Tag: Federal Reserve

Yellen Joins The Party

Posted on by George Yacik

When then-President-Elect Joe Biden nominated Janet Yellen to be his Treasury secretary last month, the markets rejoiced. The former Federal Reserve chair was a known quantity, and investors hate uncertainty – they knew what they were getting. Even better, they liked what they were getting—a monetary dove who favors low-interest rates and supports an interventionist government and Fed. While she wouldn't be on the Fed in her new role, she still holds the same views.

Moreover, since she is Jerome Powell's immediate predecessor, and they both worked together on the Fed for several years, it was pretty much a given that the two will work closely and harmoniously together for the good of the country, as the times demand.

But the markets were also relieved that Biden did not bow to the so-called progressives on the extreme left of his party and pick someone more to their liking, instead choosing someone with safe, relatively moderate views that both parties could support – as indeed they did, by an 84-15 Senate vote. In other words, Biden wanted – and the markets demanded – an adult in the room, and that's what they got with Yellen.

Or did they? Continue reading "Yellen Joins The Party" →

The Fed's Role In GameStop

Posted on by The INO.com Team

All of the news articles and media commentary on the volatility in GameStop (GME) stock last week centered on the supposed war between retail investors who were buying the stock, putting a squeeze on those evil rich hedge-fund managers who had shorted the stock. And the Davids, at least for now, were beating the Goliaths. Good versus evil is always easy to understand and makes for a compelling story, especially when "the little guy" prevails.

Morality play aside, a lot of people were probably scratching their heads as to why some people would be so enthusiastic about buying stock in a company that appears to be 10 years behind the times, seeing as how its main business consists of selling or reselling physical copies of digital games even as the rest of the world has moved onto streaming. It also cast a lot of attention on short-selling, with many people receiving a crash course in the tactic.

However, it's also another example of how the Federal Reserve's super-loose monetary policy and 0% interest rates are distorting investor behavior. While retail investors on Robinhood and other platforms are driving up the price of what otherwise might be a stock headed in the other direction, we need to remember one of the reasons why investors are willing to make such outlandish bets like this.

It demonstrates the lengths some investors will go to make money because it's become difficult to do so in more conventional (i.e., safe) investments, such as quality stocks and bonds. It also reveals the almost devil-may-care attitude some investors have adopted, believing that the Fed will eventually ride to their rescue. Continue reading "The Fed's Role In GameStop" →

The Fed Warms To Climate Change

Posted on by George Yacik

The politicization of the Federal Reserve continues apace. And no, President Trump isn’t trying to pull some grand last-minute gesture before he leaves office, like trying to fire Jerome Powell or something like that.

Last week, as expected, the Federal Reserve formally joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, the “lone holdout” among the world’s major central banks to join this “forum for central bankers and regulators to come together and discuss how their institutions can ensure their financial systems don’t worsen climate change risks, and how financial institutions might be able to lower those risks,” as the Wall Street Journal described it.

As innocuous as that may sound, it injects the Fed solidly in the middle of what has become increasingly political, namely which companies – and probably, individuals eventually– banks should or shouldn’t lend money or offer their services to.

As we know, several large international banks have been under increasing pressure from shareholder activists to stop making loans to companies in the “fossil fuels” business, namely oil and coal companies and pipeline operators, and the like. And the banks have dutifully buckled under, albeit with a long lead time as to when they will actually cease doing so. Now the Fed will be providing added pressure on the banks to make loans only to those companies favored by the Washington and New York elites – or at least will feel added pressure to do so. Continue reading "The Fed Warms To Climate Change" →

Is Fed "Independence" Dead?

Posted on by George Yacik

For the better part of the past four years, we've had to listen to the chattering classes defending the sanctity of the independence of the Federal Reserve. President Trump was routinely lambasted for constantly criticizing Jerome Powell, while several of his other nominees to the Fed, such as Herman Cain and Steven Moore, were deemed to be too cozy to Trump to warrant consideration. Both of them withdrew their nominations for other reasons, but it appeared that their nominations were DOA. For the same reason, the confirmation of the "controversial" Judy Shelton looks like it is going to die on the vine because she's been portrayed as Trump's lackey.

Yet now we have the prospect of Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Fed, being nominated as Joe Biden's Secretary of the Treasury. If nothing else, that will basically put the nail in the coffin of the notion of Fed independence. Does anyone seriously doubt that the Treasury and the Fed will be joined at the hip when the two most recent Fed chairs head those two agencies?

Yet that prospect probably won't be an impediment to her being confirmed by the Senate—on the contrary. The markets greeted Yellen's nomination with absolute euphoria, as well they should. The prospect of the Treasury and the Fed working more closely together in a time of crisis is certainly a reason for optimism. And it's certainly good for my portfolio, so I'm not complaining. But lost in all of the jubilation is that the idea of Fed independence has gone by the wayside, and nobody seems to give a hoot.

This is certainly not a bad thing. The whole idea of Fed independence was always suspect. The Fed is no more independent than the FBI or the Energy Department. It's just another branch of the government that arguably should always work in tandem with the Treasury for the betterment of the U.S. economy and usually does. Yet someone created this fiction that the Fed is somehow the moral equivalent of the Supreme Court and above politics. Continue reading "Is Fed "Independence" Dead?" →

What To Expect Under A Biden Presidency

Posted on by George Yacik

Now that the Associated Press has declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election let's take a look at what we might expect from the presumed 46th president and the kind of economy he will inherit – and what he plans to do with it.

Thanks largely to his predecessor, Biden starts off with an inherently strong economy, even as it continues to heal and deal with Covid-19. Assuming that Biden doesn't follow his own comments and some of his advisors about imposing another lockdown, we can probably expect that the economy will eventually get back to the 2-3% annual growth rate we enjoyed before the pandemic.

Biden will also likely benefit from the recently announced introduction of a Covid-19 vaccine, although a lot needs to be done first, like manufacturing and then distributing hundreds of millions of doses worldwide, which will take some time. But assuming the vaccine is as efficacious as Pfizer says it is, that will be a further elixir for economic growth.

It's hard to imagine a Federal Reserve friendlier to the financial markets than the current one, so Biden will benefit from that as well. Biden is also not likely to be a thorn in Jerome Powell's side as much as the current White House occupant. Continue reading "What To Expect Under A Biden Presidency" →