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Weekly Commentary: Transitory Histrionics

May 5, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Transitory Histrionics

May 3 – Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “Having lamented low inflation as one of the great challenges facing central bankers today in March, Jay Powell on Wednesday wrongfooted many investors with comments that seemed to play down the gravity of the problem. The new message from the Federal Reserve chairman — that ‘transitory’ drags may be slowing price growth, rather than more persistent problems — marked a rude awakening for investors who had been hoping that he would signal an ‘insurance’ interest rate cut this summer because of low inflation. To critics, Mr Powell’s sharp change in tone extends a pattern of unpredictable communications that have made Fed policy more difficult to read. While many accept that investors got ahead of themselves in treating a 2019 rate cut as a fait accompli, the risk is that in his effort to dial back expectations of easier policy Mr Powell undercut the central bank’s broader message: that it will do whatever is necessary to get stubbornly low inflation back on target.”

To many, Chairman Powell’s Wednesday news conference was one more bungled performance. It may not have been at the same level as December’s “tone deaf” “incompetence.” But his message on inflation was muddled and clumsily inconsistent. How on earth can Powell refer to below-target inflation as “Transitory”?

Chairman Powell should be applauded. Sure, he “caved” in January. And while he can be faulted (along with about everyone) for not appreciating the degree of market fragility back in December, markets had over years grown way too comfortable with the Fed “put”/backstop.  

I don’t fault the Powell Fed for having attempted in December to let the markets begin standing on their own. It was about time – actually, way overdue. Fault instead unsound markets and decades of “activist” Fed policymaking.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Officially on “Periphery” Contagion Watch

April 28, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Officially on “Periphery” Contagion Watch

This week saw all-time highs in the S&P500, the Nasdaq Composite, the Nasdaq100, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. Microsoft’s market capitalization reached $1 TN for the first time. First quarter GDP was reported at a stronger-than-expected 3.2% pace.  

So why would the market this week increase the probability of a rate cut by the December 11th FOMC meeting to 66.6% from last week’s 44.6%? What’s behind the 10 bps drop in two-year yields to 2.28%? And the eight bps decline in five-year Treasury yields to a one-month low 2.29% (10-yr yields down 6bps to 2.50%)? In Europe, German bund yields declined five bps back into negative territory (-0.02%). Spain’s 10-year yields declined five bps to 1.02% (low since 2016), and Portugal’s yields fell four bps to an all-time low 1.13%. French yields were down to 0.35%. Why would markets be pricing in another round of ECB QE?

In the currencies, king dollar gained 0.6%, trading above 98 for the first time in almost two-years. The Japanese yen outperformed even the dollar, adding 0.3%.  

April 22 – Financial Times (Hudson Lockett and Yizhen Jia): “Chinese stocks fell on Monday amid concerns that Beijing may renew a campaign against shadow banking that contributed to a heavy sell-off across the market last year. Analysts pinned much of the blame… on a statement issued late on Friday following a politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping in Beijing. They were particularly alarmed by a term that surfaced in state media reports of the meeting of top Communist party leaders: ‘deleveraging’. That word set off alarm bells among investors still hurting from Beijing’s campaign against leverage in the country’s financial system last year. Those reforms focused largely on so-called shadow banking, which before the clampdown saw lenders channel huge sums of money to fund managers who then invested it in stocks.”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Commentary: Faux Statesmanship

April 7, 2019

Market Commentary: Faux Statesmanship

April 5 – New York Times (Dealbook): “’It doesn’t take a genius’ to know capitalism needs fixing. Capitalism helped Ray Dalio build his investment empire. But in a lengthy LinkedIn post, the Bridgewater Associates founder says that it isn’t working anymore. Mr. Dalio writes that he has seen capitalism ‘evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it’s producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots.’ ‘Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and, in the government, that manifests itself in the form of populism of the left and populism of the right and often in revolutions of one sort or another.’ ‘The problem is that capitalists typically don’t know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don’t know how to grow it well.’ ‘We are now seeing conflicts between populists of the left and populists of the right increasing around the world in much the same way as they did in the 1930s when the income and wealth gaps were comparably large.’ ‘It doesn’t take a genius to know that when a system is producing outcomes that are so inconsistent with its goals, it needs to be reformed.’ Stay tuned: Mr. Dalio says that he’ll offer his solutions in another essay.”

