US Federal Reserve

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

There are only three members of the Board of Governors who matter: Janet Yellen, Stan Fischer and Lael Brainard. There is only one Regional Reserve Bank President who matters: Bill Dudley of New York. Yellen, Fischer, Brainard and Dudley are the “Big Four.”

They are the only ones worth listening to. They call the shots. The don’t like dots. Everything else is noise.

Here’s the model the Big Four actually use:

After The Fed, gold is down, the yield curve is collapsing, stocks are clinging on for dear life...

Everyone is making a big deal about the Fed's so-called "balance sheet reduction” which starts next month.

Let’s assess some facts.

First of all, the Fed plans on shrinking its balance sheet by $10-$30 billion per month. The Fed balance sheet is currently $4.5 trillion. So at this pace of unwinding it would take somewhere between 13 and 33 years for the Fed to normalize its balance sheet back to pre-2008 levels.

So the notion that this is significant is off base. It borders on irrelevant.

Perhaps having grown tired of fighting windmills, it was several weeks since Albert Edwards' latest rant against central banks.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

In response to Janet Yellen’s "everything is OK" speech following today’s balance sheet reduction notice by the FOMC committee, I received an interesting set of comments from Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man Blog regarding rate hike cycles, gold, and stock market peaks.

“Rule of Total Morons”