All Things in Moderation

Yesterday we had some Fed-speak with Philly Fed Head Charles Plosser urging the Fed to stop playing “this bond buying game by ear” and to tell the markets how much the Fed intends to buy and then to stop once it gets to that level. Plosser also claimed that the recent low inflation numbers were transitory due to lower government spending on things like Medicare. Separately, New York Federal Reserve Chairman William Dudley said he is becoming more optimistic that 2014 and 2015 will be much stronger than 2013. He said the “fiscal drag” of the sequester is abating. Pet peeve – the Fed goes out of its way to say that reducing tapering is not “tightening,” yet refers to a tiny reduction in unprecedented postwar fiscal stimulus as “fiscal drag.” Even with the sequester, fiscal policy is still highly, highly accommodative and looks miserly only if you compare it to 2009 or 2010.

Good story out of Bloomberg on the pickle the Fed is in with respect to QE.  How to reduce tapering without increasing interest rates. The Fed would really, really like to avoid a repeat of last summer where the 10 year bond increased by 100 basis points. Yellen said in her testimony that the answer was better communication, however as everyone has acknowledged, we are in uncharted territory here. Separately, the Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to vote on Yellen Thursday, which will set the stage for a full Senate vote later this year.Tomorrow starts the big data dump for the week with a slew of economic reports. We will get the minutes from the October FOMC meeting, existing home sales, retail sales and the consumer price index.

Speaking of retail sales, the holiday shopping season is shaping up to be on the weak side. We have already seen two warnings out of Wal Mart this year, and now Best Buy is saying that promotional activity is going to hurt margins. I keep hearing anecdotal evidence that the retailers are getting promotional already, which is a bad sign ahead of Thanksgiving. On the other hand, the Despot reported better than expected 3rd quarter earnings as people are taking advantage of the increase in house prices to do some remodeling.

Remember the 2012 jobs report ahead of the election where Jack Welch tweeted “”Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers,” He was fired from Fortune over that. Well, it turns out that he may have been correct. Census may have been doing some monkey business with the report.

Small banks asked for some temporary relief from some of the new edicts coming out of CFPB and were given the Heisman. CFPB has said that they will take into account good faith efforts to comply with the rules, but as Rob Chrisman points out, the plaintiffs’ attorneys definitely will not.