Tag: inflation

Can A Dove Change Its Spots?

Posted on by George Yacik

Thankfully, there is at least one area of U.S. society where people are still allowed to disagree, and that's on Wall Street, where there is a clear difference of opinion on what we can expect the Fed to do this year regarding raising interest rates to fight inflation. What's surprising is how widely divergent they are.

Let's start with the most aggressive, or hawkish, prediction. That belongs to Bank of America.

"Following the continued hawkish pivot at the January FOMC meeting, we expect the Fed to start tightening at the March 2022 meeting, raising rates by 25 basis points at every remaining meeting this year for a total of seven hikes, and in every quarter of 2023 for a total of four hikes," BofA economists said. That would put the fed funds target rate at a range of 1.75% to 2% by the end of this year and 2.75% to 3.00% by the end of next year when the bank expects the rate-raising cycle to end.

"The Fed has all but admitted that it is seriously behind the curve," the BofA research note added. "When you are behind in a race, you don't take water breaks," it said, explaining its aggressive forecast. Continue reading "Can A Dove Change Its Spots?" →

Fed Jawbones Mean Business

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

3 month T-bill yield is demanding the Fed raise the Funds rate

And the Fed is listening.

Yesterday I made a sarcasm-tinged post about the parade of Fed jawbones in the media and the coordinated and thus comical desperation they seem to exhibit. The stern message is that the Fed Funds rate could be raised at any time (which is possible even before the next FOMC meeting on March 16, in my opinion).

I would not advise you to listen to those who think they know what the Fed is thinking and insist that the Fed will not dare raise the Funds rate. They will dare and they will do it, barring any significant short-term changes to the current macro. In my experience, the Fed has done what the bond market tells it to do almost without exception. Ben Bernanke held ZIRP for a deplorably long time but that was because the T bill on the chart below allowed him to. Continue reading "Fed Jawbones Mean Business" →

Failure To launch

Posted on by George Yacik

Can everybody just chill a little? Yes, the Fed is “indicating” it’s moving to a less accommodative stance, no more government bond purchases, higher interest rates, maybe a decrease in its massive $9 trillion balance sheet, but it’s decidedly not going away. It simply can’t. Tightening? Hardly.

Indeed, as the results of its January 25-26 monetary policy meeting show, the Fed is basically being dragged kicking and screaming into stopping its asset purchases and raising interest rates to fight inflation, neither of which it actually announced at the conclusion of the meeting. Rather, it said it would buy “at least” another $20 billion of Treasury securities and $10 billion of mortgage-backed securities before ending the purchases “in early March.” It also didn’t raise interest rates, instead saying, “it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.” Whenever that is, although everyone seems to believe it means its next meeting, which is set for March 15-16 (there’s no meeting in February). But again, the Fed didn’t say that.

If inflation is so darn dangerous to our nation’s economic health, why is the Fed willing to let it run another month or two before it starts acting instead of, to use Jerome Powell’s famous phrase, simply “talking about talking about” it? Continue reading "Failure To launch" →

Rescue Me

Posted on by George Yacik

How transitory is transitory? Maybe inflation won’t turn out to be as “transitory” as we would like, but even the Federal Reserve thinks inflation will ease sometime in the not-too-distant future, likely this year. The bond market certainly doesn’t seem overly concerned about it, with the 10-year Treasury note trading late last week at about 1.75%, or about six percentage points below the current inflation rate. If inflation is such a big problem that must be addressed immediately, shouldn’t long-term bond rates be closer to 5% or 6% rather than less than 2%?

Then why is the Fed all of a sudden so worried about stamping out inflation when it’s also predicting that the inflation rate will come down fairly soon? What’s the rush?

According to its most recent economic projections released after its December 15 monetary policy meeting, the Fed said it expected inflation to fall to 2.6% this year, from 5.3% last year, then fall to 2.3% next year and 2.1% in 2024. Yet now the Fed can’t seem to stamp out inflation fast enough, even though it was Fed policy not too long ago to let inflation “burn hotter for longer.” What happened with that? Continue reading "Rescue Me" →

A Cynical Fed Is A Dangerous Fed

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

A stroll through recent and not so recent inflationary history. On ‘Fed minutes Wednesday’ the media amplified the noise, the machines are doing what the machines do and running with it, and it’s all eyes on the great and powerful Fed (of Oz).

The Fed created the cyclical inflation (in NFTRH we detailed and managed the process successfully in real-time) and thus the Fed created the cycle. In 2021 the Fed was exposed to the public as the agent of inflation it actually is, and when the inflation threatened to get out of hand they went into damage control mode. Now the Fed is trying to cool the inflation, which means cooling the cycle itself. You can’t have your inflated cake and eat it too. Not when the racket is exposed to the public.

Okay now, that second to last line triggered a memory and sent me to YouTube. Now I have distracted myself with a good laugh.

Moe: “Now look what you did; you deflated it!”

Larry: “Hey, we better blow it up again!”

Moe: “Give it the gas. Larry: “Gas on”. Moe: “Gas on”…. “Gas off!”. Larry: “Gas off”. Moe: “That oughtta be enough…”

Man blows out the candles and BOOM!!!! Classic, and so appropriate. Continue reading "A Cynical Fed Is A Dangerous Fed" →