The Fed threw in the towel this week and acknowledged what the market has known for some time. The four rate hikes previously envisioned for this year are now just two - the dots are falling. According to the Fed, the economy is just fine, just not fine enough to handle interest rates that don't have a zero before the [...]
In September 1979, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a paper that attempted to clarify the monetary and economic characteristics of repurchase agreements. The name itself offers little but further confusion as prior to the 1990’s repos could be classified as either collateralized loans or actual sales and purchases depending on individual circumstances. In some cases, the two [...]
Well, thank goodness that's over. The Fed met last week and decided to maintain the Fed funds rate in the 0 - 0.25% range in which it has been confined since the great financial crisis of 2008. Of course, the fed funds market is essentially kaput having been usurped by the Fed itself during the crisis so the rate charged [...]
The Fed is simply making it up as it goes, with nary a concern about being questioned on what is really disingenuousness. That starts with oil prices as there have been a number of Fed officials rushing to embrace them as some kind of “stimulus” that nobody outside a monetary magician (redundant) could perform. Orthodox economics despises “deflation” to its [...]
It is amazing the speed at which FOMC officials have embraced not falling oil prices but collapsing crude. The pace of the decline is being driven, contrary to the fracking miracle, by the fact that nobody seems to want to bid on the stuff. That is, as I noted earlier, a demand problem. But officials like Fed Vice Chair Stanley [...]
The Federal Reserve has an explicit 2% inflation target, whereby they pledge to maintain “loose” policy in order to achieve it. According to their preferred measure of such things, ill-suited as it is, the US economy has operated below that target since March 2012 – a stunning run of 30 consecutive months. The only other time where the US has [...]
It might be a close race to decide which day of the month is the silliest, the Friday of the “jobs” report or the FOMC meeting (which are two-day events, but only the second day seems to count; and the FOMC meets every six weeks or so which means the Establishment Survey has a few months all to its self). [...]
A few more pieces of the great taper justification puzzle fell into place last week. The politicians struck a budget deal that, as I said last week, changes little in the spending and taxes equation for the next two years, a period that pushes any real changes past the next election. And unless that election produces some pretty dramatic changes [...]
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