Latest / Trumponomics / 33: How Monetary Policy is Now Being Outsourced (Sort Of)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: This episode of Bloomberg Benchmark is sponsored by HSBC, winner
- 0:03Speaker 1: of Trade Finance America's Company Award for Best Supply Chain
- 0:08Speaker 1: Finance Bank in North America HSBC. Where ambition connects with opportunity.
- 0:13Speaker 1: The central banks are not the answer. After all these
- 0:17Speaker 1: years and all of they've done, they still can't fix
- 0:21Speaker 1: the global economy. Now we're in impotence territory. Hi, and
- 0:32Speaker 1: welcome back to Bloomberg Benchmark, a podcast about the global economy.
- 0:37Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April fourteen. I'm Daniel Moss, Executive editor for
- 0:41Speaker 1: Global Economics at Bloomberg News. My co hosts Archieto and
- 0:46Speaker 1: Tory still will are out this week, so it's just me.
- 0:51Speaker 1: We Most of us familiar with the concept of outsourcing,
- 0:54Speaker 1: the idea that companies and governments find it cheaper or
- 0:57Speaker 1: more efficient to have outside groups hand all things like
- 1:00Speaker 1: customers support, legal services, programming, bill collection, data entry, and
- 1:05Speaker 1: so on. And yes, sometimes this takes place overseas a
- 1:09Speaker 1: common example of the ubiquitous call centers. Whatever you want
- 1:12Speaker 1: to check your bank, balanced, book a hotel, or inquire
- 1:15Speaker 1: about something on your cell phone bill. But outsourcing monetary
- 1:19Speaker 1: policy that seems to take it to a whole other level.
- 1:22Speaker 1: Get in a way, that's what the Federal Reserve has done.
- 1:26Speaker 1: Chair Janet Yellen effectively said as much last week when
- 1:29Speaker 1: she told an audience in New York that the FED
- 1:31Speaker 1: dialed back its projections for how many times it will
- 1:35Speaker 1: increase interest rates in response to investors dialing back. First,
- 1:40Speaker 1: our colleague Rich Miller listened to her speech, picked up
- 1:43Speaker 1: on the theme, and wrote about it for Bloomberg News.
- 1:46Speaker 1: Rich has been following the US economy and the FED
- 1:48Speaker 1: for more than three decades. He joins us from Washington, Rich,
- 1:51Speaker 1: great to have you. Thanks for having me, Dan. Well,
- 1:54Speaker 1: the textbooks tell us that markets are, in theory supposed
- 1:58Speaker 1: to respond to what you make is saying. Do this
- 2:02Speaker 1: seems like the world has been turned upside down. What's
- 2:04Speaker 1: going on? Well, first of all, I just want to say,
- 2:07Speaker 1: of course, Janet Yellen didn't say in her speech that
- 2:09Speaker 1: the Fed is outsourcing monetary policy, and Feed officials would
- 2:14Speaker 1: undoubtedly object to that. But but what she laid out
- 2:17Speaker 1: in the speech, sure as heck, sounded like that. What
- 2:20Speaker 1: happened was the markets got a little bit scared about
- 2:23Speaker 1: global growth in China, so they adjusted down the amount
- 2:27Speaker 1: of interest rate increases they expected from the Fed. In response,
- 2:33Speaker 1: long term interest rates went down. Those long term interest
- 2:36Speaker 1: rates lower long term interest rates provided the economy with
- 2:39Speaker 1: some stimulus and helped keep the economy on track in
- 2:43Speaker 1: the face of this jitters about global growth. So Janet
- 2:47Speaker 1: Yellen said, this is great. This is like an automatic stabilizer.
