{"id":16914,"date":"2016-01-25T20:20:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T01:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16914"},"modified":"2016-01-25T20:20:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T01:20:40","slug":"the-fed-passes-the-buck-blame-oil-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16914","title":{"rendered":"The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/fed-passes-buck-blame-oil-and-china\" target=\"_blank\">The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"page-title\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China \" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/slideshow\/public\/static-page\/img\/bear2.jpg?itok=_NOgoJNr\" alt=\"The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China \" \/><\/h3>\n<section class=\"group-date-author\"><\/section>\n<div class=\"body-content\">\n<p>There are a handful of themes out there on recent market action that are either totally wrong or otherwise highly misleading. For instance, regarding the recent calamity in the capital markets, one especially apparent dichotomy has presented itself as offering two choices as to what, exactly, is causing the painful turbulence.<\/p>\n<p>There are some who, in a complete echo of the news headlines, are quick to point the finger at both oil and China. And yet there are others who point the finger at the Fed for \u201craising rates too early.\u201d Along with the second is the observation that \u201cinflation is totally MIA\u201d and therefore it was ludicrous that the Fed felt the need to \u201craise interest rates.\u201d Both of these tend to express anguish over the \u201cstrong dollar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both of these miss the entire point, and the cause of the current trouble. For one thing, it is ridiculous to blame oil for the falling markets when the falling oil is the\u00a0<em>very thing that needs to be explained<\/em>. It is wholly unsatisfactory to\u00a0<em>explain<\/em>\u00a0something by\u00a0<em>describing it<\/em>. It works well for headlines, and for shifting the blame away from where it really belongs, but one must learn to look deeper. One cannot expect to impress anyone by explaining that the plane is crashing to the ground because it is no longer flying. What is the cause of oil\u2019s magnificent plummet toward the bottom? That is the true question.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the problem with the \u201cChina thesis\u201d is that it doesn\u2019t explain anything either. It merely observes a correlation in the markets and therefore makes it highly convenient to put the blame on \u201cthe other guys.\u201d Let me not be misunderstood here: the Chinese and US economies are certainly influenced by each other, especially in our age of fluctuating fiat currencies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fed Passes the Buck: Blame Oil and China\u00a0 There are a handful of themes out there on recent market action that are either totally wrong or otherwise highly misleading. For instance, regarding the recent calamity in the capital markets, one especially apparent dichotomy has presented itself as offering two choices as to what, exactly, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,63,130,303,366,11959,7617,536,588,11960],"class_list":["post-16914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banking","tag-banks","tag-china","tag-fed","tag-global-economy","tag-jay-engel","tag-mises-institute","tag-money","tag-oil","tag-the-fed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16915,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16914\/revisions\/16915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}