Yes, the leaves have shed, frost is certainly on the pumpkin and there’s even six inches of snow in Chicago. The news has been clogged with positive results from the recent phone calls between Lighthizer/Mnuchin and their Chinese negotiating partners. Even Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was aglow with positive news from his ASEAN meeting in Bangkok, Thailand. President Trump was tweeting about a possible signing ceremony in Iowa.
Posts Tagged ‘Richard Clarida’
Notes From Underground: Torn Between Two Lovers, Feelin’ Like A Fool
July 21, 2019This Mary MacGregor ballad released in 1976 notes how a woman is torn between two men she loves and it is “breakin’ all the rules.” This is the situation Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the FOMC finds itself: The love of its dual mandate and its torrid affair with the beloved Phillips Curve. Now it appears that the FED leadership is abandoning its affair with Phillips Curve while it grows more attached to its other love, Mario Draghi and the European Central Bank.
Notes From Underground: Powell Gets Backup From Clarida and Williams
July 18, 2019Following Wednesday’s short introduction to the significance of the Powell in Paris speech in Paris, we a digestif in the form of Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida and New York Fed President John Williams providing supporting the chairman. As a result, the dollar sold off, there was a major rally in GOLD, and boost to equities even as earnings proved to be TEPID. But what I’m waiting for is a STEEPENING in the U.S. yield curves when the world’s bond investors contemplate that the FED has ABDICATED any sense of FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY for its status as a reserve currency.
Notes From Underground: Back from Hiatus
July 17, 2019I am posting a podcast recorded last week with David Rosenberg and Peter Boockvar (and moderated by Richard Bonugli) that is still really relevant. On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a speech in France at a gathering honoring the 75th anniversary of the since the Bretton Woods agreement. The speech epitomized the Fed’s third mandate as espoused by Vice Chairman Richard Clarida over the past five months.
Notes From Underground: The Powell Fed Turns Transient From Transparent
May 2, 2019May brought another Federal Reserve meeting that sowed more confusion. Maybe there is such a thing as too much transparency. The FOMC statement revealed the Fed thought “growth of household spending and business fixed investment slowed in the first quarter.” Coupled with this analysis was the OUTLOOK that “inflation compensation have remained low in recent months.”
Notes From Underground: Draghi Is Waiting On a Sunny Day
April 10, 2019President Mario Draghi’s press conference proceeded as expected as the European Central Bank laid out its plans for dealing with a slowing global economy suffering from the slings and arrows of president Trump’s trade war threats against the Chinese and now the Europeans. The ECB plans on keeping its interest rate policy intact through 2019 and probably longer as it confronts the recent headwinds to growth. The media asked several times about the possibility of tiering of rates in an effort to remove the adverse impact from the NEGATIVE DEPOSIT RATE FOR RESERVES PARKED AT THE ECB.
Notes From Underground: No Moore. No Kudlow. No MMT
March 31, 2019In the previous blog post, I suggested that if the FED was afraid of flat yield curves then they OUGHT to CUT overnight rates immediately by 50 basis points in an effort to steepen the curves to a more NORMAL slope. On Friday, in a nod to Notes From Underground, President Trump’s latest Fed nominee Steve Moore and White House advisor Larry Kudlow said that the central bank should slash interest rates by 50 basis points. Unlike my suggestion, the avid supply-siders offered no context for the rate cuts. There was no discussion of yield curves, dollar strength or the problems confronting global growth.
Notes From Underground: How Many Fed Speakers Does It Take To Make a Greenspan?
February 24, 2019More than two decades ago, then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said, “I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I’m not sure you realize that what you hear is not what I meant.”
It seems that the cacophony of Fed speakers on Friday accomplished what the so-called Oracle did by his own design .The headlines pulled out the narrative of the FED leaving a larger balance sheet and more reserves thus allowing for more liquidity in the U.S. financial system. Equity markets, bond markets and hard assets all experienced a sigh of relief and rallied in anticipation of removal of what Druckenmiller referred to as the double-barrel approach of FED tightening policy. Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida spoke about the FED‘s use of balance sheet and forward guidance dynamics as two exceptional tools the Fed used to combat the Global Financial Crisis. If policy was already at the “effective lower bound” the Fed may invoke a Bank of Japan-type policy of yield curve control (YCC) by capping the rates on longer maturities.
Notes From Underground: The Government Shutdown, Or Lots of Media Drama
January 16, 2019While I was off visiting my children and grandchildren, the government took its own hiatus. However, while I am back at it, the government is still shuttered (partially, at least). For years the pundits have ranted about the negative effects on the economy (and some even singled out the markets). For all of the noise, the bond market is stable and stocks have rallied 8 percent since the shutdown began on December 22.