US Federal Reserve

The Fed may have officially tapered QE at the end of 2014 but that doesn't mean it is done buying Treasuries: since the Fed never ended rolling over maturing paper, it means that it will remain indefinitely active in the open market. And while there were no sizable maturities from the Fed's various QEs to date (only $474 million in 2014 and $3.5 billion in 2015) that will change dramatically this year, when Brian Sack's team will have to purchase about $216 billion to replace matured TSYs.

I see a decline in inflation breakevens and the continuing flattening of the yield curve as being a very worrisome signal about the FOMC’s credibility.

There is distinct lack in the Fed’s ability and/or willingness to achieve its mandated objectives.

Two months ago, before the Fed's rate hike was largely perceived as a market-spooking policy mistake, we laid out Deutsche Bank's three stage scenario on how to trade "The Fed's Upcoming "Policy Error", one which could be summarized as follows: the 10Y starts off strong, weakens into the summer to 2.50% on tantrum fears, then proceeds to surge higher as the Fed acknowledges its error, and hits a yield of 2.00% at the end of the year.

Populist cries for trade protectionism are again ringing out, as politicians seek to blame China for bad US monetary and economic policy. But destroying trade will not only make us poorer, it is usually the harbinger of war.

Over the weekend, we gave the Dallas Fed a chance to respond to a Zero Hedge story corroborated by at least two independent sources, in which we reported that Federal Reserve members had met with bank lenders with extensive exposure to the US oil and gas sector and, after parsing through the complete bank books, had advised banks to i) not urge creditor counterparties into default, ii) urge asset sales instead, and iii) ultimately suspend mark to market in distressed instances.