One month ago we showed something curious: literally, the very hour the market was hitting its February lows, Janet Yellen was on the phone with Bank of England governor (and former Goldman Sachs employee) Marc Carney, followed the very next day by a conversation with ECB president (and former Goldman Sachs employee) Mario Draghi.
Any time a Fed president, governor or chairman trots out the trite cliche that the Fed is "apolitical" we can't help but laugh for one simple reason: not only is the Fed not apolitical, but is very closely ideologically tied with whichever party promotes deficit spending which by definition is inflationary: more deficits mean more debt, means more opportunity for the Fed to show off its "inflation" creating skills; and in a Keynesian world, a stable 2% inflation is the lubricant that drives and stabilizes the financial system - the Fed's true mandate.
In an interview posted on Swiss Finanz und Wirthschaft, Jeff Gundlach unleashes his deep ir, and in traditional style, offloads on both the Fed and all central banks, sayng that "negative interest rates are the dumbest idea ever", adding that the Fed has given up both trying to normalize interest rates as well as trying to actually stimulate the economy:
Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,
Who’s afraid of the big bad bear? No one, it seems.
Back in December 2014, just before the ECB officially launched its initial phase of QE in which it would monetize government bonds, Mario Draghi was asked a very direct question: what types of assets could the ECB buy as part of its quantitative easing program. He responded, "we discussed all assets but gold."