Is that true? Are the equities cycled or is another $75 billion bought back every night, cumulatively? Probably some mix of the two? I can't yet tell, because they take like one datapoint per week, and anything happening Thursday or Friday is not reflected in any Fed reserve holdings charts.
Yeah so Hubski users aren't exactly stupid, and the lack of transparency and accessibility to the public surrounding these policies is frankly unacceptable. It's almost messaging on par with insider trading in exactly how confined the reactions of pretty crucial components of the economy are. Of course the folks who built the structures currently in place will have an advantage, and that's fair, but there is effectively zero effort to communicate to us garbage peasants what's happening, why, and what's to be expected soon.* *To be fair, I'm not sure how much of that is the role of government, the more that I think about it. At least a clearer explanation of already-made decisions would be helpful.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that 2019 is fundamentally different than 2007. Back then we were still mostly a nation of with ridged laws so there was an expectation of how things would go down based on the structures in place. By 2009 that was no longer the case, everyone knew that the rules would change as soon as we had an abnormal situation, that the fed was not bound by the limits of its charter and that even things like recovery priority in bankruptcy would not be maintained. Now after 8 Obama years and 3 trump years the rule of law has been degraded even more so you can bet that even the basic limits of power no longer apply in a crisis situation. You can be assured that during the next crisis the fed and the president will be making up the rules as they go along, picking winners and losers as they see fit. The market is likely to move based on the expectations of fed and presidential actions and not so much on fundamentals.
I’ll just say what we’re all thinking: If this president is allowed to influence any economic policies following a major recession, we are SO fucked. There isn’t English potent enough to capture the level of fuckedness we’d achieve.
If we could put it off until juuuuust about this time next year, that'd be the sweet spot. Soon enough before the election to turn voters off of Trump, but late enough that the Bonespurs Brigade wouldn't have time to formulate a full response. But damn, would I pity the Dem president-elect's economic team.
That whole "You must buy Bear Stearns, here's the money" thing was pretty well out-of-pocket.
I’ve got some “having a shitty day” colored glasses on but should this be surprising? It seems that one of the differences between 2008, and today, is that we as a society seem to have lost part of our ability and/or desire to communicate on all facets of life from the individual connection level to the mega institution and corporation level.
The Federal Reserve has long been the target of conspiracy theorists. Depending on who you ask they're either a quasi-governmental organization or they aren't the government at all. Meanwhile, the Greenspan era taught everyone that six words from the Fed chairman could crash the economy faster than a Trumptweet. Last time we were in a pickle, it was a bunch of rich dudes huddled in a conference room over the weekend trying to figure out what to do with the economy. The difference then was Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke had half a clue... and Ben Bernanke was scared to death of the Great Depression. I haven't heard much criticism of Jay Powell involving incompetence or fecklessness but a lot of the bitching about him centers on how he's bending to Trump's will. If he were more independent, he probably would have let a recession happen a year ago; he's one of those "recessions are a natural part of the business cycle" guys. His perspective might well be that it's going to come down eventually and the longer you prop it up the harder it's gonna crash. And now that he can show that he's been sort of resisting Trump's insistence that the economy can fly forever, he has moral cover for things not working out. I dunno.
If I were him I’d kick that can as far as it could go, or at least as close to the next administration as possible. The chaos of the trump administration is not equipped to handle global chaos in the market. The world of economic manipulation is full of unintended consequences and the current administration has not been great at anticipating them.
