"You know what the news is-- in a minute, you're going to hear the rest of the story"- Paul Harvey
You heard it here first, and now it is official. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake said, and I quote, that "Dollar intervention may be justified in Disorderly Times."
In my Monday, July 14th "Journal" post, I said;
Going forward the news continues to assume the Fed is out of bullets, they're pushing on a string, and all the negatives that come with this kind of talk. Yes, the Fed made be close to being out of conventional type bullets, but this is when bullets are replaced with intervention.
The biggest problem facing the economy and consumers is the high price of energy. Unless the powers in control want to drive the U.S. economy into the ground, the must use other means to turn the economy around. What can they do? Intervention!
Over the next few months, I believe intervention will include;
1) Supporting the dollar and forcing shorts to cover. I believe the G-8 will help the dollars woes, and countries with stronger currencies will begin helping the U.S. by aggressively buying the greenback. In turn, the dollar will rally, shorts will cover, and energy prices will fall.
I don't claim to be a genius, but the only common sense move for the Fed at this point an time is to support the dollar through intrevention, force shorts to cover, and drive energy prices down.
Here are some of Bernanke's comments from MarketWatch.
Crude oil prices dropped as much as $6.00/bbl today on Bernanke's support for the dollar and after the government reported that U.S. crude and gasoline inventories rose much more than expected.
We have been saying for several weeks that all the pieces were in place to drive oil prices lower.
1) Supporting the dollar and forcing shorts to cover. I believe the G-8 will help the dollars woes, and countries with stronger currencies will begin helping the U.S. by aggressively buying the greenback.
2) Demand destruction- According to the Federal Highway Administration, "Americans drove 22 billion fewer miles from November through April than during the same period in 2006-07, the biggest such drop since the Iranian revolution led to gasoline supply shortages in 1979-80."-
3) Americans are trading in SUV's and lower mileage vehicles for more fuel efficient ones.
4) Oil purchases for our nations Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) have been temporarily halted.
5) Election year magic! Over the past 100 years, the DJIA has gained an average of 9.7% during the second half of a presidential election year.
Has the magic just begun?