- 2:50Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of sort of like an ideal
- 2:51Speaker 1: marriage where your partner sort of knows you so well
- 2:55Speaker 1: that you don't even have to ask for the present
- 2:56Speaker 1: for your birthday. She or he gets it before you
- 2:59Speaker 1: even ask. Well, we know the FED keeps a close
- 3:03Speaker 1: eye on markets. They said that that's no secret. But
- 3:06Speaker 1: this does seem to elevate it to a new level. Yes,
- 3:09Speaker 1: yes it does. I think there was a little bit
- 3:10Speaker 1: of an ulterior motive here. The FED has gotten slammed
- 3:13Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill by a Republican law may because and
- 3:16Speaker 1: by some Republican leaning leaning economists for following a policy
- 3:21Speaker 1: that's too discretionary two seat of the pants, and these people,
- 3:25Speaker 1: these lawmakers claim that investors don't understand what the Fed's
- 3:28Speaker 1: gonna do and that hurts the economy. Yelling was basically said,
- 3:32Speaker 1: was trying to say yes, the markets do understand what
- 3:34Speaker 1: we're gonna do, and in fact they had just before
- 3:36Speaker 1: we adjust. So I think there was a little bit
- 3:38Speaker 1: of a political backstory here that's going on the way
- 3:42Speaker 1: she described the relationship between the two of them. What
- 3:46Speaker 1: are the risks of this approach? Uh, Well, the risk
- 3:49Speaker 1: are uh what mis misunderstandings and upsets like in a marriage, right,
- 3:54Speaker 1: we're you know, hearken back to what was at the
- 3:56Speaker 1: middle of two thousand and fourteen. Investors work evinced that
- 4:01Speaker 1: the FED was going to have what was called quantitative
- 4:04Speaker 1: easing forever. It was going to keep on buying bonds
- 4:07Speaker 1: in the market and keep on supporting the economy. Then
- 4:11Speaker 1: Chairman Ben Bernanky said, well, maybe we're gonna end it,
- 4:14Speaker 1: maybe we're gonna taper it, and then the markets through
- 4:16Speaker 1: a hissy fit. They had a tantrum, Right, So that's
- 4:19Speaker 1: that's the risks that there's misunderstandings that could then lead
- 4:22Speaker 1: to blow ups later that could hurt the economy. It
- 4:25Speaker 1: really makes me wonder again to use the marriage analogy,
- 4:29Speaker 1: who's in charge here? Who right right now? Yeah? Well,
- 4:34Speaker 1: I guess in some marriages, uh, someone is clearly in
- 4:37Speaker 1: charge and and someone isn't. But I think in most
- 4:39Speaker 1: it's kind of a constant, kind of at least in mind,
- 4:43Speaker 1: constant kind of jockeying back and forth, trying hopefully to
- 4:47Speaker 1: get to a common goal, which in this case is
- 4:50Speaker 1: you know, a well functioning economy. I mean, one of
- 4:53Speaker 1: the problems is is that the goals don't always fully align. Usually,
- 4:56Speaker 1: you know, investors want are well functioning, growing economy, but
- 5:00Speaker 1: sometimes they were more interested in, you know, the fact
- 5:02Speaker 1: that their investments are doing well a bad But I
- 5:05Speaker 1: think it's never clear. I think there's a constant learning
- 5:07Speaker 1: process back and forth between the markets and the economy,
- 5:10Speaker 1: just like in a marriage. Just to use another analogy,
- 5:14Speaker 1: isn't this a little bit like giving a drug addict
- 5:17Speaker 1: more heroin? I mean, if you empower the markets to
- 5:20Speaker 1: that extent and publicly say you did it after markets
- 5:25Speaker 1: did it, doesn't this just risk emboldening investors and they're
- 5:28Speaker 1: going to want more and more and more and more
- 5:31Speaker 1: and more, and the FED finds itself trapped. I think
- 5:34Speaker 1: there is a risk for that, and then eventually the
- 5:36Speaker 1: FED will have to disappoint the markets, and then you
- 5:38Speaker 1: get this kind of upset like we had with the
- 5:40Speaker 1: taper tantrum. So I think there is a definite risk,
- 5:43Speaker 1: and I guess it's up to the FED to try
- 5:46Speaker 1: to communicate clearly with the markets what when it thinks
- 5:50Speaker 1: they're they're going too far. It also, I mean, we've
- 5:54Speaker 1: gotten used to seeing the markets want more and more stimulus.
