Category: US Federal Reserve Bank
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Wednesday, November 22, 2017
New Fed Chairman, Same Old Story / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
President Trump nominated Jerome H. Powell as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Don’t look for much to change. And Janet Yellen’s announcement that she will resign from the board upon Mr. Powell’s induction as board chair is pretty much a non-event.
Where we are today is the culmination of decades of irresponsible financial/fiscal policies and a complete abdication of fundamental economics. But that should not be a surprise. The self-proclaimed purpose of the Federal Reserve Bank is to manage the economic cycles. This is an impossibly presumptive task and a violation of fundamental economic theory.
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Wednesday, November 08, 2017
Here’s Why The Market Mispriced Jay Powell / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
BY JARED DILLIAN : Jay Powell has been named the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Provided he survives the confirmation process, it is a done deal.
This wasn’t the easiest pick for Trump. It’s not easy to find a Republican who is also in favor of low interest rates. Powell isn’t exactly a dove, but he’s significantly more dovish than John Taylor.
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Thursday, November 02, 2017
Who Will Be the Next Fed Chief - And Why It Matters / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Janet Yellen's term is ending at the Federal Reserve. With new appointments, President Trump can indirectly shape US monetary policy for years to come - for better or worse.Serving as the “epitome of calm,” Fed chief Ben Bernanke responded to the global financial crisis by cutting the federal funds rate to zero and initiating rounds of quantitative easing (QE) soon thereafter.
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Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Trump May Reappoint Yellen as Fed Chair after All / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By Clint Siegner: Candidate Donald Trump was none too kind to current Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during his 2016 campaign. However, the President’s tone with regards to Yellen and Fed policy has been softening since his election.Trump met one on one with Yellen and other top contenders last week and now appears quite open to the idea of reappointing her to another four-year term.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
What Happens When the Fed FINALLY Reduces Its $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet? / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
So, there we have it. Deflation has started.
The Federal Reserve announced last month that they would start to reduce their $4.5 trillion balance sheet in October, thereby starting the process we call Quantitative Tightening (QT). As expected, they are aiming to do it gently and quietly, by not reinvesting bonds as they mature, starting with sums of around $6 billion of Treasuries and $4 billion in Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). The scale of non-reinvestment will gradually increase. Once in full swing, the Fed's balance sheet could reduce by up to $150 billion each quarter.
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Monday, October 16, 2017
Who Will Be the Next Fed Chief - And Why It Matters / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Janet Yellen's term is ending at the Federal Reserve. With new appointments, President Trump can indirectly shape US monetary policy for years to come - for better or worse.Serving as the “epitome of calm,” Fed chief Ben Bernanke responded to the global financial crisis by cutting the federal funds rate to zero and initiating rounds of quantitative easing (QE) soon thereafter.
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Saturday, September 30, 2017
Kevin Warsh May Be the Next Fed Head—Let’s See What He Really Thinks / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
As reported earlier this morning by the Wall Street Journal, President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin met with Kevin Warsh yesterday to discuss the potential vacancy at the Fed next February.
Warsh already has central banking experience, having sat on the Federal Open Market Committee as a Fed governor from February 2006 until March 2011.
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Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Why Doesn’t Janet Yellen Resign? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
You would think, certainly if you were as naive and innocent as I am, that when you get offered the job of Chair of the Federal Reserve, you must be sure, before accepting, that you have the credentials and the knowledge required. If you don’t, it looks as if you don’t take the job seriously. Janet Yellen, who’s been Chair since January 2014, doesn’t seem to agree.
In a speech Tuesday for the National Association for Business Economics Yellen ‘honestly’ admitted that she doesn’t understand inflation, control of which is the Fed’s no.1 task (it’s debatable whether that’s a good idea). She doesn’t understand a bunch of other issues either. Those are her own words, not mine. Here are these own words:
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Thursday, September 07, 2017
Yet Another Theory of the Fed? Uggh! / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
The world hardly needs another theory of the Fed, especially so soon after its Jackson Hole symposium. But we have a theory, too, and who knows, ours could be as close to the bulls-eye as any of the others. Plus, our theory is easy to explain—it rests on the simple premise that decision makers worry mostly about their reputations. We’ll propose that reputational risks are the primary drivers of central bank policies, and then we’ll use that belief to predict a major policy shift.
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Tuesday, September 05, 2017
Washington D.C. Dysfunction and Central Bank Chaos / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
On September 5th, the members of both houses of Congress of the United States will clean the beach sand from between their toes and return to work. Our public servants who occupy The House of Representatives have been working on their respective tans since July 29th. The Senate has had a little less time in the sun; they held their final vote on August 3rd despite their pledge to stay until August 11th.
