Last February, as Chinese stocks and the Yuan were crashing every day, sending the S&P tumbling and government bond yields crashing to record lows, in the process aborting the Fed's first attempt to hike rates, volatility was soaring and confidence in the economy was in the dumps: in short, the bottom appeared like it was about to fall off.
Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner via Acting-Man.com,
Ticks on a Dog
A brief comment on Fed chief Janet Yellen’s revealing speech at the University of Michigan. Bloomberg:
“Before, we had to press down on the gas pedal trying to give the economy all of the oomph that we possibly could,” Yellen said Monday in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Fed is now trying to “give it some gas, but not so much that we’re pushing down hard on the accelerator.”
[…]
The reflation trade is officially over.
At the same time that retail sales posted the worst 2 month drop in 2 years, CPI - the bedrock behind the Fed's rate hiking intentions - just hit a brick wall, and after months of headline CPI growth mostly the back of the energy "base effect", in March this ended with a thud, when headline CPI printed at -0.3%, badly missing expectations of an unchanged print. The number was so bad, all 79 economist estimates missed the number (predicting a -0.2% low).
Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
The market was sent for a spin yesterday afternoon after President Trump told the Wall Street Journal the U.S. dollar “is getting too strong” and he would prefer the Federal Reserve keep interest rates low. From the WSJ:
Mr. Trump also said his administration won’t label China a currency manipulator in a report due this week.
Janet Yellen is playing with matches next to a $20 Trillion Debt Bomb.
During her speech at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in Michigan, Yellen stated that the biggest risk to monetary policy is for the Fed to “get behind the curve” regarding inflation.
To that end, the Yellen Fed has already raised interest rates twice in the last six months. And it is pushing for yet another rate hike in June.
However, Yellen as usual is missing the bigger issue: the risk of DEBT deflation triggered by the Fed’s rate hikes.