Howestreet.com - the source for market opinions

ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION

March 25, 2019 | The Fed Must Think We’re Idiots

Rick Ackerman

Rick Ackerman is the editor of Rick’s Picks, an online service geared to traders of stocks, options, index futures and commodities. His detailed trading strategies have appeared since the early 1990s in Black Box Forecasts, a newsletter he founded that originally was geared to professional option traders. Barron’s once labeled him an “intrepid trader” in a headline that alluded to his key role in solving a notorious pill-tampering case. He received a $200,000 reward when a conviction resulted, and the story was retold on TV’s FBI: The Untold Story. His professional background includes 12 years as a market maker in the pits of the Pacific Coast Exchange, three as an investigator with renowned San Francisco private eye Hal Lipset, seven as a reporter and newspaper editor, three as a columnist for the Sunday San Francisco Examiner, and two decades as a contributor to publications ranging from Barron’s to The Antiquarian Bookman to Fleet Street Letter and Utne Reader.

Fed policy went all silly Monday when a little-known spokesman for the central bank said he expects one more rate hike in 2019 and perhaps another in 2020.  Didn’t Chairman Powell just finish saying that there would be no tightening this year? And weren’t we reading the other day that the yield curve had inverted, raising the risk of a U.S./global recession? In any event, a Philadelphia Fed guy named Harker (click on inset for a revealing photo of him) averred in a London speech that economic risks are “very slight,” that the U.S. economy looks healthy, and that he will continue to monitor the data as it comes in.

The good news is that Harker is not a voting member of the FOMC. The bad news is that Trump can’t fire him. At any rate, there are no loose cannons in the upper ranks of banking, so Harker presumably speaks for “the organization” when he gives a policy speech. Which raises the question of just what the Fed intends by having Harker quoted in The Wall Street Journal.  Although it’s always entertaining to see what the banksters come up with to “manage” our “expectations,” it’s hard to infer from this latest  gambit anything other than that Powell & Co. take us all for idiots.

STAY INFORMED! Receive our Weekly Recap of thought provoking articles, podcasts, and radio delivered to your inbox for FREE! Sign up here for the HoweStreet.com Weekly Recap.

March 25th, 2019

Posted In: Rick's Picks

Post a Comment:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All Comments are moderated before appearing on the site

*
*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.