{"id":31563,"date":"2018-02-24T10:22:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T15:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31563"},"modified":"2018-02-24T10:22:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T15:22:47","slug":"haunted-by-ghosts-of-the-old-eastern-bloc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31563","title":{"rendered":"Haunted by Ghosts of the Old Eastern Bloc"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Haunted by Ghosts of the Old Eastern Bloc<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Ridiculous Minutia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jerome Powell, the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, just completed his third week on the job.\u00a0 He\u2019s hardly had enough time to learn how to operate the office coffee maker, let alone the all-in-one printer.\u00a0 He still doesn\u2019t know what roach coach menu items induce a heinous gut bomb.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThe perpetually slightly worried looking new Fed chairman Jerome Powell, here seen warily inspecting the Rose Garden at the White House. Everybody wants to know if he has a \u201cbetter plan\u201d \u2013 but there is no better plan, thus no-one has one. [PT]<\/p>\n

Photo credit: A. Brandon \/ AP<\/p>\n

Yet across the planet, folks high and low are already telling him exactly how he should do his job.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, they\u2019re passing advance judgment on things that may or may not happen.\u00a0For example, the South China Morning Post recently offered the following\u00a0opinion<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Donald Trump may have done Janet Yellen a favor by not giving her a second term as Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.\u00a0 Her successor, Jerome Powell, may have inherited a poisoned chalice.\u00a0 The Fed will have to up the pace of U.S. rate hikes or risk accusations of being behind the curve as markets react to signs of rising inflation.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Powell showed up to work on February 5, for his first day on the job, the general consensus was that the Fed would raise the federal funds rate three times this year, at 25 basis points \u2013 or 0.25 percent \u2013 per increase.\u00a0But now that consumer prices are rising at an annual rate of 2.1 percent, average hourly earnings are increasing at an annual rate of 2.9 percent, and Congress has passed a massive two year budget deal, twitchy economists are questioning if three rate hikes will be enough to keep inflation in check.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Haunted by Ghosts of the Old Eastern Bloc\u00a0 Ridiculous Minutia Jerome Powell, the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve, just completed his third week on the job.\u00a0 He\u2019s hardly had enough time to learn how to operate the office coffee maker, let alone the all-in-one printer.\u00a0 He still doesn\u2019t know what roach coach menu items […]<\/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":[5728,303,431,16888,11763,534,3650],"class_list":["post-31563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-acting-man","tag-fed","tag-interest-rates","tag-jerome-powell","tag-mn-gordon","tag-monetary-policy","tag-us-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31563","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=31563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31564,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31563\/revisions\/31564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}