Jay Powell says that three’s not a crowd, at least not for his rate cuts, but four would be. As usual, central bankers like him always hedge and say that “should conditions warrant” the FOMC will be more than happy to indulge (the NYSE). But what he means in his heart of hearts is that there probably won’t be any [...]
There he was, the Fed Chairman stumbling through a question about headwinds and transitory factors. No, not Jay Powell in January 2020, this was Ben Bernanke in June 2011. The Fed had just downgraded its recovery forecasts (again) and some in the media weren’t getting it. After all, QE2. It was this enormously powerful monetary agent introduced for a second [...]
Between the summer of 2011 and February 2012, the unemployment rate experienced its largest half-year drop since the huge recovery that had been taking place in 1984. It was a very welcome sign that the US economy may have avoided becoming entangled in the global funding messes of 2011. Caught flat-footed, as always, Ben Bernanke’s Fed had ended QE2 at [...]
More than two years into the SOFR regime, it’s not really going all that well. Adoption remains, shall we say, questionable and uncertain even though, everyone says, LIBOR is on its way out and the Secured Overnight Financing Rate is the future. Jumbled together by the Fed’s New York branch, the latter is, we are told, superior in every conceivable [...]
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