In prepared statements just released, Janet Yellen acknowledged the fact that the fucking world has been falling apart, and the financial system is in tatters.
“Financial conditions in the United States have recently become less supportive of growth,” Yellen said in testimony prepared for delivery Wednesday before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington. “These developments, if they prove persistent, could weigh on the outlook for economic activity and the labor market.”
Big fucking deal. Any normal person with half a brain would say that now.
Here is the real horseshit.
The Fed chair repeated her projections that inflation will eventually move back toward the bank’s 2 percent target, downplaying concerns over declines in inflation expectations. She attributed the drop in market-based measures of inflation expectations to technical reasons, citing changes in risk and liquidity premiums in the market for U.S. Treasuries. Survey-based measures of expectations are low but “reasonably stable,” Yellen said.
So the drop in inflation expectations are ‘technical reasons’?
She’s leaving the door open for a March hike, as unbelievable as that may seem.
“The FOMC anticipates that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” Yellen said, repeating language from the committee’s January statement almost verbatim.
Yellen noted that U.S. economic growth in 2015 slowed to an estimated 1.75 percent, restrained especially by the impact of a strengthened dollar on exporters. Still, she said, household spending had gotten a boost from lower fuel prices and steady jobs growth, a trend she expected will continue.
“Ongoing employment gains and faster wage growth should support the growth of real incomes and therefore consumer spending, and global economic growth should pick up over time, supported by highly accommodative monetary policies abroad,” Yellen said.
Futures have pared gains, from +150 to +90 and treasury yields have gone lower since these ridiculous statements were released.
If the FOMC delayed the start of policy normalization for too long, it might have to tighten policy relatively abruptly in the future to keep the economy from overheating and inflation from significantly overshooting its objective.
The FOMC anticipates that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate. In addition, the Committee expects that the federal funds rate is likely to remain, for some time, below the levels that are expected to prevail in the longer run…Of course, monetary policy is by no means on a preset course. The actual path of the federal funds rate will depend on what incoming data tell us about the economic outlook, and we will regularly reassess what level of the federal funds rate is consistent with achieving and maintaining maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.
FML
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That hobbit should be buying FB common by now. What’s wrong with her?
C’mon ease up. If I remember correctly she called last spring’s oil short squeeze during HumHawk 2015.
Un-freaking believable. The world is ran by delirious Grandma’s and community organizers.
Man what a way to start a day! I’m not gonna watch the carnage. Yesterday I was going to buy Disney , but thought better of it. I’m glad,
Macke should try his hand at being an illustrator if the stock thing doesn’t work out.
If he takes his requests, ask him to do a “Yellen”.
I believe what’s happening is the Fed is looking back at all the other times they left rates too low resulting in a bubble that eventually popped. They appear to be trying to head it off but their timing has been horrible and it probably will not end well.
It was Marco Rubio wearing a Yellen mask.
Yes, Cabana Boy does Bubbe.
She didn’t exactly downplay inflation. Here’s the whole statement. A much better read than hot takes from CNBC et al. Short read too:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/yellen20160210a.htm
There is all kinds of good stuff in here.
Mentions the renminbi, that the dollar is way too high, that inflation is well under goal, that financial stresses abroad concern them, etc etc.
The love the 2% inflation mark that has only been hit a couple times in the past 10 years.
Let’s do something because we might have to do something quickly when things get too hot. Insane logic.