- 5:57Speaker 1: But it is kind of interesting when you think about
- 6:00Speaker 1: the initial years after the Great Recession. If you look
- 6:03Speaker 1: at the markets back then, they were always expecting the
- 6:05Speaker 1: FED to raise interest rates like a year out, but
- 6:09Speaker 1: the FED didn't have any intention to do that. So
- 6:11Speaker 1: the FED eventually had to go out and explicitly say, look,
- 6:14Speaker 1: we aren't going to raise interest rates until like the
- 6:16Speaker 1: middle of two thousand fifteen. Don't worry boys and girls.
- 6:19Speaker 1: So you know, there is risks, but that's just the
- 6:21Speaker 1: way things work. And what is the risk that Fed
- 6:25Speaker 1: officials misread the message that markets are conveying. I mean,
- 6:31Speaker 1: I think it's great obviously, Um I guess, I guess
- 6:34Speaker 1: trying to stick with this marriage analogy, you know, one
- 6:37Speaker 1: of the partners is kind of someone who's whose moods
- 6:40Speaker 1: flips from elation to dejection, and that's the markets right
- 6:44Speaker 1: as as it flips. As investors flipped from greed to fear.
- 6:48Speaker 1: Then you have the other partner who's maybe stolid and
- 6:52Speaker 1: looks at models and rarely changes his or her mind.
- 6:56Speaker 1: And sometimes the one who's, you know, saying you know
- 7:00Speaker 1: the end is near is right. Oftentimes the one who's
- 7:02Speaker 1: saying the end is in he is not right. But
- 7:04Speaker 1: sometimes the one who says don't worry, be happy or
- 7:07Speaker 1: don't worry things are copasetic is wrong. So you know
- 7:11Speaker 1: why they have, you know, a huge they fed have
- 7:14Speaker 1: a huge bunch of people in New York sort of
- 7:17Speaker 1: in constant contact with the markets, trying to figure out
- 7:20Speaker 1: what the message of the markets are trying then to say, well,
- 7:23Speaker 1: do we agree with what the markets are worried about
- 7:25Speaker 1: or what the markets think of doing, or do we not? Well,
- 7:29Speaker 1: I hope this marriage doesn't end in an expensive custody trial. Definitely, Definitely,
- 7:36Speaker 1: it's been great to have your perspective. Keep up the
- 7:38Speaker 1: good work. Thanks, thanks, thanks a lot for inviting me.
- 7:40Speaker 1: Enjoyed it, and now a would from our sponsor. This
- 7:50Speaker 1: episode of Bloomberg Benchmark is sponsored by HSBC, with over
- 7:54Speaker 1: eight thousand global relationship managers on the ground in over
- 7:56Speaker 1: sixty countries. HSBC makes your global ambition their local business HSBC. Well,
- 8:08Speaker 1: the issues that Rich outlined touch on things you know,
- 8:11Speaker 1: we wrestle with daily here at Bloomberg News and helping
- 8:15Speaker 1: us flesh it out and maybe even have it out.
- 8:19Speaker 1: Two of my colleagues, Bob Burgess and Madeline Limp. Bob
- 8:22Speaker 1: is executive editor for Markets and Madeline is executive editor
- 8:25Speaker 1: for Bloomberg First World, tell us a little bit about
- 8:28Speaker 1: what that actually is. Hi, Dan, thank you for the introduction,
- 8:32Speaker 1: and Bloomberg First Wood is a very short bullet point
- 8:34Speaker 1: service about markets, issues and news that's of interest to
- 8:38Speaker 1: markets in a very quick and condensed form. Well, Bob,
- 8:42Speaker 1: you've got to feel vindicated by this Markets of one, right.
