Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog, [6]
It’s highly amusing to read all the ‘expert’ theories on a Federal Reserve hike or no hike tomorrow, but it’s also obvious that nobody really has a clue, and still feel they should be heard. Don’t know if that’s so smart, but I guess in that world being consistently wrong is not that big a deal.
Thing is, US economic numbers are so ‘massaged’ and unreliable, the Fed can pick whichever way the wind blows to argue whatever decision it makes. As long as jobs numbers get presented for instance without counting the 90-odd million Americans who are not in the labor force, and a majority of new jobs are waiters, just about anything goes in that area. Numbers on wages are just as silly.
And people can make inflation a big issue, but hardly anyone even knows what inflation is. Wonder if the Fed does. It had better, because if you don’t look at spending, prices don’t tell you a thing. They surely must look at velocity of money charts from time to time?!
The biggest thing for the Fed might, and perhaps must, be the confidence factor. It’s been talking about rate hikes for so long now that if it decides to leave rates alone, it will only create more uncertainty down the road. Uncertainty about the economy (no hike would suggest a weak economy), and also about its own capabilities.
If all you have is talk, people tend to take you a lot less serious. Moreover, the abject -and grossly expensive- failure of the Chinese central bank to quiet down its domestic stock markets has raised questions about the omnipotence of all central banks.
This morning’s spectacle of a 5% rise in Shanghai in under an hour near the close no longer serves to restore confidence, it further undermines it. Beijing doesn’t seem to get that yet. But the Fed might.
No rate hike is therefore an enormous potential threat to Fed credibility. And that’s a factor it may well find much more important than a bunch of numbers it knows are mostly fake anyway. It has for years been able to fake credibility, but that is no longer all that obvious. And delaying a hike will certainly not boost that credibility.
Sure, volatility is an issue too, but volatility won’t go down on a hike delay. It’ll simply continue – and perhaps rise- until the next meeting. There’s nothing to gain there.
Besides, don’t let’s forget how crazy it is that the entire financial world is dead nervous ahead of a central bank meeting, even as everyone knows it’s all just about a decision on a very small tweak in rates.
Yellen et al are very aware of the risks of that, even if they love the limelight it brings. All that attention tells people, meeting after meeting, that the US economy is not functioning properly, no matter what the official statements say.
There are ‘experts’ talking about the dangers of emerging markets if the Fed votes Yes on a hike, but those markets are not even part of its mandate. if Yellen thinks something can be gained from pushing emerging markets and currencies down further, she’ll do just that.
Still, all this is just pussyfooting around the bush. The Fed may have noble mandates to help the real economy, but it will in the end always decide to do what’s best for Wall Street banks. And these banks could well make a huge killing off a rate hike.
They can profit from trouble and volatility in emerging markets as well as domestic markets, provided they’re well-positioned. Given that they’ve had ample time, and it’s hard to answer the question who else is in a good position, we may have an idea which wind the wind will blow.
Increasing credibility for the Fed and increasing profits for Wall Street banks. Might be a winning combination. And if Yellen is realistic about the potential for a recovery in the American economy, why would she not pick it?
