Fed "policy," such as it is, went all silly Monday when a little-known spokesman for the central bank said he expects one more rate hike in 2019 and perhaps another in 2020. Didn't Chairman Powell just finish saying that there would be no tightening this year? And weren't we reading the other day that the yield curve had inverted, raising the risk of a U.S./global recession? In any event, a Philadelphia Fed guy named Harker (click here for a revealing photo of him) averred in a London speech that economic risks are "very slight," that the U.S. economy looks healthy, and that he will continue to monitor the data as it comes in.
The good news is that Harker is not a voting member of the FOMC. The bad news is that Trump can't fire him. At any rate, there are no loose cannons in the upper ranks of banking, so Harker presumably speaks for "the organization" when he gives a policy speech. Which raises the question of just what the Fed intends by having Harker quoted in The Wall Street Journal. Although it's always entertaining to see what the banksters come up with to "manage" our "expectations," it's hard to infer from this latest gambit anything other than that Powell & Co. take us all for idiots.
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