Well, it’s official: Powell came, saw, and unlike two years ago when, with with CPI rising almost double digits the uber-hawkish Fed chair warned of “pain” to come, this time he couldn’t be more dovish.
Having put inflation fully in the rearview mirror, the “Powell payrolls pivot” is now complete because as the Fed chair said, “the cooling in labor market conditions is unmistakable” even if it was quite mistakable to the Biden admin’s presstitutes as recently as one month ago.
It appears the “cooling in labor market conditions”, enough to prompt an easing cycle with inflation still at 3%, was mistakable https://t.co/TwujErKbGI pic.twitter.com/KnPBSkDNQ7
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 23, 2024
Which is also why it was imperative for the Biden labor department to admit the truth about the deteriorating labor market: without that -818K revision earlier this week, the Fed would have some pushback to turning fully dovish. But now that we know that a third of the job gains in the last year of Bidenomics were bogus…well, please come save us Chairman Fed.
Or, as TradeStation head of strategy David Russell said, “here comes the punchbowl. Jerome Powell came out swinging today with a litany of dovish signals. He said inflation is on a sustainable path lower and talked about how the job market has cooled to pre-pandemic levels. He drove the point home with a clear call for adjusting policy.”
The market agreed, and quickly cemented at least one rate cut while also pricing in as much as 33% odds of a 50bps rate cut.
Which is all great: after all as we have long said, with the November elections looming, the Fed will do everything to make sure the establishment candidate isn’t distracted by such trivial things as a market crash.
There are just four small problems with this.
First: the Fed will end its tightening cycle and starts the next easing cycle with stocks at all time highs, something that has never before happened in the history of capital markets!
It means that, unless the current expansion ends in a gruesome recession which crushes the economy, the S&P is about to enter a full-blown bubble, which in turn will burst in even more spectacular fashion and force the Fed to not only cut back to ZIRP, but activate NIRP (just like Japan did years ago) and also go right back to QE and buying bonds ETFs. For now, however, as in the next three months ahead of the elections, all shall be well and should serve the all time high in the market to Kamala Harris on a silver platter…. which is precisely why the Fed is doing what it is doing.
Second, this is also the first time in history when the Fed has aborted a tightening cycle having achieved zero home price easing. Indeed, one look at the case-shiller index shows that home prices are the highest they have ever been…
… as are actual asking rents according to Zillow (not that delayed aberration known as Owner-Equivalent Rent).
And then you have Kamala’s promise to provides $25,000 in new home purchase subsidies, which will go straight to the asking price, sending prices even higher.
In short, both home prices and rents, already at record high, are about to go record-er…
Third, while one can technically live without housing or rent, one still needs to eat. And here we find another problem, because not only did the Fed’s rate hikes not contain stock, home or rent prices, but food prices – both at home and away from home – are also at all time high! And guess what cutting rates and stimulating the economy will do to food prices from this point on…
Fourth, and final, the seeds of the next inflationary bubble are already set, because even as the Fed kept conditions tight (or even exceptionally tight), M2 – the broadest money aggregate tracked by the Fed – is once again rising after declining for the past three years.
Of course, there are countless other examples, because besides the above case studies, prices are at all time highs pretty much everywhere else too. But you get the message. The only question is what can possibly go wrong with the Fed launching an easing (i.e., monetary stimulus) cycle with prices for pretty much everything, stocks and homes included, at all time highs and rising.
For the answer, ask this guy…
