In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Axel Merk discuss:
- No Rate Hike After All?
- Yellen sings a dovish tune this week
- Wait, Wasn't The Fed Just Warning It Would Tighten?
- Yep. It was talking tough up until now
- Why Can't The Fed Make Up It's Mind?
- Because it's in a box. Jawboning is all it can do at this point
- The Next Fed Head
- A complete transformation may be in store soon
Chris and Axel unpack the latest guidance from the Fed issued this week. For those listening, the Fed's inconsistency is understandably infuriating. One week it's warning about tightening ahead, the next it's telling folks rates are just fine where they are.
Axel, who has more inside access to current & past Fed officials than anyone we know, feels that the Fed is simply trying to walk a tightrope it knows will one day snap. At this point, it's trapped. It needs to normalize rates, but doing so will crash the markets. So it's using the only tool it has — confusion — to keep the system fooled that everything is under control. Of course, one day the ruse will be discovered. But until then, the Fed will obfuscate, vacillate, prevaricate — whatever it can do to keep the status quo in place for one more day…
Why is it that Yellen is back-pedaling: Hey, we're not going to hike rates quite as much even though we've been saying we're going to reduce the balance sheet and “normalize”?
by kugscheese