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When will the Fed raise interest rates? If you ask investors, the answer is “Not this year”. Bets have been placed on bond futures which imply that the Fed Funds Rate will be no higher than a quarter of a percent at the end of the year – hardly any rise at all.
But if you ask the Fed, it’s going to come soon. Why doesn’t anyone believe them?
This is not an ordinary election year in many ways. For one, it’s not really an election year – the actual voting doesn’t happen until 2016. It’s also going to be the first Presidential election without Obama since 2004 as the White House becomes open.
But more importantly, everyone seems to understand that the economy and the politics of this nation are both changing. Stuff is seriously up for grabs. A desperate cry for attention might make all the difference.
Enter into this a bid for more Congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve, an idea backed by no less than 30 Senators, 3 of which are clearly running for President. It seems like a good idea all around – what can be wrong with more oversight? That depends on what’s being overlooked now, of course, and what can be done with existing law.
Plus, of course, we have the omnipresent Fed itself. Does it need to be reigned in?
Another quarter has come, and it arrived with good news on jobs. The stock market didn’t tank right away, but most investors agree that the daze of puffed-up valuations for everyone are over. The consensus seems to be that rather than a general fall, investors will have to be more selective and careful. This is consistent with an economy that is changing and gradually turning over, ahead of the next Big Thing that will propel a real bull market in coming years.
But where do we stand with respect to Yellen’s Dashboard – those key economic indicators that Fed Chair Yellen said she’d be watching for movement where there has been so little over the past few years? We don’t have all the data to fill in where 3Q14 stands, but we have most of it. And it all looks good. Which is to say bad, if you’re so minded, because it really does look like the Fed is going to raise rates.
The Federal Reserve of Kansas City puts on the big event every year – and why not throw a big party when your territory includes Jackson Hole, Wyoming? This year’s production concluded after presentations and official pronouncements from all the top central bankers of the world – Mario Drahgi of the European Central Bank (ECB), Haruhiko Kuroda of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), and our own Janet Yellen. It’s a must-see event if you want a front row seat for the big show of policy changes among the most powerful people in the world.
This year, the theme was “Re-Evaluating Labor Market Dynamics”, and the power players from around the world made it clear that nothing is going to change in the near future. If that sounds like the biggest let-down for a big show ever, you’re right. The Fed never intended for this to be a huge theatrical spectacular. It’s a place for central bankers to get together and agree on things. And what they agreed on, more than anything, is that in the developed world there is nothing more important than figuring out just how much “slack” there is in labor markets and how to take it up.
But it’s more exciting than it seems if you want to predict what will happen in the next year.
There is arguably no more powerful job in the world than Chair of the Federal Reserve. When Janet Yellen took the gig in February, it was only natural for a lot of words to be written wondering what kind of leader she would be. Betting money was on more of the same, given her long tenure at the bank.
With her first press conference behind her, we do indeed have more – of the same, yes, but so much more it’s not the same. Yellen brought forward a new transparency so open that it makes the breath of fresh air that as Bernanke rather stale in comparison. Perhaps it was time for a woman, after all, as Yellen is following in the developing tradition of female leaders as no-nonsense reformers.
Sad that the market is built on nonsense, then. The reaction so far has not exactly been good.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 