Takeaway: In today’s speech, Yellen sounded as hawkish as she has all year, even while growth is as slow as it’s been all year.

“When the Committee begins to normalize the stance of policy, doing so will be a testament, also, to how far our economy has come in recovering from the effects of the financial crisis and the Great Recession. In that sense, it is a day that I expect we all are looking forward to.”

-Janet Yellen, Fed Chair speaking at Economic Club of Washington (12/2/2015)

Newsflash: Yellen is a Democrat so she had to obfuscate the actual state of the US economy. Make no mistake, though, Yellen will go down in history as one of the few Fed Heads who tightened into a recession.

In today’s speech, Yellen sounded as hawkish as she has all year, even while growth is as slow as it’s been all year. She spent today’s speech talking up "consumer confidence,” even though that has slowed since seeing its cycle peak in Q1.

Dear Janet, Go Ahead. Hike. See What Happens - Rate hike cartoon 09.04.2015

She didn’t mention yesterday’s recessionary ISM and PMIs that don’t corroborate her rate hike calculus. You can't draw a line (sine curve) that is "accelerating" in almost any US economic data series right now. In fact, Autos and Housing are the only two data points that are accelerating, but both are highly dependent on no hike.

She tried to blame every component of US #GrowthSlowing on non-US factors, while citing higher foreign exchange rates and the statement that “foreign economies still pose risks to U.S. economic growth” but that this risk had “lessened since late Summer.”

It was really sad to watch.

The pinnacle of Yellen’s economic song and dance, however, had to be her touting of the exceedingly rosy "Blue Chip" (Old Wall) economic forecasts. No real help there. They have been consistently wrong on growth by a seriously wide margin, by 50% in 2015 alone. That’s almost as bad as the Fed's own "expectations,” which have been wrong 70% of the time since Bernanke's reign. 

No matter. After this speech, financial markets will be shocked if Yellen doesn’t hike. So I say “Hike baby, hike into the slow-down.” Any tightening into a slow-down will surely "disrupt" financials markets. It's already disrupting them. During and after Yellen’s hawkish speech, the Treasury market sold off, equities fell, and the dollar rose.

Most people who blindly believe the Fed are paid to but so-called “central bankers” have turned America into a socialized state of centrally-planned markets. The obfuscation of U.S. economic data needs to be audited. It is un-elected, un-accountable, and un-American.