Thursday will be a big day for the kind of manufactured ‘news’ that can move markets. Fed clown-in-chief (and imminent lame duck) Yellen is scheduled to speak at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, presumably to obfuscate whatever genius plan the central bank is thought to be hatching for December.  You can bet the news media will be glued to their monitors for this momentous event, eager as always to have their expectations managed, and that they will get a headline out of it even if all she does is mumble and drool for 15 minutes. To make the day even more interesting for the fawning, in-the-box thinkers charged with shaping public opinion, the latest stats for CPI, housing starts and jobless claims are due out an hour before the opening bell. Our gut feeling is that stocks will end the day moderately higher, but that there will be some crazy swings along the way. Yes, this is betting on the favorite, but at least we’ll have a horse in the race to make the day halfway tolerable.