from FDX this morning combined with some fresh dilution and dividend-chopping from Fifth Third Bank (FITB) is making it look like another fine day to have sold LAST May and gone away.

So… the Fed is going to RAISE rates this year?

O RLY?

Unemployment, jittery housing, crunchy credit and Bernanke comes out all posturing like he’s gonna be able to raise rates? The market may have bought it for a day or two but I don’t believe it for a second. It’s nice and all to want to strengthen the dollar because gas costs an arm and a leg but Ben Bernanke won’t be able to raise rates in the US for a good long time. ‘Course now that he’s put on the hawk suit if he decides to hop back into the helicopter (and another rate cut by end of year wouldn’t surprise me, not that I am a fan of said action) he looks like an epic failure… not a position I’d wanna be in.

And you thought Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo won friends and influenced people just with those blindingly white teeth and crazy dark tan. Looks like Senators just might have been trading discounts for bailouts and who knows what else.

Check out this WSJ article.

I was emailed this lol by Jim Swift (thanks!):

OK, I know this is another one that doesn’t have to do with the Fed but the fact that Grupo Modelo and InBev are apparently now dueling over BUD reminded me of this:

Every once in a while I’ll see market commentary on icanhascheezburger.com… my friend Brie sent me this one, and it did make me LOL:

CNBC’s interviewing President of the Philly Fed Charles Plosser as I type this; interesting points from the interview include that he has finally noticed we have inflation outside of food and oil, that he preferred a “hem-and-haw” answer to whether there’s a Fed put under Lehman, and, of course, his disavowing that anything the Fed has done could possibly have affected the price of oil.

Looks like Guv Mishkin is a’resignin from the Fed. Don’t think we’ve made a lol out of him yet, so we can’t let him go out without one. This leaves three, count em, THREE vacancies. Which seems like a lot for Dubya to get filled.

A little bonus political content because the oil markets have been more exciting than the credit markets as of late… Dubya begging the Saudis to increase oil production:

“Oh hai… ur oil… I can haz moar? Presidenshul SUV’s, let me show you them…”

Srsly can we PLEASE stop filling the SPR now?? And, this regulation where CFTC wants to start counting contracts across exchanges - while I do think a nontrivial part of the oil price right now is speculation-driven and not demand-driven, seriously, what are you going to do other than force the speculators to overseas exchanges? If anyone thinks this will work, pls splain to me thx.

So Bernanke speaks tomorrow, and we might get an idea as to whether the most recent Fed rate cut really is the last. Retail numbers come out too, so we’ll see how those look pre-stimulus payment. How’s that glass looking, Benny?