The Kansas City Fed Symposium was steeped in boredom as all the hype failed to live up to the expectations of the media. The excitement centered around Mario Draghi potentially dropping hints about the beginning of quantitative tightening (QT). Rick Santelli spoke with former FOMC Governor Mark Olson, who rightfully predicted Chair Yellen would not reveal any sense of Fed intentions but he was dead wrong about Draghi. Olson opined that Yellen put the spotlight on President Draghi, but the ECB President must have suffered stage fright as he very bland when speaking to concerns about the Trump administration’s move to economic nationalism. There was not a single word about ECB policy.
Posts Tagged ‘Dodd-Frank’
Notes From Underground: It’s All About the Narrative
August 27, 2017Notes From Underground: Just a Song Before I Go
February 14, 2017We had to get back home
And when we opened up the door
Notes From Underground: The Circus Has Left Town, Time To Clean Up The Manure
October 16, 2013The budget negotiations and political maneuvering that have clogged the airwaves and the capital flows are now kicked further down the road and financial markets can again resume crunching data and analyzing fundamentals and technicals. It became a distraction as the television pundits and anchors opined on the impact of the “Washington Standoff.” The worst part of the entire drama was the constant parade of corporate CEOs warning Congress about the damage being done to the U.S. economy.
Notes From Underground: EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR??????
May 19, 2011Let us hope that the FED and Chairman Bernanke are not following Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction. Today, the FOMC released the minutes from the last meeting and as widely expected the predominant interest was in the discussion of the FED‘s exit strategies from the QE2 program. It seems that FED BOARD members were pushing the idea of raising rates prior to the unloading of assets that have accumulated on the FED‘s balance sheet. There were many opinions about the significance of the various proposals that the FED is considering, but it seems that the FED itself is very uncertain about which procedure will produce what impact.