In her first post-rate-hike press conference, Janet Yellen is about to go to extreme lengths to explain just how dovishly bullish raising interest rates is, despite leaving the Fed Funds forecast unchanged since September (i.,e. not dovish). We look forward to her explaining why she is raising rates now - as opposed to September - as economic data has nosedived and the market has done a significant job on contracting credit already. We also look forward to her explaining how, if rate hikes on the path to normalization are so awesome, why is the willingness to do it so low?
- *FED SAYS ACTUAL RATE PATH TO DEPEND ON ECONOMIC OUTLOOK, DATA
Which is odd, since as the macro "data" got worse, market "data" got better:
Live Feed:http://www.ustream.tv/embed/4944768
The key highlights:
- YELLEN: WE HAVE SUSPENDED AGGREGATE CAP ON RRP TRANSACTIONS
- YELLEN: FED TO MONITOR MARKETS CLOSELY, MAY ADJUST TOOLS
- YELLEN: I CONTINUE TO JUDGE THAT SLACK REMAINS IN ECONOMY
- YELLEN: COMMITTED TO NOT ALLOWING SUB 2% INFLATION TO PERSIST
- YELLEN: I'VE BEEN SURPRISED BY FURTHER DROP IN OIL PRICES
- YELLEN: IF ECONOMY DISAPPOINTED, WE WOULD BE MORE ACCOMMODATIVE