The market didn’t react very well to Jerome Powell’s characterization of Wednesday’s interest rate reduction as a “mid-cycle adjustment.” Investors took that to be a bearish easing of monetary policy. The stock market dropped, the bond market took a future interest rate reduction off of the table,
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There has been some criticism of Fed chairman Powell as he has gone from saying this in early October 2018:
To telegraphing this on July 10th:
Those who are upset by his dovish turn are irked because they feel like he is kowtowing to the market and Trump who is forcing his hand despite record high stock market averages,
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Last week my daughter and I went to see the Improvised Shakespeare Company in Los Angeles. Wow, what a mind-blowing experience that was. It was extraordinary to see the four actors take an idea thrown out to them by the audience and turn it into a 90 minute Shakespeare play.
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As the following headline shows, interest rates fell quite sharply on Friday to current cycle lows in the wake of a very weak non-farm employment report.
One can see how inverted the 10-year Treasury note yield has become versus the 3-month T-bill yield in the following chart.
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Mohamed El-Erian, the former CEO of PIMCO, said recently on CNBC that if you want to know what’s going to happen to U.S. long-term interest rates, then all you have to do is look to Germany. And so that is what I did.
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It’s been a very busy three weeks of travel so I’m going to keep this one pretty short and sweet. And while I often write a thousand words or more, this post will hopefully support the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
The Federal Reserve finally responded to the market’s beseeching that it pauses its rate increases and not be on a “damn the torpedoes” path of raising interest rates and shrinking the balance sheet.
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The fact that I’m not going to spend much time on this chart must mean that I still feel the need to release things deep within my subconscious with regard to the loss of Roneet.
While rates were rising I wrote a few times that I was perplexed that they were doing so given the headwinds of tariffs and increasing tension with China,
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The Grateful Dead have a song called The Eleven. In many ways the lyrics are unintelligible. It was written during their psychedelic phase so the lack of comprehension makes some sense as their senses were non-sensical.
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Gary Carmell Posted in Interest Rates, Investing, Manufacturing, News, Uncategorized No Comments ↓ 
With the midterm elections kicking into high gear and political rhetoric heating up and true believers huddling in their echo chambers and cocoons, I thought it would be interesting to look at some research carried out with regard to the 2016 presidential election and some of the surprising findings.
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Gary Carmell Posted in Economy, Interest Rates, Investing, News, Trends, Uncategorized, Wealth 2 Comments ↓ 
Under most economic environments longer-term debt instruments yield more than shorter ones. This is the case in order to compensate investors for risks related to purchasing power eroding and more uncertainty and volatility that can increase the probability of default (outside Treasuries). In addition, our banking system is based on banks accessing short-term deposits and being able to make longer-term loans and investments which necessitates longer rates being higher than shorter ones so banks can be profitable.
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