Morning Report: FOMC minutes not as hawkish as feared 8/18/16

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change
S&P Futures 2177.5 -2.0
Eurostoxx Index 342.0 1.5
Oil (WTI) 47.0 0.2
US dollar index 85.5 -0.1
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.55%
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA 103.3
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA 104.2
30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage 3.5

Stocks are flattish after the FOMC minutes came in less hawkish than feared. Bonds and MBS are up.

Initial Jobless Claims came in at 262k last week.

The Philly Fed Business Outlook Survey came in slightly positive, about in line with expectations.

The FOMC minutes were not quite as hawkish as markets feared. The Fed noted that the two biggest fears at the June meeting (Brexit, which had just happened, and the terrible May jobs report) turned out to be non-events. That said, there is still some debate at the Fed over how much more work they have to do on the employment side of their dual mandate. Some at the Fed point to the unemployment rate and infer their job is largely done, while others point to the low labor force participation rate and say they have more work to do. The lack of language about the risks of the economy being more tilted toward the upside than the downside has been taken as a signal that the Fed isn’t planning to move in September. Bonds rallied somewhat on the minutes, with the 10 year falling to 1.54% and the Fed Funds futures reducing the implied probability of a 2016 hike to a coin toss.

The minutes did discuss housing a bit as well. In terms of housing construction, they noted that housing activity growth had slowed in recent months, which is a fair observation however housing starts have been in a 1.1 million to 1.2 million range for about a year. Not much improvement going on there at all, just steady state. Much of the growth is going to multi-fam construction, not single, however.

In terms of credit, the Fed noted that mortgage credit became somewhat more easy between the June and July meetings. Apparently, a number of large banks said they had eased standards somewhat for GSE loans. Purchase and refi activity picked up as well.

Speaking of GSE loans, everyone in DC realizes that the current state of affairs (with the GSEs as wards of the state) is unsustainable, however no one really knows what to do with them. The US taxpayer bears the credit risk of 90% of all new origination. Republicans would like the government less involved with the mortgage market, while Democrats would like to see them officially nationalized and made a government owned corporation. The point is moot, however in that there is nothing in the private sector capable of replacing them.

Note that Fan and Fred used to be 100% owned by the government (Fannie Mae was a New Deal phenomenon), and LBJ made them a nominally private institution. The reason? Fannie Mae’s debt was becoming a problem for the national balance sheet and was making it difficult to finance the Vietnam war. LBJ wanted Fannie Mae’s debt off the official books of the US Government, so he spun off a piece to private investor. So, yes Virginia, the first user of off-balance sheet financing was Uncle Sam.

Former Minneapolis Fed Head Narayana Kochlerakota compares the US recovery to that of Europe and Japan. People trumpeting the great performance of the US versus their peers (largely a partisan affair) are ignoring the fact that the US population has been increasing much faster than Europe, so comparing simple GDP growth isn’t really all that meaningful. If you look at employment, the US looks worse. This has big implications for monetary policy. Perhaps QE hasn’t been quite the elixir it has been held up to be. In Japan, banks are running out of JGBs to sell the Central Bank. To me, the glaring observation is that the 10 year bond yield where it was pre taper tantrum (Spring of 2013). It implies they could have achieved the same result doing nothing! As Art Cashin said, the Fed is beginning to resemble Casey Stengal’s 1962 Mets.

10 year NAD

That said, it looks like fiscal policy might be ready to run with the ball. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both want to spend more money. Assuming Hillary wins and the GOP keeps the House, we will have to see if she can cut a deal with Republicans to allow for more spending.

Filed under: Economy, Federal Reserve, Morning Report |

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13 Responses

  1. jnc4p, on August 18, 2016 at 9:55 am said:

    A competent Trump campaign could do something with this:

    “Think the world is on fire? Obama’s national security adviser says things are better than ever.

    by Zack Beauchamp on August 18, 2016”

    http://www.vox.com/2016/8/18/12387600/susan-rice-vox

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  2. jnc4p, on August 18, 2016 at 11:26 am said:

    He’s either going to win or lose as Trump.

    “Bannon, who’s as eager to attack Republicans as Democrats, is unlikely to worry much about the plight of mainstream GOP incumbents. At a New Year’s party at his Capitol Hill home last year, Bannon gave guests silver flasks stamped with his personal motto: “Honey badger don’t give a shit.””

    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-18/trump-resuscitate-campaign

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  3. Brent Nyitray, on August 18, 2016 at 12:12 pm said:

    With the health insurers pulling out of obamacare exchanges, what happens when no one will offer them and President Clinton has a GOP controlled House?

    This is where obama’s arrogance and partisanship is going to bite him in the ass. He jammed through obamacare on a straight partisan vote, so the GOP has absolutely no political investment in the program’s success. obama bet (wrongly) that his baby would become popular over time and it hasn’t – it still falls along partisan lines.

    The GOP will rightly say “See, we told you so, the government is the gang that can’t shoot straight… Guess the only thing left to do is get rid of the mandate (and the Cadillac tax as well), leaving the residual of obamacare nothing but an expansion of Medicaid.

    I suspect the bet is that the media will try and shame the GOP into implementing a public option, I cannot see the GOP going for something that was a bridge too far for democrats…

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  4. jnc4p, on August 19, 2016 at 11:30 am said:

    It will be interesting to see if this becomes the template for HUD going forward:

    “On Dec. 12, the Baltimore Sun published a 6,100 word story — quite long for a newspaper — by Doug Donovan that describes how the city Housing Authority, complying with a federal court order, has been quietly buying homes over the past decade in prosperous suburbs to use as public housing.

    The intensity of the conflict between city and county interests was reflected in the covert tactics used by the city to provide housing for low-income residents on a regional basis, outside city limits.

    “We did it very much under the radar,” Amy Wilkinson, the city authority’s fair housing director told The Sun. “We met very early on with the county executives. They understood we had to do it. Their request was to make sure [the homes] are really scattered and make sure we do it quietly.”

    The city hired a nonprofit developer, Homes for America, to make the purchases on its behalf. The contract specified that the firm make sure that the acquired homes not be “identifiable as subsidized housing to minimize objections from the surrounding community.””

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/opinion/campaign-stops/can-hillary-manage-her-unruly-coalition.html

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  5. Let the mutherfuker burn!, on August 21, 2016 at 10:16 am said:

    There are two unavoidable realities of making the American health-care system less costly: Americans must use less care, and our nation’s legion of well-paying, stable jobs in the health-care sector need to be both less numerous and less well paid. What no one can figure out is how to generate the political will to make this happen. The public option doesn’t fix that political problem.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-19/obamacare-s-public-option-is-no-longer-defensible

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