The 13% rally of the SPX and Dow from the “Dimon bottom” of February 11 has been most impressive and has converted a lot of bears into at least neutrality. This week’s NAII Sentiment Survey: 34% bullish, 42% neutral, 24% bearish. Of such are tops made. But the market is chugging along with the rally still intact, isn’t it?

Well, if you believe, as I do, that our markets are being led by the big banks and their derivative troubles, especially in Europe, you better take a look at the following. Things are going from bad to worse with the banks. NIRP is crippling a beast already wounded by the quantum leap lower in commodity prices. An article at Seeking Alpha states “NIRP Is Absolutely Crushing Big Parts Of The Finance World”.

Negative interest rates are the antidote to a normal, healthy free enterprise system.Banks are forced away from giving savers a return and making their money loaning to economic activity with a normal yield curve. What are they forced toward? They now have to devote their full attention to what Glass-Steagall bared them from doing after the banking fiasco of the 1930s, “investment banking”, playing with commodity and all manner of toxic derivatives, which is what got us into this very mess to begin with! Yes, that’s just what we need.

As I pointed out before back in October, the key outfit to watch for clues as to what might happen next is Deutsche Bank, the lead bank of Germany, the lead economy in all of Europe, the leader as we go into a socialist style banking takeover of our global economy. They have replaced the Swastika with the Derivative Pricing Model. Our entire free capitalist world is held captive to how these models play out, and, in particular, how they control our currencies.

My fellow militant Austrian economist, Jeffrey Snider, just wrote a  piece called “Credit Suisse And Deutsche Bank Still At The Forefront (Just Where They Don’t Want To Be)”.Here he quotes a mea culpa from Credit Suisse on their sipping of the Bernanke Kool Aide with heavy bets on returning to normal economic growth in the Emerging Markets after the 2008 crisis. Tiajane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse, is giving a euphemistic review of Q4 that is paraphrased by Snider thusly: