Big fan for years, Catherine. Really liked your including the "Pressure Index" and related explanation. The market (certainly equities, and most likely bonds) should be down quite a bit more, but traders have assumed a Taco throughout this entire illegal war. The issue this time, and you've pointed it out on the weekend show, is that there is another party that won't let him off the hook, ie, Iran. You don't kill a guy's dad, sister, child, etc., and expect to walk.
Save the "tacometer" label for an indicator of White House based insider leaks leading to another market manipulation grift event. Shouldn't be hard to formulate and would provide a great public service for the unwitting masses. Maybe post it at the bottom of the WSJ daily.
In the spirit that you should never let a piece this good and apt go to waste as an opportunity for self-promotion …
If the political struggles of Powell and seven of his predecessors interest you as much as they do me, click here (https://bit.ly/242TheChair) to listen to The Chair.
This is an eight-part podcast series with Fed biographers including Nick Timiraos, David Wessel, Sebastian Mallaby and Jon Hilsenrath - discussing the challenges facing Chairs going back almost a century.
Uh oh. Trump turned the pressure volume up to 11 like Spinal Tap. It's gonna get loud before he blows a fuse!
As to Powell, some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. He's straddling the latter two. I hope he sticks around as a rank-and-file Fed member. Because there's sure to be a renewed push for de-dollarization. And that will further compound the US's deep fiscal and monetary problems. Yuan to bet? :)
Not one of the Project 2025 clones appointed to the Cabinet or any U.S. Representative or U.S. Senator can express the incredulity of the mythical young man central to Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" or possesses the intestinal fortitude to invoke Section IV of the 25th Amendment to our Constitution.
Absolute banger of a newsletter. While you've long been one of my favorite economic journalists, it's a shame that the administration's chronic rake-stepping is presumably going to double (if not triple) your output for the foreseeable future.
I used to do political risk assessment for a multinational firm evaluating overseas investment opportunities, and one component of ALL the risk measurement services we consulted was the independence of a nation’s central bank. If the central bank could be too easily politicized and thus controlled by the ruling party, through structural means or other more personal means, that was clearly a negative factor. Some of these emerging countries had newly empowered leftist governments that robustly primed the fiscal pump with a doubling or tripling of social spending and with an accommodating central bank; the ensuing uninterrupted inflation ravaged the exchange value of the nation’s currency.
Trump, like many a power-mad executive, wants to control the Federal Reserve like what he’s done with DOJ, intelligence, trade, etc., but an interesting thing is that factions on both the Right and Left want to make the Fed more “accountable.” The Left has certain credit allocation schemes, and the Right likes low interest rates so Private Equity can leverage its deals more substantially and Hedge Funds can enjoy higher discounted values in their holdings of risk assets. Perhaps Trump the populist wants lower rates also for home buyers (since the 50-year mortgage didn’t go over so well!). But the Fed has a macroeconomic dual mandate of very modest inflation (2%) and a semblance of full employment which may conflict with these political wishes. After all, it was 1950s Fed Chairman William Martin who said the Fed’s function “was to remove the punch bowl when the party got really going,” i.e., good times leading to developing inflation.
We need a Fed leader with spine to combat inflation - look at how many South American countries have been ruined by their corrupt leaders .There are so many people that know more than Trump and his spineless GOP. What will it take to get the intelligent experts of the professions to speak out? We have finance professors all through the country as well as money managers and even the corrupt directors at Blackrock and Vanguard. They need their own "no kings day' - get out tomorrow
And one central banker (Canada and Britain) has made the jump to elected politician. Mark Carney is a competent technocrat and it seems that in these perilous days that is exactly what Canadians want. Maybe Powell should think about a career change, although it is easier in a parliamentary system
Big fan for years, Catherine. Really liked your including the "Pressure Index" and related explanation. The market (certainly equities, and most likely bonds) should be down quite a bit more, but traders have assumed a Taco throughout this entire illegal war. The issue this time, and you've pointed it out on the weekend show, is that there is another party that won't let him off the hook, ie, Iran. You don't kill a guy's dad, sister, child, etc., and expect to walk.
