It is virtually guaranteed that tomorrow the FOMC will make history by officially announcing the Fed's plan to begin shrinking its balance sheet through the gradual phasing out of bond reinvestments, which however in a world in which other central banks continue to pump $125 billion per month, will hardly by noticed by markets at least in the beginning.
Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,
The world hardly needs another theory of the Fed, especially so soon after its Jackson Hole symposium. But we have a theory, too, and who knows, ours could be as close to the bulls-eye as any of the others. Plus, our theory is easy to explain - it rests on the simple premise that decision makers worry mostly about their reputations. We’ll propose that reputational risks are the primary drivers of central bank policies, and then we’ll use that belief to predict a major policy shift.
While it may come as a surprise to the current crop of 17-year-old hedge fund managers, the current period of persistently low long-term interest rates and plunging, near reocrd volatility in the face of a hawkish Fed and rising short-term rates, is hardly new: exactly the same happened from 2004 through 2006, despite the Fed's continued rate hikes and jawboning. Alan Greenspan, the Fed's Chair at the time, called this phenomenon a "conundrum" and blamed it on many things, including the global savings glut.
In an otherwise relatively quiet week in which the only upcoming US data is housing, current account and jobless claims, UK politics will again draw attention, one year (on Friday) after the Brexit referendum and as noted earlier, Brexit negotiations begin on Monday, despite lingering political uncertainty in the UK. Also no less than 9 FOMC members are scheduled to speak this week.
Courtesy of RanSquawk