The Secret Race

States the UCI "doesn't want to catch certain guys"

Former Lance Armstrong teammate Tyler Hamilton has provided the world with a sweeping, high-definition view into the thinly veiled world of the doping culture in cycling in his new book, "The Secret Race", due out September 5 by Random House publishing, co-written by Daniel Coyle.

If cycling fans had any doubt as to the depth of doping during Armstrong and Hamilton's era, the level of detail provided by Hamilton will, or at least should, cast that all aside.

The text is Hamilton's words but the stories are backed up by extensive research by Coyle, who states in the introduction that he interviewed Hamilton more than 60 times, and "to verify and corroborate Hamilton's account", he interviewed numerous independent sources. The result is a bird's eye view of Armstrong's power and influence over even those tasked with governing the sport.

Coyle, who spent months with Armstrong to write "Lance Armstrong's War", ends his preface by stating, "I think people have the right to know the truth. People need to know how it all really happened, and then they can make up their minds."

"They weren't drug tests. They were more like discipline tests, IQ tests"

After years of denial following his own doping positive, Hamilton first opened up about his doping past to the US federal grand jury, which was investigating Armstrong and allegations of doping and conspiracy at the US Postal Service team. He then came out on the television news magazine 60 Minutes with public allegations that Armstrong doped and helped him dope.

Armstrong has continued to deny all involvement with doping, and the federal investigation was dropped without warning or reason, but the US Anti-Doping Agency picked up the case and has banned Armstrong for life and stripped him of all of his results from August 1, 1998 to the end of his career.

Hamilton's 265 page account in "The Secret Race" is prefaced by an admission that he had lied throughout his career: "The truth is too big, it involves too many people. You've either got to tell 100 percent or nothing. There's no in-between", and then ends by stating "The truth will set you free."

In between those pages, Hamilton's account fills in all of the gaps and pieces together many of the stories already in the Cyclingnews archives, fleshing them out with a shocking level of detail never seen before.

"The tests are easy to beat," he writes. "We're way, way ahead of the tests. They've got their doctors, and we've got ours, and ours are better. Better paid, for sure. Besides, the UCI doesn't want to catch certain guys anyway. Why would they? It'd cost them money."

In addition to recounting US Postal's sophisticated doping programme, with EPO syringes being handed out in little white lunch bags to select riders on the "A-team" - as well as his first injection at the hands of Dr. Pedro Celaya, (who was also charged by USADA), Hamilton goes on to detail about how easy the UCI's tests were to beat.

"In fact, they weren't drug tests. They were more like discipline tests, IQ tests. If you were careful and paid attention, you could dope and be 99 percent certain that you would not get caught."

"Lance tested positive. I know because he told me"

It was easy, Hamilton describes, because there was a ring of nefarious doctors, trainers and assistants who helped Armstrong, himself and others avoid testing positive. From standing watch and delaying testers should they arrive during "glowtime" - when a rider was likely to test positive following administration of EPO, testosterone or corticosteroids - to methods to avoid testing positive such as 'microdosing', or injecting EPO into the vein rather than subcutaneously so that it left the system quicker (methods developed by Michele Ferrari), Hamilton explains that it was not only possible to dope continuously and not test positive, it was a part of life as a professional cyclist.

He also details how the UCI was not only ineffective as far as testing, but alleges that it kept Armstrong from testing positive - from the 1999 cortisone test that was swept under the rug with a back-dated Therapeutic Use Exemption ('saddle sore'), to the 2001 Tour de Suisse EPO result where Ferrari's latest protocol to have Armstrong dope with EPO and not test positive, nearly failed.

"Ferrari advised Lance to sleep in an altitude test and to microdose Edgar [code name for EPO - ed.] in the vein, 800 units a night. This would help keep his haematocrit high and also beat the new EPO test. The altitude tent would create more natural EPO, helping to balance out any synthetic EPO that might linger ... his plan with Ferrari had worked out perfectly.

"That is until Lance tested positive," Hamilton wrote. "I know because he told me."

While Hamilton was worried, Armstrong was flippant. "No worries dude. We're gonna have a meeting with them. It's all taken care of."

"Them" was the Lausanne anti-doping lab director Martial Saugy, a fact confirmed by USADA's own investigation.