I’m reminded of back in 2007 when Pimco’s Paul McCulley coined the term “shadow banking” – and the world finally began taking notice of the dangerous new financial structure that had over years come to dominate system Credit. Okay, but by then the damage was done. As someone that began posting the “Credit Bubble Bulletin” in 1999 and had chronicled the prevailing role of non-bank Credit in fueling the “mortgage finance Bubble” fiasco (on a weekly basis), it was all frustrating.  

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works

March 17, 2019

Weekly Commentary: No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works

My interest was piqued by a Friday Bloomberg article (Ben Holland), “The Era of Cheap Money Shows No One Knows How Monetary Policy Works.” “Monetary policy is supposed to work like this: cut interest rates, and you’ll encourage businesses and households to borrow, invest and spend. It’s not really playing out that way. In the cheap-money era, now into its second decade in most of the developed world (and third in Japan), there’s been plenty of borrowing. But it’s been governments doing it.”

I remember when the Fed didn’t even announce changes in rate policy. Our central bank would adjust interest rates by measured bank reserve additions/subtractions that would impact the interbank lending market. Seventies inflation forced Paul Volcker to push short-term interest-rates as high as 20% in early-1980 to squeeze inflation out of the system. 

Federal Reserve policymaking changed profoundly under the authority of Alan Greenspan. Policy rates had already dropped down to 6.75% by the time Greenspan took charge in August 1987. Ending 1979 at 13.3%, y-o-y CPI inflation had dropped below 2% by the end of 1986. Treasury bond yields were as high as 13.8% in May 1984. But by August 1986 – yields were down to 6.9% – having dropped almost 700 bps in 27 months.  

Lower market yields and economic recovery were absolute boon for equities. The S&P500 returned 22.6% in 1983, 5.2% in 1984, 31.5% in 1985, 22% in 1986 – and another 41.5% for 1987 through August 25th. Markets had evolved into a speculative bubble.  

One could pinpointing the start of the great Credit Bubble back with the 70’s inflation. For my purposes, I date its inception at the 1987 stock market crash. At the time, many were drawing parallels between the 1987 and 1929 market crashes – including dire warnings of deflation risk – warnings that have continued off and on for more than three decades.  

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Q4 2018 Z.1 “Flow of Funds”

March 9, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Q4 2018 Z.1 “Flow of Funds”

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the Fed’s Q4 2018 Z.1 “Flow of Funds” report. It provided the first comprehensive look at how this period’s market instability affected various sectors within the financial system. From ballooning Broker/Dealer balance sheets to surging “repo” lending to record Bank loan growth – it’s chock-full of intriguing data. All in all, and despite a Q4 slowdown, 2018 posted the strongest Credit growth since before the crisis – led, of course, by our spendthrift federal government. 

Non-Financial Debt (NFD) rose $2.524 TN during 2018 (5.1%), exceeding 2007’s $2.478 TN and second only to 2004’s $2.915 TN growth. NFD closed 2018 at a record 253% of GDP, compared to 230% to end of 2007 and 189% to conclude the nineties. By major category, Federal borrowings expanded $1.258 TN during the year, up from 2017’s $599 billion, and the strongest growth since 2010’s $1.646 TN. Year-over-year growth in Total Household borrowings slowed ($488bn vs. $570bn), led by a drop in Home Mortgages ($285bn vs. $312bn). Total Corporate borrowings slowed to $532 billion from 2017’s $769 billion. Foreign U.S. borrowings declined to $207 billion from 2017’s $389 billion.  

