Interesting what Trump said yesterday morning. You know I'm not a fan of debt, but I can understand why Trump is pressuring the Fed for more QE and lower rates. He wants to keep the economy humming so he can get re-elected. This is going to have some really bad long term consequences.
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Yields, Dollar Slide As Trump Calls For QE4
Before any Fed officials get the idea that Friday's stronger-than-expected headline jobs number (which, as we pointed out, actually masked signs of pervasive weakness in employment in wage growth) might justify raising interest rates again in the not-too-distant future, President Trump slammed the central bank during comments to a group of reporters in Washington.
Instead of sticking with its "pause", Trump said the central bank should instead "drop" interest rates, something that markets have already priced in, adding that the central bank has "really slowed" the American economy.
Setting aside the cognitive dissonance between these comments and Trump's repeated claims that the US economy is doing "really, really well" and that companies are preparing to announce that they're "coming back" to the US...
TRUMP SAYS FED SHOULD DROP RATES, STOP QUANTITATIVE TIGHTENING
Because economy is so strong
...Trump's comments show that he won't let up the pressure on Jerome Powell after reportedly trying to replace him with Kevin Warsh, and declaring Powell one of the worst hires of his administration.
"I personally think the Fed should drop rates, I think they really slowed us down, there's no inflation, in terms of quantitative tightening, it should really be quantitative easing...you would see a rocket ship. Despite that, we're doing very well."
On the subject of the US-China trade negotiations, Trump said he didn't want to predict that a deal would happen, and defended his decision to tweet a video mocking Joe Biden's history of inappropriately touching women, saying he didn't see Biden as a threat. He also said he wouldn't be attending the White House Correspondents dinner because it's "too negative" and that he would be holding a rally instead.
Trump's rate-cut comments were echoed by Larry Kudlow, one of his top economic advisors, who said during an interview Friday morning that the US economy "could do with a rate cut."
Trump's comments provoked and immediate response in yields and the dollar.
The administration's calls for a rate cut come after the yield curve briefly inverted last month, which economists worry could portend a recession in the indeterminate future.
Of course, Trump didn't always feel this way about the virtues of loose monetary policy.
"The Fed's reckless policies of low interest and flooding the market with dollars needs to be stopped or we will face record inflation." - Trump
Now that the president has officially started the conversation about QE4, how long until mainstream economists follow suit? |