In a letter to the UCI, USADA attorney William Bock states, "USADA met with Lausanne laboratory director Martial Saugy who confirmed various communications and meetings he claims to have had with UCI personnel, Johann Bruyneel and Lance Armstrong concerning EPO test results for a sample that Mr. Armstrong provided at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland. Mr. Saugy told USADA that representatives of UCI were aware of both the indication of EPO use from Mr. Armstrong’s 2001 Tour of Switzerland sample and of the meetings involving Dr. Saugy, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Bruyneel."

"Lance called the UCI on you"

When Hamilton left US Postal for CSC and later Phonak, he set up his own doping system using Eufemiano Fuentes (later busted as part of Operacion Puerto), using transfusions in addition to EPO, a system championed by CSC owner Bjarne Riis, Hamilton alleges. (Riis categorically denied knowing Fuentes and refused to comment further).

Hamilton confirms the use of a powder termed "polvo", likely protease, an enzyme tucked under the fingernail and introduced into the stream of urine to beat the EPO test. He states several times that Riis helped him refine his transfusion schedule, and that doctors and soigneurs on CSC aided in defeating doping controls by being on "standby" with intravenous saline to water down haematocrit if doping controllers showed up, and doctors on Phonak helped with transfusions.

Hamilton states in the book that he was called into the UCI headquarters to meet with then-president Hein Verbruggen and Dr. Mario Zorzoli, the UCI's chief medical officer, where he was informed that his blood tests indicated autologous transfusion - blood from another person - after the Ventoux stage of the 2004 Dauphiné Libéré.

The kicker? Armstrong himself arranged the meeting, Floyd Landis tells Hamilton. Landis alleges that Armstrong helped bring down the UCI's anti-doping authorities on his main competitors including Hamilton and Euskaltel's Iban Mayo.

"He called Hein, after Ventoux. Said you guys and Mayo were on some new shit, told Hein to stop you," Landis is quoted as saying.

It's a third-hand statement, and UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani emphatically denied the insinuation to Cyclingnews. While the UCI's meeting with Hamilton was public knowledge after his arbitration hearing, the motives behind it were simple, Carpani said.

"At the time, it was the only strategy we could use. We did not have tests for all of the illegal methods," Carpani said. If a rider had abnormal blood values, he said they would ask them to UCI headquarters, a practice they no longer use. "At that time we used the option of bringing the rider in to ask him to explain himself, to let them know that we were monitoring him and to perhaps put some pressure on him. But I can clearly state that we never, never brought in any rider at the request of Lance Armstrong."

The meeting was just a warning - and Hamilton was allowed to go on racing as normal, to continue doping at the hands of the inept doctor Fuentes and his assistant. To be given a bad blood bag in the 2004 Tour de France that made him severely ill. He then tested positive for an autologous transfusion in the 2004 Vuelta a Espana and Olympic Games and was suspended for two years.

Hamilton fought hard to get people to believe the lies he told during his defence. His fans, like Armstrong's wanted to believe. Unlike Armstrong, Hamilton never could embrace the love and admiration of his fans. He sank into a deep depression, tested positive a second time because of anti-depression supplements and was given an eight-year ban. It was only after getting the decade of lies off his chest that he said he truly began to live again.

Whether or not that 'truth and reconciliation' process can work for all of cycling remains to be seen.

For his part, Armstrong told the cancer community in a video statement yesterday, "It's time to move forward. It's time to talk about a different fight. I refused to be distracted."

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/tyler-hamiltons-book-reveals-in-depth-doping-network

Jim Grant on the Fed

Why a collapse of the Eurozone must be avoided

Anders Åslund, 21 August 2012

It has become increasingly fashionable to talk about Europe without the euro. But this column points out that in the last century Europe has seen the collapse of three multi-nation currency zones: the Habsburg Empire, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia – and they all ended with disastrous hyperinflation. The lesson for the Eurozone is clear: avoid break up at almost any cost.

