The Fed’s Body Count
“The problem with the war (Vietnam), as it often is, are the metrics. It is a situation where if you can’t count what’s important, you make what you can count important. So, in this particular case what you could count was dead enemy bodies.” – James Willbanks, Army Advisor, General of the Army George C. Marshall Chair of Military History for the Command and General Staff College
“If body count is the measure of success, then there’s a tendency to count every enemy body as a soldier. There’s a tendency to want to pile up dead bodies and perhaps to use less discriminate firepower than you otherwise might in order to achieve the result that you’re charged with trying to obtain.” – Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gard, Army and military assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
Verbal Jenga
In recent press conferences, speeches, and testimony to Congress, Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell emphasized the Fed’s plan to be “patient” regarding further adjustments to interest rates. He also implied it is likely the Fed’s balance sheet reductions (QT) will be halted by the end of the year.
The support for this sudden shift in policy is obtuse considering his continuing glowing reports about the U.S. economy. For example, the labor market is “strong with the unemployment rate near historic lows and with strong wage gains. Inflation remains near our 2% goal. We continue to expect the American economy will grow at a solid pace in 2019…” The caveats, according to Powell, are that “growth has slowed in some major foreign economies” and “there is elevated uncertainty around several unresolved government policy issues including Brexit, ongoing trade negotiations and the effect from the partial government shutdown.”
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