Hopefully, they got a lot of rest, because they have a lot to do upon their return. By the end of September Congress will need to pass a budget bill to avoid a government shutdown. Expect Tea Party Republicans to hold their ground on spending cuts while Trump petitions for his wall. According to recent tweets, Trump is pushing for this fight and welcomes a government shutdown. Get out the popcorn this could get interesting.
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Friday, August 11, 2017
Is the Yellen Fed Planning to Sabotage Trump’s Presidency? / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
The Federal Reserve can make or break a president.
Monetary policy influences all financial markets as well as the cycles in the economy. No president wants to have to run for re-election when the stock market and economy are turning down.
Recall that President George H.W. Bush was sitting on sky-high job approval numbers in 1991 and was expected to coast to victory in his 1992 re-election bid. But then the economy swooned toward recession, giving Bill Clinton the opening he needed.
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Friday, July 07, 2017
If The Fed’s Members Spent Some Time As Uber Drivers, Our Monetary Policy Would Be Saner / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
BY PATRICK WATSON : John Mauldin wrote a letter last year called “Life on the Edge” that I think was one of his most important ever. It drew more reader feedback than anything else of John’s I’ve seen.
Drawing on Peggy Noonan’s Protected vs. Unprotected theme, John described how our economy has left so many people behind. Their anger, much of it well-justified, is one reason Donald Trump is now president.
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Wednesday, July 05, 2017
Will Trump Fire Yellen or Vice Versa / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Citigroup’s Economic Surprise Index just hit its lowest level since August 2011. But this level of disappointment has ironically emboldened the Fed to step up its hawkish monetary rhetoric. The truth is that the hard economic data is grossly missing analyst estimates to the downside as the economy inexorably grinds towards recession. This anemic growth and inflation data should have been sufficient to stay the Fed's hand for the rest of this year and cause it to forgo the unwinding of its balance sheet.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Here’s Why Robots Should Take the Fed’s Job / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
BY PATRICK WATSON : The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates again last week.
Higher rates aren’t entirely bad. They might help savers holding cash—though I wonder why anyone would still hold cash after almost a decade of punishment. The Fed has forced Americans into riskier assets, using every tool but horsewhips.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2017
The Federal Reserve And Drug Addiction – A Prediction / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
The Federal Reserve Bank was established in 1913. Its stated purpose was to control the economic cycles; more specifically to avoid panics and crashes by smoothing out the variances in the stages (prosperity, inflation, recession, depression) of the economic cycle.
The plan centered around control (expansion and contraction) of the money supply and exertion of any influence it could muster regarding direction (up, down, or stable) of interest rates.
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Monday, May 15, 2017
Bernanke’s Confetti Courage / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s book titled “The Courage to Act” is now available in paperback. This isn’t a surprise because, after all, his proclivity to print paper encompasses the totality of what his courage to act was all about. The errors in logic made in his book are too numerous to tackle in this commentary; so I’ll just debunk a few of the worst.
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Wednesday, April 19, 2017
The Fed Must Be Reading Our Work / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
It’s too much of a coincidence. Fed officials must be reading our work.OK, they don’t really have to be… but if they don’t, they should.
It’s not that we deserve credit for what comes next at the Fed, but I was glad to read the details last week in the nitty-gritty of the Fed’s minutes of its March meeting. (You would’ve had to have read it there; Fed chair Janet Yellen didn’t talk about it at all in her post-meeting press conference.)
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Monday, April 10, 2017
Trump's Biggest Enemy is the Fed / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
Right on the heels of Donald Trump's stunning election victory, Democrats began to diligently work on undermining his presidency. That should surprise no one. It's just par for the course in partisan D.C.
However, what appears to be downright striking is that the Keynesian elites may have found a new ally in their plan to derail the new President...the U.S. Federal Reserve.
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Monday, March 06, 2017
Arizona Challenges the Fed's Money Monopoly / Politics / US Federal Reserve Bank
History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver.
Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.
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Monday, February 20, 2017
A Game Of Chess And The Source Of The Federal Reserve’s Power / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
We have become pawns in the game of Chess being played by the Federal Reserve Bank. Who is their opponent? Anybody else who makes a move.
Week in, week out, everyone’s eyes and ears seem fixed on what the Federal Reserve Board will say or do. Mostly, it is about what they say. That’s because they can’t really do much of anything.
Except inflate the supply of money and credit. Which they have been doing for over one hundred years. And they are good at it, too. The historic erosion in value of the US dollar should merit more acclaim – or outrage. Unfortunately, the Fed is good at shifting the focus of concern to their opponent(s).
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