- 8:46Speaker 1: I'll never be able to mix it up with you
- 8:48Speaker 1: in quite the same way in our morning and afternoon
- 8:51Speaker 1: news meetings. Rich. I think I brought up some very
- 8:54Speaker 1: interesting topics. But the one thing Rich didn't talk about
- 8:58Speaker 1: was markets are always forward looking. Okay, markets are not
- 9:03Speaker 1: necessarily reactive to central banks, but they're more pricing in
- 9:07Speaker 1: what is going to happen in the future. We're it's
- 9:09Speaker 1: going to be the cost of money six months out,
- 9:11Speaker 1: a year out, and so what we've seen over the
- 9:16Speaker 1: past three years is that the markets have been continually
- 9:20Speaker 1: more right on the outlook for for the economy and
- 9:25Speaker 1: um the market has generally been more pessimistic on the
- 9:29Speaker 1: pace of growth, the FED has been more optimistic. And
- 9:32Speaker 1: what we've seen over the past twelve to eighteen months,
- 9:35Speaker 1: maybe even two years, is that the Fed's outlook in
- 9:38Speaker 1: the economy has continually come down to the markets view
- 9:42Speaker 1: of the economy. And yet markets will move in response
- 9:48Speaker 1: to specific central bank events on any given day, often
- 9:54Speaker 1: the way they should. You're drawing a distinction between the
- 9:57Speaker 1: longer term and the short term. Markets will always have
- 10:02Speaker 1: immediate reaction to whoever central bank does on a certain day,
- 10:07Speaker 1: but the markets are going to be pricing in what
- 10:10Speaker 1: is going to be, what they think is going to be,
- 10:12Speaker 1: or what the market things is going to be happening
- 10:14Speaker 1: four months out to a year out. And one of
- 10:17Speaker 1: the big debates that's going on in markets these days,
- 10:20Speaker 1: and you and I and Madeline have have talked a
- 10:22Speaker 1: lot about this is just how effective is central bank
- 10:26Speaker 1: you know, policy these days? As you and I have
- 10:28Speaker 1: debated in Madeline has Uh, We've all talked about a
- 10:32Speaker 1: lot in recent weeks is is sort of the effectiveness
- 10:36Speaker 1: of of global central banks and policies. We talked a
- 10:40Speaker 1: lot about the diminishing returns as central banks are getting
- 10:45Speaker 1: from uh, this era of lower no interest rates. Uh.
- 10:49Speaker 1: Kid Jokes, who's the chief market strategist at Society Generally,
- 10:54Speaker 1: actually had a very good no doubt talking about how
- 10:57Speaker 1: after the trillions of dollars of money that has been
- 11:01Speaker 1: pumped into the global economy by central banks, here we
- 11:04Speaker 1: are in two thousand sixteen, able two thousand sixteen, and
- 11:09Speaker 1: all we're seeing is very low growth. This is your
- 11:12Speaker 1: impotent point exactly. We're going to get to that in
- 11:15Speaker 1: just a second, because I've got something for you all that.
- 11:17Speaker 1: But Madeline, and your experience other markets always right, and
- 11:21Speaker 1: how do you determine what they're actually saying? You can
- 11:24Speaker 1: see what a phenomenal logical market level is, but how
- 11:28Speaker 1: do you know that the interpretation is right? Well? I
- 11:31Speaker 1: think it all depends on your perspective, right, And always
- 11:33Speaker 1: remember my short position is your long position. If you
- 11:36Speaker 1: believe something is going up, you've got to sell it
- 11:38Speaker 1: to somebody. So it's it's a given take situation. But
- 11:40Speaker 1: I do think that more broadly in a market based
- 11:43Speaker 1: capitalist system, as we have for aessential bank, not to
- 11:46Speaker 1: pay attention to the markets and what the markets are saying.
- 11:48Speaker 1: These are ultimately smart people who are doing their analysis
- 11:52Speaker 1: and putting their money on the line, or their investors
- 11:54Speaker 1: money on the line. That you can't really ignore that.
