Once again, we have a report saying consumer sentiment is collapsing just as economists were projecting it would be continuing to float along, and once again we have a report of rising inflation, just as the Fed decided to reduce its fight against inflation by slowing down QT to save the federal government from its overwhelming debt financing burden, and once again we have an actual voting Fed official saying the Fed may have to raise rates. Yet, all of that has been OK apparently, since, once again, stock and bond markets have shot up in a buying frenzy because, once again, Fed Chair Jerome Powell filled them with his hot air so they would rise again on the hopes that rate cuts still might be coming this year.
So, the delusion in markets, continues intensely, causing investors to take back more of the financial tightening in the last three weeks that the Fed had finally put back into place, undoing, ONCE AGAIN, the premise Powell rested his hope of rate cuts on back in November, which was that the markets were doing enough tightening on their own that the Fed could stop its own inflation fight sooner. This is the second time he’s undone that tightening by markets; so, we’ll see more inflation and a worse inflation fight down the road because Powell has encouraged the markets to loosen financial conditions with his false hopes.
The University of Michigan Survey of Consumers sentiment index for May posted an initial reading of 67.4 for the month, down from 77.2 in April and well off the Dow Jones consensus call for 76.
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