fomc

No, No, This 2% Is Different From All Those Others

By |2018-01-10T17:32:20-05:00January 10th, 2018|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The TIPS market corollary to interest rate case impatience is overhyping any round number that might in isolation appear to confirm the bias. To reiterate the mistaken assumption: if you believe that economic growth just happens, then given how much time has passed since that was true or apparent you have to believe each long end selloff is the one [...]

The Great Risk of So Many Dinosaurs

By |2018-01-03T16:19:30-05:00January 3rd, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) was established a long time ago in the maelstrom of World War II budgetary as well as wartime conflagration. That made sense. To fight all over the world, the government required creative help in figuring out how to sell an amount of bonds it hadn’t needed (in proportional terms) since the Civil War. A [...]

Inside and Outside, Market and Models Actually Agree On A Final Failing Grade For Yellen

By |2017-12-14T19:24:56-05:00December 14th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It was another pretty embarrassing day for the Federal Reserve and its policymaking body the FOMC. The latter voted, as expected, to raise the federal funds corridor (or double floor, if you can’t get over IOER fail) by another 25 bps. The long end of the Treasury bond market, however, was bid pushing yields down not up. There is a [...]

Severe Jolt In JOLTS

By |2017-12-11T19:01:12-05:00December 11th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The biggest proponents of the BLS data have been FOMC policymakers. Right from the taper tantrum of 2013, the unemployment rate has given them, and the Economists who depend on their views for crafting their own, an almost definitive set of parameters for interpreting all other economic statistics. Everything is immediately filtered through the lens of the unemployment rate and [...]

Bonds vs. Economists; The Means to the End

By |2017-12-11T16:52:31-05:00December 11th, 2017|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As part of its effort to stress its own self-importance, the Federal Reserve conducts a survey of the Primary Dealer members through its New York branch. A written questionnaire is sent out to each bank in advance of every monetary policy meeting. The purpose is for monetary policymakers to make sure that there aren’t any big surprises, that the market, [...]

Progress, So To Speak, With Some Japanification Denial

By |2017-11-29T17:23:37-05:00November 29th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Ever since Robert Solow and Paul Samuelson wrote of an exploitable Phillips Curve in 1960, economists have had dreams of being able to precisely control the economy through the exchange of inflation and unemployment. The original paper, the one sold to, and bought by, the Kennedy Administration, theorized it was possible to sort of “purchase” very low unemployment by allowing [...]

Inflation (Expectations) Corroborate Risk, Which Corroborates Inflation

By |2017-11-28T18:35:55-05:00November 28th, 2017|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

On Thursday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will report on Personal Consumption and Personal Income (as well as the difference between those two, the Personal Savings Rate). Accompanying the economic figures will be the usual estimates for consumer prices, in this case the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge the PCE Deflator. There isn’t expected to be much good news [...]

Can’t Hide From The CPI

By |2017-11-15T17:49:38-05:00November 15th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

On the vital matter of missing symmetry, consumer price indices across the world keep suggesting there remains none. Recoveries were called “V” shaped for a reason. Any economy knocked down would be as intense in getting back up, normal cyclical forces creating momentum for that to (only) happen. In the context of the past three years, symmetry is still nowhere [...]

Symmetry Matters, Or The (Small) Progress of Stating The Obvious

By |2017-11-15T16:56:06-05:00November 15th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Chicago Fed President Charles Evans is this year a voting FOMC member. Normally, that might not make much difference but in times like this where dissension is building beneath the surface of even the typically stoic central bank, this time it might. Apparently we can count Evans among the list dissatisfied with the current state of monetary policy. Speaking this [...]

Go to Top