The output falls were horrendous and long lasting. The statistics are flimsy, but officially the average output fall in the former Soviet Union was 52%, and in the Baltics it amounted to 42% (Åslund 2007, 60). Five out of twelve post-Soviet countries – Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – had not reached their 1990 GDP per capita levels in purchasing power parities by 2010. Similarly, out of seven Yugoslav successor states, at least Serbia and Montenegro, and probably Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, had not exceeded their 1990 GDP per capita levels in purchasing power parities two decades later (World Bank 2011). Arguably, Austria and Hungary did not recover from their hyperinflations in the early 1920s until the mid-1950s. Thus half the countries in a currency zone that broke up experienced hyperinflation and did not reach their prior GDP per capita in purchasing power parities until about a quarter of a century later.

The causes of these large output falls were multiple: systemic change, competitive monetary emission leading to hyperinflation, collapse of the payments system, exclusion from international finance, trade disruption, and wars. Many economists disregard the experiences of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia because both countries also went through systemic changes. In an attempt to control for systemic change we can compare the former Soviet Union with Romania and Bulgaria, which also had highly distorted socialist economies and a similar level of economic development as the Soviet Union. By such a comparison, the total output cost because of the slow collapse of the ruble zone might be on the order of 20% to 25%.

The critical issue is the Eurozone payments system. Hans-Werner Sinn initiated a heated discussion about unsettled Target2 clearing balances of the Eurozone in 2011 (e.g. Sinn 2012, Whelan 2011, 2012). Before the current crisis, these balances more or less offset each other or were settled through the private interbank market, which has dried up. As a consequence, large positive Target2 balances have arisen with the national central banks in the four northern Eurozone countries – Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Finland – and corresponding big negative balances with eight countries – Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece, France, Portugal, Belgium, and Austria) (Sinn and Wollmershäuser 2012). The causes of these balances are current-account deficits of the southern countries as well as transfers of bank deposits from the south to the north. These balances exceed €1 trillion, and Germany’s surplus alone corresponds to one-third of Germany’s GDP.

Sinn (2011) has argued that “the Eurozone payments system has been operating as a hidden bailout whereby the Bundesbank has been lending money to the crisis-stricken Eurozone members via the Target system.” He has alternatively proposed to cap the Target2 balances, settle them in hard assets, or transform them into short-term Eurobonds. Karl Whelan (2011) and others oppose Sinn, arguing that the Bundesbank has claims on the ECB system as a whole, not on individual national central banks. Whelan points out that limiting a Target2 balance would amount to cutting out a country from the euro system.

Legally, Whelan’s interpretation is presumably correct, but since the Lisbon Treaty does not contain any stipulations for the dissolution of the Eurozone, it is not evident what law would apply to these balances if it does break up. If the ECB would collapse in the breakup of the Eurozone, the main creditor would no longer exist. Moreover, the southern countries would in all probability default on their bonds in such an event, sharply reducing the value of any collateral held as sovereign bonds.

The accumulation of large uncleared balances of dubious character is symptomatic of a currency zone in crisis. The former Soviet republics formally agreed to coordinate their issue of credit, but they all failed to implement their agreement and competitive credit issue ensued. All the other former Soviet republics had large current-account deficits with Russia. Until the ruble zone collapsed in September 1993 Russia financed them all. In 1992, Russia’s credits to the other former Soviet republics amounted to 9.3% of its GDP. Formally, the gains of the other states were enormous, ranging from 11% of GDP in Belarus and Moldova to 91% of GDP in Tajikistan (IMF 1994, p. 25). In reality, however, no country benefited from this flow of money, which contributed to hyperinflation everywhere (Åslund 1995). Similarly, Slovenia and Croatia had large current-account surpluses in relation to Serbia, which responded by emitting far more credit rather than paying in real terms, which in turn persuaded Slovenia and Croatia to abandon the Yugoslav dinar (Pleskovich and Sachs 1994).

Domestically, post-Soviet Russia had a clearing system that could not manage all the new payments, and large arrears accumulated in the so-called Kartoteka II, where all payments were registered in the order of their entry. The dominant Russian view was that they should be financed with new monetary emission as indeed happened, which resulted in high inflation. Uncleared payment balances anywhere may provoke monetary emission.

Sinn has made an important contribution by drawing attention to these large unsettled balances, but his proposal to cap the national Target2 balances is very dangerous. The Russian reformers set such ceilings on the credits from the Central Bank of Russia to the other post-Soviet countries to limit Russia’s losses and break up the ruble zone, as happened. No such limit on a clearing balance is permissible in a currency zone. Nor is it permissible to ignore these balances, as Whelan seems to suggest, because they can become real.

