2 min readGiven their aggressive efforts to tame price pressures over the past few quarters, Chair Powell and the Federal Reserve were likely to have been very disappointed by the release of August’s Consumer Price Index. Despite a 2.25% increase in the overnight lending rate over just four meetings, the reading came in higher than expected with…
3 min readThe global economic landscape and cash investing have experienced sizeable market shifts in the past year due to the ongoing disruptions to supply chains, geopolitical tensions with the conflict in Ukraine, rising inflation across the globe and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate tightening cycle. Institutional cash investors will need to monitor all these ongoing disruptions…
2 min readThe Fed held its first meeting of 2022 last week and erased any lingering doubts, of which there were few, that it will raise the overnight lending rate when it next convenes in mid-March. In the press release following the meeting, the FOMC stated that “the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise…
9 min readThe Fed shifted its policy stance radically at its December meeting, increasing the pace of its reduction in asset purchases and pushing up the timeline for rate hikes. This move was a culmination of policy being out of sync with the state of the economy, as it was extremely accommodative even with above target inflation…
2 min readThe Federal Reserve met this week to review its current stance on monetary policy and updated its Summary of Economic Projections for Q1 2021. While the Fed was encouraged by the addition of 379,000 jobs to non-farm payrolls in February and a decline in the unemployment rate to 6.2%, they also acknowledged that “the path…
2 min readThe minutes from the FOMC’s January meeting were released yesterday, revealing that the Fed believes that keeping interest rates low and continuing asset purchases are necessary to support the economic recovery. The Fed indicated that December’s $900B stimulus package, the prospect of a new round of stimulus and the continued distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines…
2 min readVaccine Progress Earlier this month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their COVID-19 vaccine proved to be more than 90% effective in early trial results, while Moderna reported that its version is 95% effective in protecting patients from the virus. Fed Chair Jerome Powell spoke with Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and European Central Bank…
2 min readFOMC Meeting The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at yesterday’s meeting on monetary policy, and in the statement accompanying the meeting, the Fed commented that “Economic activity and employment have picked up in recent months but remain well below their levels at the beginning of the year.” And while “Overall financial conditions have improved…
2 min readFOMC Minutes Released The minutes from the FOMC’s July 28-29 meeting were released today. In the committee’s discussion about how to continue to support the flow of credit to consumers, they deemed “it would be appropriate over coming months for the Federal Reserve to increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency residential mortgage-backed securities…
2 min readFOMC Meeting The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee met last week and Chair Jerome Powell spelled out a bleak outlook for the U.S. economy. The Fed’s year-end median expectation for the unemployment rate is 9.3%, with 2020 GDP growth projected at negative 6.50% and core PCE inflation at 1.0%. At the press conference following the…