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\\n\\t* Another volatile day in the stock market sees the major averages deep in the red
\\n\\t* The Dow was down just over 1%; down 180 points, 17,529
\\n\\t* The NASDAQ actually got walloped a little more; down just shy of 60 points, 1.25%
\\n\\t* I think the catalyst for today\'s declines was a couple of Fed officials talking about how June is a live meeting - live from the perspective of, "We might raise interest rates"
\\n\\t* I don\'t think it\'s live at all, I think it\'s dead, and if it were alive, the stock market decline would kill it
\\n\\t* If Wall Street actually believes that the Fed is serious about raising rates in June, the market would be tanking
\\n\\t* In fact, if more people believed it, the market would be down more than 180 points today
\\n\\t* As we got closer and closer to the date that the Fed was theoretically going to raise rates, the market would be so low, that any talk of a rate hike would be dead, because the Fed would be dealing with tighter financial conditions
\\n\\t* The Fed doesn\'t want to tighten monetary policy with financial conditions are tightening on their own
\\n\\t* It\'s interesting, too, that you hear people asking, "Why does the Fed have a June rate hike on the table"? I keep hearing about the economy strengthening
\\n\\t* The economy is not strengthening! That\'s just the point, the economy is weakening
\\n\\t* Yes we did get a little data in the last few days that was better than expected, buy we also got data that was worse than expected
\\n\\t* Most of the financial data that has come out since the last time the Fed hiked rates has been bad
\\n\\t* If the Fed is talking about raising rates, it\'s not because the economy is getting stronger, it is despite the fact that the economy is getting weaker
\\n\\t* What is getting stronger is inflation
\\n\\t* The problem is, even though inflation is above the Fed\'s so-called 2% target, I don\'t think this raises the probability of a rate hike
\\n\\t* If anything, the increase in prices will slow down the economy even more
\\n\\t* We actually got some official inflation data today, we got the April CPI
\\n\\t* The consensus was for a move +.3, following the prior month\'s +.1
\\n\\t* We got a bigger jump than was expected - we got +.4
\\n\\t* The year-over-year headline number - not the core number - is now 1.1
\\n\\t* So the year-over-year is below 2% but if you annualize that .4 for the next 11 months that would be a 6% annualized rate of CPI-based inflation
\\n\\t* I read articles about the jump in the CPI and the jist was that this is good news, because the Fed is making progress on its policy goal of price stability -
\\n\\t* If you think about how ridiculous that comment is:
\\n\\t* We had a big spike in consumer prices, which if you annualize the rate of increase that\'s 6% increase in prices and that\'s progress on price stability?
\\n\\t* If anything, the Fed is moving away from price stability
\\n\\t* \\xa0If you\'re going for price stability, the less prices go up the more stable it is
\\n\\t* I don\'t know how much more "stability" people can stand -
\\n\\t* If prices get any more "stable" than this, we\'re going to have runaway inflation
\\n\\t* This is not about price stability - this is about generating inflation on purpose because there is no alternative for the Fed
\\n\\t* In recent times, a hotter than expected inflation number, causes the currency goes up
\\n\\t* And when inflation is lower than expected, the currency goes down
\\n\\t* Now, you might think that\'s counter-intuitive, and actually it is
\\n\\t* Why would higher inflation be good for a currency?\\xa0 After all, inflation measures how quickly a currency loses purchasing power
\\n\\t* So why would a currency that is losing purchasing power more quickly be more valuable?
\\n\\t* In today\'s world, low inflation is bad for your currency and high inflation is good for your currency
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