I caught numerous headlines last week about the President unhappy with the Fed raising rates (here is one from CNN). I am not going to get into whether the President can or cannot criticize the Fed, and I am actually not going to get into whether he should. The question we need to ask is whether or not he is correct about economic policy.
A bit of a wonky discussion on the radio today with the guest host. Policy stances for both fiscal and monetary policy were the major topics, mostly with relations to stock price movements. I could talk policy all day, as I did for most of the hour on the radio.
Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, or your favorite other term here. I gave my outlook on these to the people at Focus Economics and you can find the post at this link, Blog Link.
I am getting back to my monetary economics roots with this post. Bloomberg has a really interesting piece (found here). One well known forecasting tool or leading indicator known to the public at-large is the inverted yield curve. After an inversion the economy goes into recession within a few quarters, or so the story goes.
In what may be the most telegraphed monetary policy move in history the Federal Reserve raised rates today by 0.25% (here is an article). The great wailing and gnashing of teeth predicted by all the Chicken Littles seems not to have come to pass though. I have been saying this on JT’s show for the better part of a year now: If the economy is so fragile that a 0.25% increase in rates is a threat to economic growth than we have bigger issues.