SC, Yes, it looks like they aren't trying to prop up the market anymore, as they did for the last 10 years.
As Rickards says, the Fed has been desperate to 'normalize' in order to have the necessary tools/ammo to deal with the next crisis or recession. You can't drop rates if they're already close to zero. Likewise you can't do QE if the Fed's balance sheet is already maxed out. But in doing the normalization (raising rates and doing QT), they run the risk of precipitating the very crisis they fear.
Allowing the market to seriously tank, as they are doing, throws a wrench into normalization, and the Fed will be forced to back off before they have reached their goal. To get rates back to 'normal' would require another year (4 more rate hikes), and a partial normalization of the Fed's bloated balance sheet (currently in $4 tril range, up from less than $1 bil pre-2008), will take another 2-3 years at the current rate of QT ($600 bil/year).
So if the Fed is so desperate to normalize, why aren't they stepping in to prop up the tanking stock market? All I can figure is that they want to remove Trump (or prevent a 2nd term) more than they want to normalize.
I'm surprised since the PPT could keep the market fairly buoyant, at least sideways, but they aren't doing it. They must really want to derail Trump since the market turmoil is going to force them to put normalization on hold indefinitely.
There is another explanation however -- that the powers that be want to tank the system in order to bring in the SDR system. We know that's in the cards eventually, but do they want it now?
Rickards blames Fed ineptitude and their using dated and poor models, like the Phillips Curve, etc. But Rickards is a quasi Deep State operative, so he would never say that the current unraveling is by design. Personally, I hope what we're seeing isn't the lead up to the SDR scenario.
