The Girl Who Cried ‘Exit Strategy’

For readers with functional memories; they will recall that at the end of 2008, B.S. Bernanke (aka The Boy Who Cried ‘Exit Strategy’) promised to “normalize interest rates”, immediately, in early 2009. This was his supposed Exit Strategy from the most-extreme, monetary insanity ever contemplated. This promise was echoed by the equally trustworthy mouthpieces of the other central banks of the Western bloc.

After that, every few months, the Boy would “promise” he was going to raise the U.S. interest rate (from 0% all the way to 0.25%). And all the mainstream media talking-heads would echo that promise, treating it as the Gospel, and (strangely) never remembering any of the previous, broken promises.

The original promise to “normalize” interest rates had vanished completely. Strangely, none of the legion of mainstream talking-heads ever noticed that, either. But even after this bait-and-switch, all of the Boy’s subsequent promises were just as empty as the first.

Flash ahead to early 2014: 5+ years of the Boy “promising” to raise the U.S. interest rate from (a criminal) 0%, to (a merely insane) 0.25%; 5+ years of duplicating Japan’s failed economic policy, while the Boy also promised us he would “never copy Japan.” And, of course, we had 5+ years of the mainstream talking-heads treating every promise as if it had been carved in stone, from Heaven above.

Then things changed. Did the Boy actually keep his promise? No. The Boy was replaced with a Girl. What was the first thing that the Girl did, in taking over as Head of the Federal Reserve? She began “promising” to raise the U.S. interest rate.

But this was different. Why? Because the talking-heads of the mainstream media told us so. The same talking-heads who had previously told us we could-and-should believe every one of the Boy’s promises, even though none were ever honoured, were now telling us we could trust the Girl’s “promise” – this time, for sure (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Indeed, so certain were the mainstream talking-heads that they (and we) could trust the Girl that by the end of 2014 we were given a precise date, a date where, after 6 ½ years of empty promises, we could bet the farm the U.S. rate of interest would finally be raised, ever so slightly, from 0%. That date was June 2015.

This was not some mere Chairman-of-the-Federal-Reserve-promise. This was a real promise. Like an insane cuckoo-clock, as each day ticked by, the mainstream talking-heads assured us we were one day closer to I-Day.

Then June of 2015 finally arrived, the time where everyone in the world knew that the Federal Reserve would raise the U.S. interest rate (ever so slightly), because the Girl Who Cried Exit Strategy had “promised” it, and the mainstream talking-heads all assured us that this time we could believe it.

Then the 1^st of July arrived, and there was still no U.S. rate-hike. The Ultimate Promise had been broken. What happened? The Girl had a perfectly good reason for breaking her promise, proclaimed the mainstream talking-heads, the Girl’s loyal choir. What was that?

The Mighty U.S. economy, once again “growth engine of the world”, had not yet had enough time to “recover”. This was perplexing (at least to some). Suddenly, the Girl told us that this economic juggernaut couldn’t withstand the “shock” of the tiniest nudge in the U.S. rate of interest, from the lowest-in-History to the second-lowest-in-History, which was then dutifully echoed by the mainstream choir.

The same mainstream talking-heads had been telling us for 6 ½ years (twice as long as any normal growth-cycle) that the U.S. economy had been “recovering” and “recovering”, and “recovering” some more. More than that, the talking-heads regularly proclaimed that the Recovery itself was “strengthening” and “strengthening”, like some strongman bulking-up in the gym.

How could the mainstream talking-heads rationalize this seemingly gigantic contradiction? They did so by pretending it didn’t exist. After the Girl’s Ultimate Promise came-and-went, the Girl simply went back to making more promises, and the mainstream talking-heads simply continued to tell us we could-and-should trust each, new promise.

After nearly a year of writing about a U.S. “rate-hike” as if it was an event that had already occurred, the language of the talking-heads changed. First we were told the rate-hike would come “soon”, and then we were told the rate-hike would come maybe. After nearly two years of the Girl’s “promises”, the Girl had now become completely indistinguishable from the Boy.