Sadly, both Sinn and Whelan’s lines of argument are likely to contribute to the disruption of the Eurozone. Sinn’s argument is a straightforward copy of the Russian breakup of the ruble zone, while Whelan ignores the problem of uncleared Target2 balances.

If one country (Greece) departs from the Eurozone or if its Target2 balances are capped, the current slow bank run from the south will accelerate quickly and become a massive bank run from most banks in southern Europe, and the banking system would stop working. The Eurozone payments system would stop functioning because it is centralized to the ECB. To re-establish a payments system is both politically and technically difficult. In the former Soviet Union, it took three years to do so. Currency controls would arise and a liquidity freeze would occur. If the drachma were reintroduced in the midst of a severe financial crisis, its exchange rate would plummet like a stone by probably 75%-80%. High inflation would result and mass bankruptcies ensue because of currency mismatches. Output would plunge and unemployment soar. Greece would experience a new default and other countries would follow.

For all these reasons, Greece or any other financially weak country is unlikely to depart from the Eurozone. In the three hyperinflationary currency union collapses, it was small, wealthy counties that left first: Czechoslovakia from the Habsburg Empire, Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia, and the three Baltic states from the former Soviet Union. The countries that departed early and resolutely were most successful. Hence, the main concern should be whether small, wealthy northern countries want to abandon the Eurozone.

The conclusion is that the Eurozone should be maintained at almost any cost. All the economic problems in the current crisis can be resolved within the Eurozone. In order to maintain the Eurozone Eurozone-wide clearing must be maintained in full. The Target2 balances should be resolved by reforms, not by capping national balances. The only reasons for a breakup of the Eurozone would be that Eurozone governance fails completely or that one nation decides to leave. If the breakup starts, it would be better to agree on a complete and speedy dissolution into the old national currencies.

References

Åslund, Anders (1995), How Russia Became a Market Economy, Washington: Brookings Institution.

Åslund, Anders (2007), Building How Capitalism Was Built: The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia, Cambridge University Press.

Åslund, Anders (2012), “Why a Breakup of the euro Area Must Be Avoided: Lessons from Previous Breakups”, Policy Brief 12-20, Peterson Institute for International Economics, August.

Buiter, Willem (2011), “The Terrible Consequences of a Eurozone Collapse”, Financial Times, 8 December.

Cliffe, Mark et al. (2010), “EMU Break-up: Quantifying the Unthinkable”, ING, Global Economics, 7 July.

Dornbusch, Rudiger (1992), “Monetary Problems of Post Communism: Lessons from the End of the Austro-Hungarian Empire”, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 128(3):391-424.

International Monetary Fund (1994), Economic Review: Financial Relations among Countries of the Former Soviet Union, IMF.

Lachman, Desmond (2010), Can the Euro Survive?, Legatum Institute, December.

Normand, John, and Arindam Sandilya (2011), “Answers to 10 Common Questions on EMU Breakup”, JP Morgan, 7 December.

Pasvolsky, Leo (1928), Economic Nationalism of the Danubian States, London: George Allen & Unwin.

Pleskovic, Boris, and Jeffrey D Sachs (1994), “Political Independence and Economic Reform in Slovenia”, in Olivier Blanchard, Kenneth Froot, and Jeffrey D Sachs (eds.), The Transition in Eastern Europe, 1, National Bureau of Economic Research, 191-220

Roubini, Nouriel (2011), “The Eurozone Is Heading for Break-up”, Financial Times, 14 June.

Sinn, Hans-Werner (2011), “The ECB’s Stealth Bailout”, VoxEU.org, 1 June.

Sinn, Hans-Werner (2012), “Fed Versus ECB: How TARGET Debts Can Be Repaid”, VoxEU.org, 10 March.

Sinn, Hans-Werner, and Timo Wollmershäuser (2012), “Target Loans, Current Account Balances and Capital Flows: The ECB’s Rescue Facility”, International Tax Public Finance, 30 May.

