Courtesy of Pam Martens
Growth in Federal Reserve’s Foreign Central Bank USD Liquidity Swaps Versus Dow Jones Industrial Average
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 455 points by the closing bell on Friday. It seemed sadistic to average folks. One hour before the stock market opened, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had reported the worst U.S. unemployment figure since the Great Depression (14.7 percent) along with the staggering loss of 20.5 million jobs in just the month of April. Within the first half hour of trading, the Dow was up more than 300 points. It then added to those gains in afternoon trading.
None of the explanations offered by mainstream media to explain the incongruous stock trading were accurate. It was not because the stock market had anticipated worse or that the market was rallying because it thought the worst of the economic fallout was behind us. It was because the one emergency funding facility that the Federal Reserve has quietly ramped up more than any other, its Foreign Central Bank Liquidity Swap Lines, was working its magic on Friday.
To understand what happened on Friday, you need to understand what Fed Chair Jerome Powell was methodically setting in place in February.
Beginning on February 3, Powell started dialing the head of one central bank after another. We know this because his daily calendars are made public. Before the month of February was over, Powell had spoken to, or met with, the heads of 14 different foreign central banks. This was an unprecedented number of central bank contacts in such a short period of time for a man telling Americans everything was fine with our banks and our financial system.
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