On a percentage basis, NFD increased 4.51% in 2018, up from 2017’s 4.10%. Federal debt grew 7.58%, almost double 2017’s 3.74%, to the strongest percentage growth since 2012 (10.12%). Household debt growth slowed to 3.22% (from 3.90%), with Mortgage borrowings up 2.83% (from 3.19%) and Consumer Credit growth easing slightly to 4.88% (from 5.04%). Total Corporate Debt growth slowed meaningfully from 2017’s 5.71% to 3.69%.

For Q4, on a seasonally-adjusted and annualized basis (SAAR), Non-Financial Debt (NFD) expanded $1.390 TN, the slowest expansion since Q4 2016 (SAAR $941bn). This is largely explained by the sharp drop-off in Federal borrowings (SAAR $444bn vs. Q3’s SAAR $1.180 TN). 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

February 26, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

December’s market instability and resulting Fed capitulation to the marketplace continue to reverberate. At this point, markets basically assume the Fed is well into the process of terminating policy normalization. Only a couple of months since completing its almost $3.0 TN stimulus program, markets now expect the ECB to move forward with some type of additional stimulus measures (likely akin to its long-term refinancing operations/LTRO). There’s even talk that the Bank of Japan could, once again, ramp up its interminable “money printing” operations (BOJ balance sheet $5.0 TN… and counting). Manic global markets have briskly moved way beyond a simple Fed “pause.”

There was the Thursday Reuters article (Howard Schneider and Jonathan Spicer): “A Fed Pivot, Born of Volatility, Missteps, and New Economic Reality: The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be ‘patient’ about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates.”

And then Friday from the Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “Slow-inflation Conundrum Prompts Rethink at the Federal Reserve: Ten years into the recovery and with unemployment near half-century lows, the Federal Reserve’s traditional models suggest inflation should be surging. Instead, officials are grappling with unexpectedly tepid price growth, prompting some to rethink their strategy for steering the US economy. John Williams, the New York Fed president, said on Friday that persistently soft inflation readings over recent years could damage the Fed’s ability to convince the general public it will hit its 2% goal.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

February 24, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

December’s market instability and resulting Fed capitulation to the marketplace continue to reverberate. At this point, markets basically assume the Fed is well into the process of terminating policy normalization. Only a couple of months since completing its almost $3.0 TN stimulus program, markets now expect the ECB to move forward with some type of additional stimulus measures (likely akin to its long-term refinancing operations/LTRO). There’s even talk that the Bank of Japan could, once again, ramp up its interminable “money printing” operations (BOJ balance sheet $5.0 TN… and counting). Manic global markets have briskly moved way beyond a simple Fed “pause.”

There was the Thursday Reuters article (Howard Schneider and Jonathan Spicer): “A Fed Pivot, Born of Volatility, Missteps, and New Economic Reality: The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be ‘patient’ about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates.”

And then Friday from the Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “Slow-inflation Conundrum Prompts Rethink at the Federal Reserve: Ten years into the recovery and with unemployment near half-century lows, the Federal Reserve’s traditional models suggest inflation should be surging. Instead, officials are grappling with unexpectedly tepid price growth, prompting some to rethink their strategy for steering the US economy.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: No Mystery

February 3, 2019

Weekly Commentary: No Mystery

January 30 – Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “After putting traders on notice six weeks ago to expect further increases in US interest rates in 2019, the Federal Reserve… executed one of its sharpest U-turns in recent memory. Leaving rates unchanged at 2.25-2.5%, Jay Powell, Fed chairman, unveiled new language that opened up the possibility that the next move could equally be down, instead of up. Forecasts from the Fed’s December meeting that another two rate rises are likely this year now appear to be history. Changes to its guidance were needed, Mr Powell argued, because of ‘cross-currents’ that had recently emerged. Among them were slower growth in China and Europe, trade tensions, the risk of a hard Brexit and the federal government shutdown. Financial conditions had also tightened, he added. Yet the about-face left some Fed-watchers wrongfooted and bemused. Many of those hazards were already perfectly apparent in the central bank’s December meeting, when it lifted rates by a quarter point and kept in place language pointing to further ‘gradual’ increases.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip pursued a similar path with his article, “The Fed’s Mysterious Pause.” “Last December, Mr. Powell noted his colleagues thought they’d raise rates two more times this year, from between 2.25% and 2.5%, which was at the lower end of estimates of ‘neutral’—a level that neither stimulates nor holds back growth. On Wednesday, he suggested the Fed could already be at neutral: ‘Our policy stance is appropriate right now. We also know that our policy rate is in the range of the… committee’s estimates of neutral.’ If indeed the Fed is done, that would be a breathtaking pivot. Yet the motivation remains somewhat mystifying: What changed in the past six weeks to justify it?”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Monetary Disorder 2019

January 19, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Monetary Disorder 2019

The S&P500 advanced 6.5% in 2019’s first 13 trading sessions. The DJ Transports are up 9.2% y-t-d. The broader market has outperformed. The small cap Russell 2000 sports a 9.9% gain after 13 sessions, with the S&P400 Midcap Index rising 9.3%. The Nasdaq Composite has gained 7.9% y-t-d (Nasdaq100 up 7.2%). The average stock (Value Line Arithmetic) has risen 9.7% to start the year. The Goldman Sachs Most Short index has jumped 13.6%.

Some of the sector gains have been nothing short of spectacular. This week’s 7.7% surge pushed y-t-d gains for the Bank (BKX) index to 13.7%. The Broker/Dealers (XBD) were up 5.3% this week – and 11.0% so far this year. The Nasdaq Bank index has a 2019 gain of 11.3% (up 4.9% this week). The Philadelphia Oil Services index surged 22.3% in 13 sessions. Biotechs (BTK) have jumped 16.1%.

Taking a deeper dive into y-t-d S&P500 sector performance, Energy leads the pack up 11.2%. Financials have gained 9.0%, Industrials 8.9%, Consumer Discretionary 8.4%, and Communications Services 7.9%. Last year’s leaders are badly lagging. The Utilities have gained only 0.4%, followed by Consumer Staples up 3.2% and Health Care gaining 4.2%.

Canadian stocks have gained 6.9% (“Best Start to Year Since 1980”). Mexico’s IPC Index has risen 6.3%. Major equities indices are up 6.1% in Germany, 7.6% in Italy, 6.2% in Spain, 3.6% in the UK and 3.1% in France. European Bank stocks have gained 5.3% (Italy’s banks up 5.1%). Brazil’s Ibovespa index has gained 9.3% and Argentina’s Merval 15.9%. Russian stocks are up 4.9%, lagging the 7.9% gain in Turkey. The Shanghai Composite has recovered 4.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index has rallied 4.8%, with the Hang Seng Financial Index up 5.1% to start the year. With WTI crude surging 19% y-t-d, the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index is up a quick 10.4% to begin 2019.

After trading as high as 3.25% on November 6th, 10-year Treasury yields ended 2018 at 2.69%. Yields traded quickly sank to as low of 2.54% on January 3rd and have since rallied to 2.79% – up 10 bps y-t-d.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Commentary: Issues 2019

January 12, 2019

Market Commentary: Issues 2019

When I began posting the CBB some twenty years ago, I made a commitment to readers: “I’ll call it as I see it – and let the chips fall where they will.” Over the years, I made a further commitment to myself: Don’t be concerned with reputation – stay diligently focused on analytical integrity.

I attach this odd intro to “Issues 2019” recognizing this is a year where I could look quite foolish. I believe Global Financial Crisis is the Paramount Issue 2019. Last year saw the bursting of a historic global Bubble, Crisis Dynamics commencing with the blow-up of “short vol” strategies and attendant market instabilities. Crisis Dynamics proceeded to engulf the global “Periphery” (Argentina, Turkey, EM, more generally, and China). Receiving a transitory liquidity boost courtesy of the faltering “Periphery,” speculative Bubbles at “Core” U.S. securities markets succumbed to blow-off excess. Crisis Dynamics finally engulfed a vulnerable “Core” during 2018’s tumultuous fourth quarter.

