"Sometimes it isn't what you say but how you say it" YNOT
Well now, ladies and gentlemen, the bankers have held court again, and the High Priest of the Federal Reserve—Mr. Powell himself—stood up before the nation like a man trying to calm a river flood with a teaspoon. He spoke in that careful Washington tongue, the kind that seems to say plenty without ever actually putting its boots in the mud. Folks want to know: Are we headed for a recession, and is Powell leading or lagging? Spoiler—he’s lagging, same as always.
The Fed gave us their latest wisdom: a 25-basis point cut, no more, no less. They were mighty proud of the unity they showed, though unity don’t mean much if everybody’s marching lockstep off the wrong cliff. Markets had been dreaming of half a dozen cuts by spring, but Powell swatted that fantasy like a man brushing flies from his sandwich. Three cuts this year, maybe a little trim next year, and that’s the whole feast.
Now, Powell tells us the labor market is “cooling”—that’s the kind of soft, government word that makes a hard problem sound like an evening breeze. Beneath that varnish, the truth is this: jobs are thinning out, participation is shrinking, and if folks start showing up again looking for work, unemployment will shoot skyward faster than a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July. Powell admits the trouble but prescribes nothing stronger than a half-measure, like giving a drowning man a cork and calling it a lifeboat.
The bond market, less polite than Powell, is already hollering that the Fed is behind. Yields are ticking upward, and that means the smart money don’t believe Powell’s bedtime story. They see him as Mr. Too Late—a man who waits to smell the smoke before asking if the house is on fire.
Meanwhile, the average soul out there, the one juggling bills and praying their job holds, hears all this and wonders why the men with the levers can’t see what they see. Inflation may be “transitory” in Powell’s book, but the grocery bill looks permanent enough when it hits the kitchen table.
And so, here we are: another meeting, another sermon, another promise that the great machine of money is being steered with steady hands. Yet I’d wager, same as I’ve seen in drunken sailors and politics alike, that steady hands don’t mean much when they’re slow ones. Mr. Powell may have all the charts, the models, and the words, but time itself don’t negotiate. You can be early or you can be late, and the Fed has chosen late. Folks best keep their eyes wide and their wallets tight—for this train may not slow down in time.
OK this is the big boring speech…. great if you have trouble sleeping.
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