Keep up the great work.
Save the "tacometer" label for an indicator of White House based insider leaks leading to another market manipulation grift event. Shouldn't be hard to formulate and would provide a great public service for the unwitting masses. Maybe post it at the bottom of the WSJ daily.
Frau Katie, thank you for reading my comments.
In the spirit that you should never let a piece this good and apt go to waste as an opportunity for self-promotion …
If the political struggles of Powell and seven of his predecessors interest you as much as they do me, click here (https://bit.ly/242TheChair) to listen to The Chair.
This is an eight-part podcast series with Fed biographers including Nick Timiraos, David Wessel, Sebastian Mallaby and Jon Hilsenrath - discussing the challenges facing Chairs going back almost a century.
Uh oh. Trump turned the pressure volume up to 11 like Spinal Tap. It's gonna get loud before he blows a fuse!
As to Powell, some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. He's straddling the latter two. I hope he sticks around as a rank-and-file Fed member. Because there's sure to be a renewed push for de-dollarization. And that will further compound the US's deep fiscal and monetary problems. Yuan to bet? :)
Not one of the Project 2025 clones appointed to the Cabinet or any U.S. Representative or U.S. Senator can express the incredulity of the mythical young man central to Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" or possesses the intestinal fortitude to invoke Section IV of the 25th Amendment to our Constitution.
Yeah, but is the award gold?
Alan Greenspan went viral in '96 for talking about "irrational exuberance" - but at least Bill Clinton didn't attack him!
Absolute banger of a newsletter. While you've long been one of my favorite economic journalists, it's a shame that the administration's chronic rake-stepping is presumably going to double (if not triple) your output for the foreseeable future.
What a mess! For something I never cared about, it's become an important part of American life!
I used to do political risk assessment for a multinational firm evaluating overseas investment opportunities, and one component of ALL the risk measurement services we consulted was the independence of a nation’s central bank. If the central bank could be too easily politicized and thus controlled by the ruling party, through structural means or other more personal means, that was clearly a negative factor. Some of these emerging countries had newly empowered leftist governments that robustly primed the fiscal pump with a doubling or tripling of social spending and with an accommodating central bank; the ensuing uninterrupted inflation ravaged the exchange value of the nation’s currency.
Trump, like many a power-mad executive, wants to control the Federal Reserve like what he’s done with DOJ, intelligence, trade, etc., but an interesting thing is that factions on both the Right and Left want to make the Fed more “accountable.” The Left has certain credit allocation schemes, and the Right likes low interest rates so Private Equity can leverage its deals more substantially and Hedge Funds can enjoy higher discounted values in their holdings of risk assets. Perhaps Trump the populist wants lower rates also for home buyers (since the 50-year mortgage didn’t go over so well!). But the Fed has a macroeconomic dual mandate of very modest inflation (2%) and a semblance of full employment which may conflict with these political wishes. After all, it was 1950s Fed Chairman William Martin who said the Fed’s function “was to remove the punch bowl when the party got really going,” i.e., good times leading to developing inflation.
Exactly. Surely Scott Bessent knows all this too, and yet is participating in the degradation of the central bank's autonomy.
We need a Fed leader with spine to combat inflation - look at how many South American countries have been ruined by their corrupt leaders .There are so many people that know more than Trump and his spineless GOP. What will it take to get the intelligent experts of the professions to speak out? We have finance professors all through the country as well as money managers and even the corrupt directors at Blackrock and Vanguard. They need their own "no kings day' - get out tomorrow
And one central banker (Canada and Britain) has made the jump to elected politician. Mark Carney is a competent technocrat and it seems that in these perilous days that is exactly what Canadians want. Maybe Powell should think about a career change, although it is easier in a parliamentary system
Could the Trump Pressure Index be used to predict when Trump and his cronies will be doing insider trading?
Why is the illustration covered with dildos made out of military campaign ribbons?
Oh, wait, those are container ships?
My other guess was "SLBMs dressed up for the Met Gala."
'Tacometer' - LOL!