Tag: Federal Reserve

Will The Fed Buy Stocks Next?

Posted on by George Yacik

Since he became Federal Reserve Chair two years ago, Jerome Powell has created a new mandate for the Fed above and beyond its “dual” Congressional mandate to “promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates” (that’s federal government math for you).

Powell has added putting a floor under stock prices, which usually has come to mean when the market reaches correction territory (i.e., prices fall by about 10%). When stocks reach that threshold, count on the Fed to cut interest rates or loosen monetary policy in order to restore order and investor confidence. So far in his tenure, the Powell Fed has been pretty successful in that regard. Even when overall economic conditions (GDP growth and unemployment) provide no justification for lowering rates, the Fed has stepped in to prop up the market.

Now, however, the current panic selling over the coronavirus has tested the Fed’s ability to wave its magic wand and restore peace to the market. As we know, the Fed’s recent decision to make an emergency 50 basis-point cut in the federal funds rate three weeks before its next scheduled meeting proved to be a dud. Investor confidence has now been so spooked by the uncertainty created by the virus that the rate cut caused barely a blip, and stock prices continued to tank.

Moreover, despite the market begging for the Fed to cut rates, Powell only opened himself up to criticism for actually delivering. The cut was either too small, some critics said, or a cut would have no effect in such a situation, so why bother doing it, others said. Yet the market consensus now seems to believe that another 50 basis-point cut is already baked in the cake when the Fed meets on March 17-18. But market anxiety being what it is, there’s no assurance that that will have any effect, either.

Already, many so-called experts are calling for some form of fiscal stimulus, as opposed to monetary stimulus, such as a Continue reading "Will The Fed Buy Stocks Next?" →

"We Will Use Those Tools..."

Posted on by Gary Tanashian

Yesterday from Fed Chairman Powell…

Powell says Fed will aggressively use QE to fight next recession

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday the central bank would fight the next economic downturn by buying large amounts of government debt to drive down long-term interest rates, a strategy that has been dubbed quantitative easing, or QE.

Of course, they will. The fix is always in, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to let a system and associated economy so far out on a brittle limb weighed down by exponential debt leverage go it on its own, now would we? Wouldn’t want anything like a naturally functioning economy because until an utter and complete crash and clean out, there can be no such thing. So more debt manipulation it is!

“We will use those tools — I believe we will use them aggressively should the need arise to do so,” Powell said.

The Fed has traditionally been able to slash interest rates to fight a recession often by as much as 5 percentage points. But that’s impossible now because the Fed’s benchmark rate is currently in a range of 1.5%-1.75%.

“We will have less room to cut,” Powell said.

Duh.

Now comes the money line Continue reading ""We Will Use Those Tools..."" →

QE or Not QE: The Consequences Are The Same

Posted on by George Yacik

It may look, swim and quack like one, but Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell insists that the Fed’s recent reinflation of its balance sheet past the $4 trillion mark isn’t quantitative easing. Oh no, he says, just because the Fed’s portfolio recently rebounded to $4.175 trillion at the middle of January, up from a six-year low of $3.76 trillion since the beginning of September, doesn’t mean that the Fed is back to its old QE ways, which had pushed the Fed’s balance sheet to a steady $4.5 trillion between 2014 and 2018 when it started to shrink.

But QE by any other name is still QE.

At least one voting member of the Fed’s monetary policy committee has expressed some concern about the recent boost in the Fed’s balance sheet – more than $400 billion in just the past four months.

“The Fed balance sheet is not free and growing the balance sheet has costs,” Robert Kaplan, the president of the Dallas Fed, told reporters at a recent Economic Club of New York event, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Many market participants believe that growth in the Fed balance sheet is supportive of higher valuations and risk assets. [That’s Fed-speak for a bubble]. I’m sympathetic to that concern.”

For the past 12 years, ever since the financial crisis in 2008, the Fed has swollen the size of its balance sheet – its holdings of U.S. Treasury and government-insured mortgage-backed securities – from less than $1 trillion to more than four times that. Its first burst of bond-buying took place in 2008, during the depths of the meltdown when its portfolio more than doubled in less than a year. It then gradually increased to more than $3 trillion over the next five years, at which time QE took it to $4.5 trillion, where it held steady until 2018, when the Fed started to allow its holdings to run off as they matured, until its recent policy U-turn.

And what was the direct result of all that buying? Continue reading "QE or Not QE: The Consequences Are The Same" →

The Fed's Newest Service: Portfolio Insurance

Posted on by George Yacik

Every generation believes that they know more than the previous generation. Then, as they get older, they slowly start to realize that their elders aren’t as dumb as they thought. It's normal.

What's different today is that we seem to think, or at least many people do, that not only are we wiser today than everyone who has come before us but that humankind has been doing everything wrong for the past 5,000 years or so of civilization. Whether it's morally wrong to eat meat, or how many genders there are, or who can marry who, or whatever, it seems that we've been misguided since the beginning of time.

This attitude also manifests itself in the economic sphere. Based on the Federal Reserve’s recent actions, they appear to believe that everything we knew or thought we knew about economic cycles and bull and bear markets has been all wrong. Thousands of years of boom and bust cycles could have been eliminated, apparently, if only the proper monetary policy fixes had been applied.

Quite clearly, the Fed’s new mandate is that if economic growth starts to sputter, or the stock market moves beyond a correction, or some international crisis – Brexit, Megxit, Iran, North Korea, trade wars, you name it – threatens to upset the applecart, it will immediately turn its monetary policy tools into high gear.

Before now, economic growth and stock prices were pretty much allowed to take their own course, with some attempts to smooth out the worst excesses. It was considered to be both normal and healthy for markets and economies to go up and down periodically, as long as the general trend was upward. Now, however, that appears to be not only quaint, old-fashioned thinking but just plain wrong. There is no reason, the thinking goes, for us to suffer any economic pain as long as we have the policy tools to avoid it. Continue reading "The Fed's Newest Service: Portfolio Insurance" →

Ignorance Is Bliss

Posted on by George Yacik

Are the financial markets not paying attention? Or is that a good thing?

I keep asking myself those questions while I watch the major U.S. stock market indexes soar to new heights on a regular basis, while bond prices retreat – and yields rise – after hitting crisis levels early in the year.

The markets are saying: everything is just fine. The economy is humming along, consumers are spending, everyone who wants one can get a job, but just in case, the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low and monetary policy accommodative. How can things possibly get any better?

But are we getting a little too comfortable?

Stock prices are rising, and bond prices are falling even as the main Democrat presidential hopefuls try to top one another with the most profligate government giveaways they can think up – Medicare for All, free college tuition, student loan forgiveness, free health care for illegal aliens, reparations for slavery, you name it – while their peers in the House are trying desperately to drive President Trump from the White House, so they don’t have to face him on Election Day next year.

To say that there is a huge disconnect between the political world and the financial world is a huge understatement.

At some point, will investors look over this depressing – and rather scary – landscape and take their chips off the table? Or do they really believe that all of this silliness will eventually blow over and Trump – whom the financial markets seem to like, or at least are comfortable with – will arise victorious after the impeachment witch hunt plays itself out and the current field of Democrat presidential wannabes thins out? Continue reading "Ignorance Is Bliss" →