Friday, February 21, 2014

FED to the World: We will do what we want - Deal with it

This Bloomberg article re enforces our analysis here. Everybody is going their own separate ways. The quotes below from this article from FED officials could not be more clear.


"Almost three weeks since taking the helm of the Fed, Yellen, 67, makes her international debut as its chief when she joins fellow G-20 finance ministers and central bankers at the Feb. 22-23 talks. They meet in the wake of a decline in emerging-market shares andcurrencies on concern over softer economic growth."

"Blamed in part for the sell-off and need for interest-rate increases from Brazil to India is the Fed’s decision of December to pull back its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program, which it has since lopped to $65 billion. U.S. monetary policy will be part of the debate in Sydney, G-20 officials say."

"The recent volatility doesn’t pose a “substantial risk to the U.S. economic outlook,” Yellen said on Feb. 11, signaling the tapering will continue. The U.S. central bank sets policy “to pursue our goals that Congress has assigned,” she said."

"Statements that we need to more explicitly coordinate international policy are a bit overblown compared to where real gains would be from doing that,” St. Louis Fed President James Bullardtold reporters in Washington yesterday."

"“So as long as every country pursues its own monetary policy for its own purposes and does a good job at that, you get a pretty good global equilibrium that isn’t too far from the one that you would get if everyone was under the same monetary policy or was perfectly coordinating monetary policy,” he said."

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi reinforced the idea that it is up to each institution to keep its house in order. “The priority for all of us is the compliance with our mandate,” he said on Feb. 6 in Frankfurt.
The following week, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said the world “can no longer rely on methadone every day” from easy U.S. monetary policy and that central banks must act in their national interests.
My commentary: So there you have it. Message to the world delivered. We'll taper if we want and we'll print money if we want. It's not our problem how that may impact you. And so we should not be surprised that China and the BRICS are steadily working on Plan B (getting out from under US policies impacting their reserve holdings). Who wouldn't in this situation?

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