Whelan, Karl (2011), “Professor Sinn Misses the Target”, VoxEU.org, 9 June.#

Whelan, Karl (2012), “Target2: Germany Has Bigger Things to Worry about”, VoxEU.org, 29 April.

World Bank (2011), World Development Indicators.

Bernanke - Draghi: Jackson Hole vs. Leen’s Lodge

August 27, 2012  David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer, Cumberland Advisors "Five years into the financial crisis, the exit for central banks from their stimulus efforts is nowhere in sight and even may be getting further away." (Richard Barley. “Central Banks’ Incredible Lightness of Easing.” Heard on the Street. WSJ.com. August 26, 2012) Second-quarter GDP revisions will likely put the growth rate of the US economy above two percent. That estimate is high enough to stop any QE3 action from Jackson Hole. We expect lots of Fed rhetoric and some mixed comments as media interviews occur. The media will have nothing to do but cover a conference where presentations will be made and decisions will be deferred. The Fed retreat in Jackson Hole is the place for the national media to earn its pay. Mario Draghi has already declared to do “whatever it takes.” We do not expect anything new from Draghi or the European Central Bank until several events occur. They are scheduled for September. The troika (IMF, European Commission, and ECB) will inspect Greece but will not yank funding. Greece will likely pass the tests with a B+, a C-, or an intermediate grade that suggests Greece is trying but needs to do a little more, to try harder and achieve more results. Greece will get enough money to roll back the debt it owes to the institutions the troika represents. That paves the way for the next issue. The German constitutional court decision (currently scheduled for September 12, 2012) may say yes to the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), it may say no (this is highly unlikely), or it may say yes with certain modifications. We do not know. Finding a form to complete the ESM is the most likely outcome. Furthermore, the brain trust that operates the eurozone will come up with a different mechanism if no form is found by the constitutional court. Once the ESM is in place, it can be funded through the ECB, which means a very large QE at the ECB level. Perhaps a banking license will be granted to the ESM, and several countries will become immediate recipients. Spain, Italy, and Ireland will be among them. There will suddenly be a very large liquidity infusion of newly created euros that will drive down interest rates and narrow the spreads among the various members of the eurozone. That is the outcome to expect in September. Questions: Will any of this improve the economic growth rates of the European countries? Perhaps some improvement will occur in some countries, but will those improvements be dramatic? That is not clear, since structural reforms have not been implemented meaningfully in those countries. What will this do for banking systems in countries like Spain? It should amount to some modest help, since it is a subsidy to the banking system. Not a lot of help, since the banking systems still hold assets that are under water and inadequately reserved for the upcoming damages. Will runs on banks in countries such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy subside, so that their banking systems can regain functionality? Perhaps there will be some restoration of confidence and the bleeding will lessen. What does all of this mean for markets? That is the biggest unanswered question. Foreign markets are watching China’s weakness. The second largest economy in the world is struggling with serious questions about its regrowth. In Europe, growth rates are not expected to improve even if the ECB liquidity infusion occurs. In the US, the slow-growth approach and fiscal-cliff uncertainties of an unclear election outcome impede an economy that is struggling under the burden of a large negative output gap (read: high unemployment). There is a realization that the Federal Reserve can not, will not, and should not do any more. It does not have a reason to. The above leave us to end August with a large uncertainty premium. What to do? The first thing to do is avoid 70 thousand of your closest personal friends on the west coast of Florida. Some of them will be in Sarasota, but they will miss us. The second thing is to try to duck the damage that may be done by Hurricane Isaac. Isaac’s most likely impact is on oil-drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. It may go on to dump copious amounts of rain in sections of the US that need it. We will escape to Maine and chase some friendly bass or pickerel in the pristine waters of the St. Croix River watershed at Leen’s Lodge. Our small group will talk about the economics and politics of the world and look for pre-autumn color. At last check there were a few empty spots at the lodge, in case any venturesome souls want to head in that direction at the last minute. We wish our readers all the best for the Labor Day weekend. There is much to observe and plenty of fireworks coming in September. For the size of those growing central bank balance sheets and for the interest rates and credits spreads, see the weekly updated series in the middle of our homepage, www.cumber.com.

David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer

How China Is Driving Federal Reserve Policy

By JAMES RICKARDS

August 20, 2012

During the Cold War, national security analysts spoke knowingly about the art of "Kremlinology." This was a technique for understanding Soviet power relations and policy changes taking place inside the leadership compound in the Kremlin.

