In mid-January, just as the market was crashing due to among other things concerns that the economy was prolapsing, we had a brief exchange with the Atlanta Fed asking them why they waited until the after the close of trading to report that its Q1 GDP estimate had crashed to the lowest yet, at 0.6% (incidentally almost exactly what the final Q1 GDP print was), a number that is traditionally revealed at or before noon. The Fed’s answer: “Apologies for the late-day data release. Nothing more nefarious than technical difficulties, which we believe have been resolved.”
Said otherwise, just a glitch.
Shortly thereafter, following a Zero Hedge exclusive laying out the latest policy directives by the Dallas Fed to lenders with substantial exposure to the oil and gas sector, namely to suspend mark-to-market of stressed loan books, while urging banks to avoid cascading bankruptcies of energy debtor counterparties, the Dallas Fed decided to lie and state unofficially (well, on Twitter), that there was no truth to our story.
The same Fed then “responded” to our subsequent FOIA request by providing absolutely none of the information required, because it turns out, the Fed “does not maintain or possess calendars of Federal Reserve staff.”
Said otherwise, people at the Fed come and go and nobody knows anything.
Then, last night, shortly after the Iowa caucus had concluded, we noticed something just as disturbing: the “apolitical” San Francisco Fed, which tends to be quite active on Twitter, made what amounted to a derisively political comment, one which it promptly deleted but not before we managed to screengrab it:
We had some follow up questions:
We wonder: does the San Fran Fed deny there is any truth to this tweet? Or maybe, like the Dallas Fed, it simply does not keep a log of what it tweets?
That aside, perhaps the San Francisco Fed and its staffers can explain what “matters”?
Is it Goldman Sachs? Or JPMorgan?
Or any other bank that the “Board” has decided it is time to bailout?
To our surprise, the SF Fed did not have any retorts. In fact, the otherwise quite chatty Twitter account was even more quiet than Donald Trump’s, which prompted this question from us earlier:
no tweets from @sffed today?
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 2, 2016
Within minutes of our question we received the following response from the heretofore mute San Francisco Fed:
(1/2) Last night an employee mistakenly tweeted from the Bank’s account. The tweet was deleted b/c it doesn’t represent the Bank’s views.
— San Francisco Fed (@sffed) February 2, 2016
(2/2) We apologize for this mistake; we are reviewing our policies & practices to ensure that this does not happen again.
— San Francisco Fed (@sffed) February 2, 2016
Actually, the only reason why the Fed apologized is because it was caught. As for the now ex-employee, we can only assume he or she will be a seasonal adjustment in this week’s initial unemployment insurance claims number.
But what is more disturbing is that a pattern is emerging: a Federal Reserve plagued by “non-nefarious” technical difficulties, one where nobody has any idea where anyone is going or what anyone is doing (and where there seemingly are no records and no accountability), and one where random employees can take over official Fed communication channels to disseminate their biased, political views and who knows what else.
In retrospect, it is no surprise that the Fed is losing credibility with every passing day.
That said, we are delighted that in under three weeks, we have interacted directly with three regional Feds. At this rate soon Janet Yellen, if not Ben Bernanke himself, will finally address our concerns after 7 years of day after day demonstrating to the world and to the Federal Reserve how its actions have led this country to ruin, something everyone else is finally realizing too. Even if it is on Twitter.
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