As we begin a new year, rallying risk markets engender optimism. The storm has passed, it is believed. Especially with the Fed’s early winding down of rate “normalization”, there’s no reason why the great bull market can’t be resuscitated and extended. The U.S. economy remains reasonably strong, while Beijing has China’s slowdown well under control. A trade deal would reduce uncertainty, creating a positive boost for markets and economies. With markets stabilized, the EM boom can get back on track. As always, upside volatility reenergizes market bullishness.

I titled Issues 2018, “Market Structure.” I fully anticipate Market Structure to remain a key Issue 2019. Trend-following strategies will continue to foment volatility and instability. U.S. securities markets rallied throughout the summer of 2018 in the face of a deteriorating fundamental backdrop. That rally, surely fueled by ETF flows and derivatives strategies, exacerbated fragilities.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Global Markets’ Plumbing Problem

January 6, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Global Markets’ Plumbing Problem

“Goldilocks with a capital ‘J’,” exclaimed an enthusiastic Bloomberg Television analyst. The Dow was up 747 points in Friday trading (more than erasing Thursday’s 660-point drubbing) on the back of a stellar jobs report and market-soothing comments from Fed Chairman “Jay” Powell.
December non-farm payrolls surged 312,000. The strongest job gains since February blew away both estimates (184k) and November job creation (revised up 21k to 176k). Manufacturing jobs jumped 32,000 (3-month gain 88k), the biggest increase since December 2017’s 39,000. Average Hourly Earnings rose a stronger-than-expected 0.4% for the month (high since August), pushing y-o-y gains to 3.2%, near the high going back to April 2009.

Just 90 minutes following the jobs report, Chairman Powell joined Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke for a panel discussion at an American Economic Association meeting in Atlanta. Powell’s comments were not expected to be policy focused (his post-FOMC press conference only two weeks ago). But the Fed Chairman immediately pulled out some prepared comments, perhaps crafted over the previous 24 hours (of rapidly deteriorating global market conditions).

Chairman Powell: “Financial markets have been sending different signals – signals of concern about downside risks, about slowing global growth particularly related to China, about ongoing trade negotiations, about – let’s call – general policy uncertainty coming out of Washington, among other factors. You do have this difference between, on the one hand, strong data, and some tension between financial markets that are signaling concern and downside risks. And the question is, within those contrasting set of factors, how should we think about the outlook and how should we think about monetary policy going forward. When we get conflicting signals, as is not infrequently the case, policy is very much about risk management.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Powell Federal Reserve Lowers “Fed Put” Strike Price

December 22, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Powell Federal Reserve Lowers “Fed Put” Strike Price

I have little confidence history will get this right. Today’s overwhelming consensus view holds that Powell this week committed a major policy blunder. After his early-October “we’re a long way from neutral” “rookie mistake”, he has followed with a rate increase right in the throes of a stock market sell-off, Credit market instability and mounting global and domestic economic risk. He stated the Fed’s balance sheet runoff was stuck on autopilot, even as stunned market participants fret illiquidity. Moreover, Powell disappointed skittish markets heading right into December quadruple-witch options expiration – in the face of an impending government shutdown. How times have changed.
There was irony in Alan Greenspan joining Bloomberg’s Tom Keene Wednesday for live coverage of the FOMC policy decision. It was, after all, the original “Greenspan put” that morphed over Bernanke’s and Yellen’s terms into the interminable “Fed put.” Markets this week were desperate for confirmation that the Powell Fed would uphold the tradition of pacifying the markets and, when needed, invoking the Federal Reserve backstop. Markets were prepared to begrudgingly tolerate a rate increase. But the marketplace demanded evidence – an explicit signal – that the FOMC recognized the gravity of market developments and was prepared to intervene. Chairman Powell didn’t share the markets’ agenda.

