Monday Morning Notes, 4/11/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning It’s full steam ahead for monetary policy with the Fed positioned to begin a series of 50bp rate hikes

The Fed Means Business The Fed Means Business As we expected, the minutes of the March FOMC meeting leaned hawkishly with respect to plans for both interest rates and the

The Fed Is Only Becoming More Hawkish Governor Lael Brainard’s speech today dispelled any lingering notions that she would lean against the hawkish direction taken by her colleagues. Expect the

Monday Morning Notes, 4/4/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning Everything is shaping up for the Fed to initiate the first of at least two consecutive 50bp rate hikes

Yield Curve Inversion, Fed Presidents, JOLTS Report The 2s10s spread briefly inverted today, intensifying focus on the recession predicting abilities of the yield curve. Our view has been that inversion

Monday Morning Notes, 3/28/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning The Fed stepped up the hawkish rhetoric last week to put market participants on notice that it intends to

Monday Morning Notes, 3/21/22 Note: As I am on a post-FOMC vacation this week, this is a condensed version of my usual Monday morning note. February retail sales surprised with

Bit and Pieces Ahead of the FOMC Monday was a busy start to the week. First, the New York Federal Reserve consumer survey reported that households expected to spend 6.4%

Monday Morning Notes, 3/14/21 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning The Fed will hike rates 25 basis points this week and signal additional rate hikes in future meetings, including

Inflation Meets Expectations, Rocky Road for Raskin Inflation continues to run at a pace that keeps the Fed firmly focused on pushing rates higher. Market pricing has rebounded to an

Monday Morning Notes, 3/7/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning The Fed remains positioned to begin this rate hike cycle with a 25bp move next week and follow up

Powell Sticks With the Hawkish Script As we thought, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell confirmed that the Fed is leaning toward beginning the rate hike cycle this month with a

Thoughts Ahead of Powell In recent decades, the Fed has repeatedly held back from tightening, or even eased, in response to crisis events and financial market instability. We know the

Tuesday Morning Note, 2/22/22 Note: I am forgoing the usual beginning of the week format in favor of a deeper dive into the Fed. I will circle back to data

Next Steps For Monetary Policy The yield curve continues to flatten relentlessly: The curve typically flattens during tightening cycles and consequently this should not be entirely unexpected. That said, I

Monday Morning Notes, 2/28/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning As of the end of last week, Fed officials were still debating the size of the first rate hike

Fed Ready to Respond to Higher Inflation The minutes of the January FOMC meeting were light on details, reflective of the high degree of uncertainty among FOMC participants with respect

Monday Morning Notes, 02/14/22 If You Don’t Have Time This Morning Last week’s inflation report was the latest number telling us that the Fed is behind the curve. As we

Deeply Behind the Curve The Fed is deeply behind the curve on inflation. There is no other story at this point. Our baseline outlook is the equivalent of seven 25bp

Thoughts Ahead of CPI Number The BLS releases the January CPI report tomorrow. Wall Street expects core-CPI inflation to be at 0.5%, consistent with the 0.45% prediction from the Cleveland