- 11:57Speaker 1: And I would sort of warn that you know, where
- 12:00Speaker 1: not talking about the stock market here and it's various
- 12:02Speaker 1: ups and downs. Nor are we talking about the FX
- 12:05Speaker 1: markets another completely different story. We are talking about the
- 12:08Speaker 1: bond market here, which can be volatile admittedly, but if
- 12:11Speaker 1: you look at the ten year yield since December, it
- 12:14Speaker 1: has been more or less on a downtrend and two
- 12:17Speaker 1: percent is the level that is really hard for the
- 12:19Speaker 1: ten ure yield to get above in the US, and
- 12:21Speaker 1: I think that tells you something about what investors feel
- 12:24Speaker 1: is the outlook for growth. But for both of you
- 12:26Speaker 1: in your jobs, one of the things I find frustrating
- 12:29Speaker 1: is how do you cut through the noise and find
- 12:32Speaker 1: out what actually is the central point? Because it does
- 12:37Speaker 1: feel like one day market participants are saying that there
- 12:40Speaker 1: needs to do this and they're hopeless at that. Then
- 12:43Speaker 1: the next day they're saying precisely the opposite how do
- 12:46Speaker 1: you sort out, to quote Nate Silver, the signal from
- 12:51Speaker 1: the noise. As Medal has said, there's always going to
- 12:55Speaker 1: be a buyer and a seller, and you're always going
- 12:58Speaker 1: to have the ups and downs of the markets. But
- 13:01Speaker 1: what we need to do every day is is take
- 13:03Speaker 1: a step back, take a look at the big picture
- 13:05Speaker 1: and try to get a sense of what does the
- 13:07Speaker 1: bigger picture or message that the markets are are are sending.
- 13:11Speaker 1: And I think that in these days it's clear that
- 13:13Speaker 1: the markets are signaling that the outlook for the global
- 13:18Speaker 1: economy is is pretty anemic. I mean, as Madeline said,
- 13:21Speaker 1: he's talking about the tenure yield. Globally, bon yields on
- 13:25Speaker 1: average are down one to one point three percent, a
- 13:28Speaker 1: record low. Does anemic often get conflated, mistakenly with disastrous
- 13:35Speaker 1: If we go back to January, in the first half
- 13:38Speaker 1: of February, the narrative coming not just from the markets,
- 13:43Speaker 1: but from some family serious economists as well, you could
- 13:46Speaker 1: be forgiven for thinking the apocalypse was with us, and
- 13:49Speaker 1: now here we are. The macro economic data hasn't changed dramatically,
- 13:54Speaker 1: certainly within the US, China hasn't fallen apart, and the
- 13:58Speaker 1: Eurozone is like, you know, hanging in there. Well, what
- 14:02Speaker 1: I would say is you're right. I mean, at the
- 14:04Speaker 1: beginning of the year, there was a number of different
- 14:06Speaker 1: events that happened that caused a lot of terminal markets.
- 14:09Speaker 1: You had China weakening its its currency, raising concerns about
- 14:14Speaker 1: a currency war. Oil and commodities continued to collapse um
- 14:19Speaker 1: raising concern about deflation, global recession, defaults by energy companies
- 14:25Speaker 1: that have raised a hundreds of billions of dollars in
- 14:27Speaker 1: recent years. You had all these events coming together at
- 14:31Speaker 1: the same time. You had the Bank of Japan going
- 14:34Speaker 1: into negative interest rates and the European Central Bank going
- 14:38Speaker 1: further into a negative interest rates, and the message that
- 14:41Speaker 1: was sending the markets was the central banks are not
- 14:45Speaker 1: the answer. After all these years and all of they've done,
- 14:48Speaker 1: they still can't fix the global economy. Now we're in
- 14:53Speaker 1: impotence territory for one of a better time. Right. But
- 14:57Speaker 1: you know, so I think that you know, taking a
- 14:59Speaker 1: look at all that the first couple of months of
- 15:02Speaker 1: the year, it was very turbulent markets and markets were, um,
- 15:05Speaker 1: we're reacting to that. They weren't just reacting to to
- 15:07Speaker 1: what central banks were doing. March was a tremendous comeback.
