Politics and Religion

Does ANYONE think Yellen is doing a good job?
GaGambler 455 reads
posted

Or even has the least business chairing the Fed?

I am listening to her double talk about the decision about not to raise rates and although I am pleased the Fed is not raising rates, I can't help but believe that Yellen is the most political Fed Chairman in my lifetime. Say what you like about Volcker, Greenspan, or Bernanke, I don't think any of them made decisions based on partisan politics, I just can't say the same about Yellen.

Does anyone have a single good word to say about her? and by "anyone" I mean anyone who actually understands the role of the Fed and has even the slightest clue as to how the Fed works, that of course leaves out Planet Stupid, but I am sure they will feel obligated to comment none the less.

Leaving rates alone was certainly good for me as it keeps the dollar from rising and hopefully will keep WTI over $40, but I can't shake the feeling that the Fed didn't at least inch up rates by even 25 basis points after crowing about all this "great" economic news the Obama Administration has been crowing about because she/they KNOW that the market would tank on the news and she/they don't want the market tanking until AFTER the election.  

As much as I loathe and detest Alan Greenspan, he was a Republican appointee yet he had no problems tightening rates a year before the election, causing a minor recession due to his heavy handedness and becoming almost as big a factor in Bill Clinton defeating George HW as was Ross Perot. Yellen OTOH is being a good little political puppet and everyone including the press corps that grilled her this afternoon knows it.

St. Croix103 reads

We are 8 years out of the last recession. Growth, if you want to call it that, is anemic at best. Our economy is running at a growth rate of 1-2% per year. Wow! We have shitty growth, but growth nevertheless. Inflation is muted, and unemployment is down. The Fed's mandate is twofold maximum employment and price stability. Based on that mandate, 50% of people  that matter are freaking out that the Fed may increase interest rates by 25 basis points, while the other 50% are freaking out that the Fed should raise rates.  

Data dependent my ass. Yellen is more market and political dependent than any other Fed Chairman ever. Does that answer your question? I'm surprised you can listen to that voice for more than 2 minutes.

Now that I said that, I'm a greedy SOB, so yes low interest rates is great for my investment portfolio. So were all the Quantitative Easing programs initiated by the Fed. The market realizes that with low growth the S&P P/E should be no higher than its statistical average of 15. We are around 18 based on future earnings, depending upon who you ask. So yeah, the market is way overvalued on just that one metric. Wonder what a nice little 10%-15% correction would do to the election outcome?

Guess who's happy today? John Stumpf of Wells Fargo. Why? Because another government oversight committee is beating the shit out of Heather Bresch of Mylan for Epi-pen. The consensus from Washington is that Mylan's greed is astounding and sickening. So Stumpf is off the front pages. That didn't last long.

But things aren't all bad. SF Giants are imploding, and the Dodgers are winning the West. I forgot, this is a political board. Did you see the tweet from the SF Giants organization on Madison Bumgarner striking out Kike Hernandez 3 times on Monday? Kike is a nickname for Enrique Hernandez, but you need to add an accent mark over the "e" on Kike. And the tweet was

"Mr. Baumgarner gets KKKike for the 3rd time tonight". Now that was bad!

Posted By: GaGambler
Or even has the least business chairing the Fed?  
   
 I am listening to her double talk about the decision about not to raise rates and although I am pleased the Fed is not raising rates, I can't help but believe that Yellen is the most political Fed Chairman in my lifetime. Say what you like about Volcker, Greenspan, or Bernanke, I don't think any of them made decisions based on partisan politics, I just can't say the same about Yellen.  
   
 Does anyone have a single good word to say about her? and by "anyone" I mean anyone who actually understands the role of the Fed and has even the slightest clue as to how the Fed works, that of course leaves out Planet Stupid, but I am sure they will feel obligated to comment none the less.  
   
 Leaving rates alone was certainly good for me as it keeps the dollar from rising and hopefully will keep WTI over $40, but I can't shake the feeling that the Fed didn't at least inch up rates by even 25 basis points after crowing about all this "great" economic news the Obama Administration has been crowing about because she/they KNOW that the market would tank on the news and she/they don't want the market tanking until AFTER the election.  
   
 As much as I loathe and detest Alan Greenspan, he was a Republican appointee yet he had no problems tightening rates a year before the election, causing a minor recession due to his heavy handedness and becoming almost as big a factor in Bill Clinton defeating George HW as was Ross Perot. Yellen OTOH is being a good little political puppet and everyone including the press corps that grilled her this afternoon knows it.


-- Modified on 9/21/2016 2:43:16 PM

Yeah, I am a greedy motherfucker too, and this was actually good news for me. But even a greedy capitalist like me wanted to retch with every word that came out of that cunt's mouth. and I am the very same guy who gave Elizabeth Warren kudos yesterday.

