J.P. Marín-Arrese|Skyrocketing prices confront central bankers with a challenging dilemma. Their sacred duty to preserve stability forces them to take vigorous action to curb inflation. Yet, they are conscious that tightening the monetary stance will fail to put on hold the current supply shock. Worse still, only by pulling hard on the hand brake coulld they stop short prices from escalating. A move that would come at a heavy cost…
Juan Pedro Marín-Arrese | The hawkish and straightforward message Jerome Powell delivered yesterday surprised analysts and markets alike. They expected a non-committal press conference following a routine FOMC meeting. Instead, Powell unfolded the planned roadmap for monetary tightening. He even announced a rate hike in March, breaking the rule of refraining from providing precise tips on future action, coupled with a sharper than expected increase in federal funds rates. It…
J.P. Marín Arrese | Charles Dickens opens his novel by describing the contrast between the sedate life in London and the bloody spasms shaking Paris under the Revolution with the famous sentence: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’. While the current economic scenario bears little in common with the dramatic events described by the prominent author, we enjoy a robust recovery but face an…
The investigation follows the recent resignations of Rosengren and Kaplan, presidents of the Boston and Dallas Federal Reserve respectively, for questionable trading in 2020. The spotlight is now on Clarida, the Fed’s vice chairman, after she moved between $1m and $5m from a bond fund to an equity fund a day before Powell’s statement in late February 2020, in which he announced possible Fed policy action because of the pandemic….
Simon Harvey (Monex Europe) | While every sell-side analyst didn’t expect the FOMC dot plot to signal a rate hike in 2022, markets had other thoughts. While two members shifted their expectations to move the median dot plot to signal rates at 0.3% in 2022, this under-delivered in the eyes of rates markets. The price of eurodollar 2022 futures rose, in turn lowering the expected interest rate, while risk was…
J.P. Marín Arrese | Jay Powell was crystal clear in Jackson Hole about his willingness to scale down QE starting by the year close. As the US economy is recovering at full steam and prices skyrocket to a 13-year record, the idea that monetary policy will soon switch from the current over-loose stance to a more neutral one is hardly surprising. His message even sounded dovish as he cautioned against rushing into fighting inflation. He considered its current upsurge temporary, however, dismissing this upsurge might poise an…
Today, Monday 7 June, the Fed will start selling its positions in 16 corporate debt ETFs ($8.6 billion) as part of its decision to unwind $13.8 billion in ETFs and bonds under the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility before the end of the year. The turn for corporate bond sales will come after the summer, in both cases proceeding in a “gradual and orderly” manner.
Attention will be particularly centred on the discussion of QE tapering. Previous comments by regional Fed members Bostic and Kaplan stoked markets into pricing in the possibility of bond market support fading by year-end. When combined with news of an additional $1.9trn fiscal stimulus package being floated in Washington, this resulted in rising 10-year yields, which has been one driver of the USD rebound witnessed at the beginning of this year. A quicker vaccination campaign being rolled out since December has also added to a brighter economic outlook, bringing the discussion of policy normalisation to the table.
The new strategy plays on the asymmetry of monetary policy: it is easier to let inflation accelerate in good times – which only entails not acting (keeping rates unchanged) – than propping it up in bad times, because at some point the latter would require ever more action which would collide with the zero bound limit to policy rates.
Mobeen Tahir, Associate Director, Research, WisdomTree | The biggest challenge facing the Fed in the coming months (and years) is to sketch a roadmap for closing the floodgates of liquidity. At this point in time, it might seem like a ‘nice problem to have’. But given long and variable lags between policy implementation and impact on economy, these are issues the Fed needs to be thinking about now. While the Fed’s mandate is to promote maximum employment and ensure price stability, markets have become highly dependent on central bank accommodation as a propellant. As unemployment (currently 10.2% in the US) decreases and inflation (US Core Personal Consumption Expenditure Index inflation is currently 0.9%) rises closer to the Fed’s desired target level of 2%, the central bank will need to tighten policy.