Business

Yesterday, in a carbon-copy response to what happened in December 2013 when the Fed announced the Tapering of QE, stocks first sold off then, as if to validate the Fed's decision as being accurate, saw a dramatic buying surge which pushed them to close just off the highs. With bonds and gold selling off while the dollar rebounded, the Fed could not have asked for - or engineered - a better reaction, while markets, as Bloomberg's Richard Breslow points out, 'chose to hear the parts of the statement and press conference that they wanted to."

Federal Reserve At End Of Monetary Road

The all important context for Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, where the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.25% for the first time in nearly a decade has been examined by the insightful Grant Williams. He is very skeptical of the Fed’s ability to continue to control markets much longer … and this is a gross understatement:

by Keith Weiner

Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that we have an administered interest rate. This means that the bureaucrats at the Federal Reserve decide what’s good for the little people. Then they impose it on us.

In trying to return to freedom, many people wonder why couldn’t we let the market set the interest rate. After all, we don’t have a Corn Control Agency or a Lumber Board (pun intended). So why do we have a Federal Open Market Committee? It’s a very good question.

The "long dollar" trade may be the most crowded ever...

...but that doesn't mean there aren't disagreements where the greenback goes from here, especially after the Fed's historic first rate hike which according to some means the end of the dollar's tremendous year-plus long rally as the market starts to price in the next recession as a result of the Fed's own action, while according to others as a result of rate differentials and other central banks' ongoing debasement of their own currencies, the dollar surge is only getting started.

Support This Website

What Does Today’s “Rate Hike” Mean?

Paul Craig Roberts

The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?”