Our Federal Reserve Chairman should be commended. Under extraordinary pressure, Mr. Powell and the FOMC didn’t buckle.

Expiration for the aged “Fed put” was long past due. For too long it has been integral to precarious Bubble Dynamics. It has promoted speculation and speculative leverage. It is indispensable to a derivatives complex that too often distorts, exacerbates and redirects risk. The “Fed put” has been integral to momentous market misperceptions, distortions and structural maladjustment.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: The Perils of Inflationism

December 15, 2018

Weekly Commentary: The Perils of Inflationism

December 13 – Financial Times (Chris Giles and Claire Jones): “When the European Central Bank switches off its money-printing press at the turn of this year and stops buying fresh assets, it will mark the end of a decade-long global experiment in how to stave off economic meltdowns. Quantitative easing, the policy that aims to boost spending and inflation by creating electronic money and pumping it into the economy by buying assets such as government bonds, is on the verge of becoming quantitative tightening. With the Federal Reserve slowly reducing its stocks of Treasuries, central banks are no longer in the buying business. Globally, only the Bank of Japan is left as a leading central bank that has not formally called time on expanding its stock of asset purchases. Arguments over how, or even if, the trillions spent by policymakers helped the global economy recover will rage for years to come. But as central banks step back, the initial view is that the purchases worked — whether through encouraging investors to hold more risky assets, easing constraints on borrowing, providing finance so governments could run larger budget deficits or just showing that central banks still had an answer to weak demand and low inflation.”
At this point, the prevailing view holds that QE “worked.” Moreover, central banks are seen ready and willing to call upon “money printing” operations as need. The great virtue of this policy course, many believe, is that there is essentially no limit to the scope and duration of “QE infinity.” The FT quoted Mario Draghi: “[QE] is permanent and may be usable in contingencies that the governing council will assess in its independence.” Melvyn Krauss, from the Hoover Institution, captured conventional thinking: “No one willingly walks into a room from which there is no exit. Because QE proved temporary, because it worked and because it has ended, it is likely to be used again.”…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Framework for Monitoring Financial Stability

December 1, 2018

Weekly Commentary: Framework for Monitoring Financial Stability

Upon the public release of Jerome Powell’s Wednesday speech came the Bloomberg headline: “Powell: No Preset Policy Path, Rates ‘Just Below’ Neutral Range.” When the Fed Chairman began his presentation to the New York Economic Club just minutes later, the Dow had already surged 460 points. From Powell’s prepared comments: “Interest rates are still low by historical standards, and they remain just below the broad range of estimates of the level that would be neutral for the economy‑‑that is, neither speeding up nor slowing down growth.” When he read his speech, he used “range,” as opposed to “broad range” of estimates.
Equities responded to the Chairman’s seeming dovish transformation with jubilation (and quite a short squeeze). It certainly appeared a far cry from, “We may go past neutral, but we’re a long way from neutral at this point, probably,” back on the third of October. Powell’s choice of language was viewed consistent with the ‘much closer’ to the neutral level, as headlines ascribed to vice chair Richard Clarida. What he actually said in Tuesday’s speech: “Although the real federal funds rate today is just below the range of longer-run estimates presented in the September [Summary of Economic Projections], it is much closer to the vicinity of r* than it was when the FOMC started to remove accommodation in December 2015. How close is a matter of judgment, and there is a range of views on the FOMC.”

The “neutral rate” framework is problematic. Back in early October, the Fed was almost three years into its “tightening” cycle (first rate increase in December 2015). Yet the Atlanta Fed GDP Forecast was signaling 4% growth; consumer confidence was near decade highs; manufacturing indices were near multi-year highs; corporate Credit conditions remained quite loose; and WTI crude had just surpassed $75 a barrel.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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