Back on December 31, the day which was the first quarter and year-end after the Fed's first rate hike cycle in nearly a decade, we pointed out something unexpected - the Fed's rate hike corridor had just been broken when the Fed Funds rate traded as low as 0.12%, far below the mandated minimum of 0.25%.
Back in November, when it was laying out its (five out of six wrong) Top Trades and predictions for 2016, Goldman strategists forecast that because the "US will be the first to grow GDP demand above potential" the stock market party would be over and that the "Bernanke Put" would be replaced with the "Yellen Call."
Specifically, this is what Goldman predicted:
Gold's 16.1% surge in Q1 2016 ias the best start to a year since 1974. Overall, this is the best quarter since Q3 1986 and is the best performing major commodity of the year.
Last night we noted the odd "messaging" that was apparent in The PBOC's Yuan fix shifts into and after The Fed and Janet Yellen spoke...
Almost as if The Fed had "outsourced its monetary policy" to China once again. But as DollarCollapse.com's John Rubino notes, it appears Janet Yellen has instead outsoured US monetary policy to the financial markets...
Remember when 2016 was the year when the US economy was finally supposed to take off on "above trend" growth? Make that 2017.
Here is JPM's chief economist Michael Feroli doing what banks are so good at doing: cutting their own US GDP growth forecasts.
Shave and a haircut, first half