Now if we are going to talk about Quantitative Easing, personally I think that was a genius move by Bernanke and saved the entire system from melting down. Bernanke had ZERO bullets left in his gun with which to fight with, so he grabbed a knife and kicked ass. If you hadn't noticed, I am a fan. lol

Trump called it correctly, but in all fairness Trump will continue many of the same policies where it comes to doing his best from the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to keep rates down himself if he is elected POTUS, NOBODY wants the house burning down under their watch. It's so much better to take over an already broken market and take claim for fixing it rather than having it collapse 90 days after taking office. The stupid people will never believe you took over something ready to collapse, they will just say it went broke under your watch.  

BTW, I only listened to Yellen about two minutes at a time, you are absolutely correct in that being about the pain threshold a man can take.

And lastly, please ask Mari where he is putting his money. I need to know which sectors to avoid.

JakeFromStateFarm104 reads

keyboard diarrhea here for years.  I'll lay a bet with anyone that if and when St. C gets fed up with this place you'll keep posting promiscuously despite it.

but if you hadn't noticed, I only post about a fourth as much as I once did.

Two things are fun here, having an intelligent conversation with rational people, rare as that is. and the other pleasure I "used to" have here was making fun of the stupid people, which of course is much less rare.  

For quite some time now, I have not been able to have any fun making fun of the stupid people as barely half my posts, ever the rather tame ones never see the light of day. So having people like ST C around for that occasional intelligent conversation is an unexpected pleasure. You used to be good for an occasional intelligent conversation, but between arguing with board trolls and droning on and on about the evils of Trump, getting any intelligent conversation has been a rarity too. I've had more actual "discussions" with BPS than with you on this board over the last few months.  

I do find it ironic that a guy who completely swore off this board just recently now has a post count almost double mine here.

You try to rebut my point about your level of posting here and the best you can do is state you've attempted to post even more but your posts have been denied?  LMAO!
Then you double down on dumb by saying your post count is less than mine.  Which you admit it would not be if all your attempted posts went up.  
Do you have any clue how ludicrous you sound?  Apparently not.
Keep it up, GaG, it's funny to watch.
PS: I have not had any "debates" with either FV or fg of late, because they bore me.  Please try and keep your "facts" straight.  Such things are easy to check.

-- Modified on 9/22/2016 8:41:06 PM

You repeatedly have "conversations" with people who can only dream of room temperature IQ, until they run completely off the right side of the page. and THEN you beat your chest and claim victory in the TER version of the Special Olympics. You really should go back to drinking, you were actually entertaining now and again when your BAC was at proper levels.

and answered a different one of your own choosing.  It's called a "straw man" or "red herring" response, and you are the master of it.
congrats!
PS: Love your line about "the rest of us," as if you speak for the "rest" of the board.

-- Modified on 9/23/2016 9:16:57 AM

I suppose you are quite proud of the fact that you are smarter than FV, I would suggest you set higher goals in life. Being smarter than a moron is hardly anything to be proud of, not to mention how bad you look when they actually get the better of you, which as hard as it is too believe actually happens from time to time. Well not with fg of course, he has never gotten the best of ANYONE here.

Do try to go back and read my post above.  You are starting to look dumber than FV, or even FG.  And that is hard to do.
PS: I haven't had a fight with a moron in quite some time, unless you are talking about yourself.

Just checked the board for the past month and my last real dust-up with FG was about a month ago.   As for FV, only a few brief skirmishes.  There were a couple of real dust-ups with Laffy but I'm not sure he counts as a full-fledged moron.  
In fact, the poster who has most recently (and most often) gone after FG is USGrantLover.  So perhaps you should go lecture him, dimwit.
But by all means, don't let yourself be confused by actual facts.  That's boring.

The only concern I have is--the longer quantitative easing goes on--when it ends what happens to the bonds? Are they sold off "gradually" so as not to tank anything? Will they be held for an indeterminate time, which is tantamount to burning the whole thing up? Do concepts like "deferred inflation" even have any meaning these days? And aside from day traders trying to time the market so that they can get out in time, how important REALLY would a pullback be (assuming it will be within reason, like a fraction of one)?

But Yellen did the right thing for the first couple of years and if she's failed, IMO, it's that she let it go on for too long.

It's like when you start with a provider, you just don't want to quit even though you know the hour's up.

But actually I have no idea what criteria to use as to how well she's doing.

$.02 from "Planet Stupid"

The Fed under Yellen might as well have been run by Obama.

The Fed no longer "sets policy" it reacts to world and national events.

As I said earlier, leaving rates alone does benefit me personally, but kicking the can down the road like Bush did regarding the housing crisis is going to make the "landing" that much harder. Either Hillary or Trump are most likely going to have to deal with a  "rising rate environment" unless of course the entire world remains in  essentially a "zero rate" environment like we are in now.

I think a single 25 basis point raise would have taken a "little bit" of air out of the market, which would have been healthy, As it stands now the Fed is going to be totally feckless until 2017 at the soonest.

For the record, with the benefit of hindsight, QE was a stroke of genius, I can only imagine what kind of havoc would have ensued without it. At some point we do have to wean ourselves off of it as Zero interest and Zero Inflation are very unhealthy for the economy, both Main st and Wall st.

Register Now!