Here’s a question … if you’re going to start raising rates to normalize monetary policy, why would you only do it once? Presumably, you’re confident that the economy is ready to start moving towards the old normal … but one 25 basis point hike every 6 quarters does what, exactly?
Lazy
Typical of me to go on vacation two days after I start this blog. Some posts in the hopper, back Monday the 23rd for real.
Musical Chair
A few thoughts on the top four candidates for Fed Chair. I was going to do the top six, but the prediction markets are giving the top four 85% chance to win this thing.
What a fine persecution – to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened
I’m a sucker for long form interviews where they largely just give the transcript. There’s a lot of good stuff from Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren (nonvoting until 2019) in this NYT piece.
Boston Fed’s President Makes Case for Interest Rate Hikes
Right off the bat, he hits us with this gem:
“A number of papers at the conference highlighted that some of the economic relationships that are frequently assumed to be stable over time have proven to be not so stable as we have come out of the financial crisis. These structural changes mean that if you tried to have a model that was fairly invariant to these changes, or a process that was invariant to these changes, there would start being big misses in monetary policy.” – Rosengren
Links – 2017.10.17
It’s early in the process … I’m going to add a few links everyday, and some of them are going to be dated. I’ll get through my back catalog sooner or later.
- European high-yield bonds yield the same as US 10yr. Janus Investors
- The Dovish and Not-As-Dovish FOMC members debate inflation. Bloomberg
- Is the 2% inflation target too low? Economic Policy Institute
- Bullard: Fed should defend inflation target. Reuters
- Fischer retires and likes Yellen for Chair. The Straits Times
Predicting the next Chair
Predict It – Federal Reserve Chair Predictions
The Trump administration has indicated that they will select a Federal Reserve Chair within the month. Below is the Predict It prediction market for the top 6 candidates. Over the next couple of days, I’ll give an outline of each candidate … hopefully before the nomination.
Charting Hourly Earnings
On Thursday, Average Hourly Earnings “spiked” 2.9% year on year. Is 2.9% a lot?
2017 FOMC Committee and First Blog
First blog post and FOMC list.
This blog, ultimately, is my attempt to aggregate all of the most important stories about the Federal Reserve into once place. I’ve been following the FOMC since starting my finance career as a fixed income trader during the heart of the 2008 Financial Crisis. My goal with this blog is to aggregate some of the most important news about the most important club in the world.
To start this blog, I feel like the most important thing to do is let you know about whom I will be writing. The Federal Open Market Committee is by far the most important group of people when it comes to monetary and economic policy, and most people have no idea who they are. The seven members (only four as of this writing) of the Board of Governors serve fourteen year terms, and a rotating panel of the eleven regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents serve as voting and nonvoting members.
Four Plus Trillion 