Last week Fed Chair Janet Yellen opted to keep the Fed’s zero interest rate policy in place.  Wall Street cheered the news and bid stock prices up to near record levels.  After more than six years, and over $3 trillion of direct asset purchases, what could the Fed really do?

Sure they could have begun the difficult task of walking credit markets back from their policies of mad insanity.  But that would destroy something the Fed’s worked very hard to create.  In short, it would explode a financial H-bomb and crash the perilous stock market edifice it has constructed.

This real possibility has the Fed parsing its words out like Bill Clinton at a Congressional impeachment hearing.  “Just because we removed the word ‘patient’ from the statement doesn’t mean we are going to be impatient,” said Yellen.  Huh?  So they may raise rates soon…but not too soon?

By all accounts, this dither drabble is categorically worthless.  What’s more, it’s ludicrous that in the year 2015, in an era of indoor plumbing and tablet communications, the financial system rests upon the mixed utterances of a frail bureaucrat with a hair helmet. Continue reading →