No Alien Invasion And No Rate Hike – Ep. 197

* Aliens didn't invade the Earth, and the Federal Reserve didn't raise interest rates
* If you remember, I was pegging the probability of each at roughly the same
* True to form, the Federal Reserve did pretty much exactly what I thought they were going to do and not raise interest rates
* Now I thought they might have tried to lower expectations for the probability in the markets of a December rate hike
* Even though they didn't say that, that was the effect of their announcement
* If you look at the dot plots, for example, the FOMC members were looking for rates to be lower for longer
* Surely, if you look at the reaction to the market, the market does not appear to be worried about a rate hike coming in either November or December, even though the Fed still maintains the narrative that the possibility still exists
* The Fed reiterated that the case for a rate hike had increased
* But, they chose not to raise rates despite their narrative
* Their reason was that they wanted to see more data
* This is exactly what I said after Yellen's statement at Jackson Hole
* The media interpreted her statement as a signal that a September rate hike was likely
* What did I say?
* I said the Fed didn't say anything about hiking
* They were speaking about the case for a hike
* I described it as a scale from, say 0 - 10
* If the case were a 3 and then it became a 4, the case had strengthened
* But if the Fed needs 10, and we're only at 4, they're not going to hike
* They never came clean about their scale, they simply said that the case for a hike had increased
* That doesn't mean they were going to raise rates, and that's exactly what happened
* It's interesting that in all of the prepared remarks and in the following press conference
* Janet Yellen never once admitted that the economy is weakening
* In fact, she continues to pretend that everything is great
* Ironically, one of the questions in the Q&A had to do with Donald Trump's position that the Fed is not raising interest rates for political reasons
* Which, of course is exactly why they're not raising them
* If they raise interest rates, everything would collapse, and so would Hillary Clinton's election prospects


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