The Soviet Union was completely opaque. One-time leaders could be demoted and new leaders advanced without any public acknowledgement. One technique for gleaning information was to look at photographs of Soviet leaders assembled on top of Lenin's Tomb in Red Square on important occasions. Such photographs were among the few glimpses of the leadership available to the public. Analysts were careful to note the proximity of each figure in the photo to a supreme leader such as Leonid Brezhnev. A Politburo member who was adjacent to Brezhnev one year but two places away the next had clearly been demoted.

Unfortunately our access to Federal Reserve monetary policy is not much improved over those Cold War techniques. The understanding of Fed policy is left to careful scrutiny of official speeches, reading between the lines of various statements, and using software to detect subtle shifts in wording such as "prepared to take" turning into "will provide" as the standard for further ease.

Even these resources are of limited use since regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents often contradict each other and the Fed Board often hides its true motivations. They will tell the publicwhat they are doing without really saying why. The situation is not much better in Europe where national central bank heads sometimes quarrel with the European Central Bank.

Markets are now approaching one of the most momentous two-week stretches of central bank actions and economic data in recent memory. On August 31, senior officials from the Fed, the European Central Bank, and other central banks along with prominent economists and top financial journalists will gather near Jackson Hole, Wy. for their annual central bank symposium. Less than a week later, on September 6, the ECB Governing Council will announce its monthly decision with respect to key interest rates for the euro area. The following day the United States. will announce its monthly employment report. Finally, on September 13, the Federal Open Market Committee will issue its statement with regard to key U.S. interest rates followed by a press conference by Chairman Bernanke.

Importantly, one driver of policymaking to come in this two-week stretch is happening not in the United States or Europe but half-a-world away in China. After hitting a 19-year high of 6.3 yuan to the dollar in late April, 2012, the Chinese yuan has weakened trading recently at about 6.4 yuan to the dollar, a 1.5 percent decline in the past three months. While this decline may seem slight, it represents a reversal of four-years of pressure by the United States to force the Chinese to appreciate the yuan.

The 17 percent upward revaluation of the yuan from August, 2007 to April, 2012 was material, but still far short of the 30 percent or more revaluation sought by the United States. Moreover, even this modest progress required the full force of Fed "QE" or quantitative easing to achieve.

The first QE program lasted from November, 2008 through June, 2010. The second, QE2, lasted from November, 2010 through June, 2011. Both QE programs put enormous pressure on the Chinese either to revalue their currency or face internal inflation as they printed yuan to soak up the easy money dollars finding their way to China.

The fact that the Chinese have now allowed the yuan to devalueagainst the dollar is a powerful prompt to the Fed to launch a new round of QE to once again force the Chinese to make an unpleasant choice—more upward revaluation of the yuan or more inflation in China.

Of course, the Chinese yuan is not the only driver of Fed or ECB policy. The ECB has ample reason to create ease through rate cuts based on economic weakness on the European periphery regardless of the yuan exchange rate. The Fed will be responding to weak employment and weak economic growth in the United States.

The Fed will never make explicit reference to the dollar/yuan exchange rate because exchange rate policy is the exclusive domain of the U.S. Treasury. However, like the good Kremlinologist, one can use inference and seemingly extraneous data to see what is going on behind the scenes. A weaker dollar to promote exports is a paramount goal of U.S. economic policy. The Fed's relentless money printing, otherwise known as QE, is the key to forcing China to revalue the yuan despite their reluctance to do so.

So look for the following sequence of events. On August 31, the Fed will give strong indications that more quantitative easing should be expected if economic conditions do not show substantial improvement. On September 6, expect the European Central Bank to lower its main lending rate by 25 basis points to 0.50 percent. Then on September 7 look for an employment report weaker than consensus estimates due partly to quirks in seasonal adjustments. This will give the Fed economic justification and political cover for the start of a new quantitative easing program on September 13. This double-dose of ECB and Fed ease should give stock markets a lift through the fall at least until the twin dangers of the fiscal cliff and war with Iran stare investors in the face later this year.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/20/how-china-is-driving-federal-reserve-policy