- 15:11Speaker 1: I think in the SMP we were down ten percent
- 15:15Speaker 1: through mid February and then the SMP five recouped all
- 15:19Speaker 1: that through the end of March. It was the biggest
- 15:21Speaker 1: turnaround in history for the markets. So that makes me
- 15:23Speaker 1: wonder who was right in January February or were they
- 15:26Speaker 1: both right? They were both right. The markets are not
- 15:29Speaker 1: signaling now that it's all clear, while back in February
- 15:34Speaker 1: and January. In February, there's a lot of concern about
- 15:37Speaker 1: as I said, deflation, global recession that's come out of
- 15:41Speaker 1: the market, but the market is not signaling that it's
- 15:43Speaker 1: all clear, right. And I would just add to that
- 15:46Speaker 1: with Bob says, is that you have to just be
- 15:49Speaker 1: mindful of when when you talk about the market, what
- 15:51Speaker 1: your how you look at things. I really do think
- 15:54Speaker 1: the perspective rely matters if you take what the market
- 15:56Speaker 1: is pricing in now for it, like Bob says, in
- 15:59Speaker 1: the next years ahead, you know, rather than looking at
- 16:01Speaker 1: the noise, you have to kind of look at the
- 16:04Speaker 1: long term and then sort of from there. And it
- 16:06Speaker 1: wouldn't be tenable to have the market pricing in you know,
- 16:09Speaker 1: very low likelihood of maybe even two rate tags this
- 16:13Speaker 1: year and the Fed still maintaining no, we're going to
- 16:15Speaker 1: raise rates for You can't have that dicotomy go on
- 16:18Speaker 1: for too long. At some point, something has to converge.
- 16:20Speaker 1: And I think for the FED to look at the model,
- 16:22Speaker 1: and you know, the FED looks at it's economic models,
- 16:25Speaker 1: the market looks at their economic models, and I think
- 16:28Speaker 1: taking it together, it's just using all the data that
- 16:30Speaker 1: you can to formulate the best policy that you can
- 16:32Speaker 1: come up with. I think right or wrong is a
- 16:35Speaker 1: hard question to answer, because ultimately, if the policy is
- 16:39Speaker 1: set right, then yes, you should see growth pick up.
- 16:43Speaker 1: Right come the middle of the year, the picture looks different.
- 16:46Speaker 1: You're trying to create the conditions now that foster growth
- 16:49Speaker 1: in the future, and I think that's a really hard
- 16:50Speaker 1: balance to achieve and we shouldn't be trying to parse
- 16:54Speaker 1: too much out of the day to day moves, and
- 16:56Speaker 1: I would really warn against looking too close listens at
- 16:58Speaker 1: that point. But but the other thing, you know is
- 17:02Speaker 1: I think what happened at the beginning of the year
- 17:04Speaker 1: is people were setting up for the FED. You know,
- 17:07Speaker 1: the FED was tightening policy. They started in December, and
- 17:10Speaker 1: people were trying to set up for that, and there
- 17:13Speaker 1: was a lot of volatility around and I think that
- 17:15Speaker 1: added to the whole concern of what was going on,
- 17:17Speaker 1: and some big names thought that they would have to
- 17:20Speaker 1: revert to queue and that they would take interest rates
- 17:23Speaker 1: off the table together. Now they've scaled back their projections,
- 17:27Speaker 1: as Rich was just saying, but they haven't taken them
- 17:30Speaker 1: off the table, and they certainly haven't eased Let's get
- 17:34Speaker 1: back to the eye word body. I can buy the
- 17:37Speaker 1: argument that the central bank efforts now suffering diminishing returns,
- 17:45Speaker 1: but there still is a return there. Are you sure
- 17:48Speaker 1: it's impotence. I think it depends on how you look
- 17:50Speaker 1: at it from the market perspective. If you're looking about
- 17:55Speaker 1: at strictly what central banks are doing to asset prices,
- 18:00Speaker 1: it's probably not evident because there's still the e c B,
- 18:03Speaker 1: the b o J, they're still buying bonds, um and
- 18:07Speaker 1: other financial assets. The federals are even though it's not
- 18:10Speaker 1: creating money to buy bonds, it's reinvesting the proceeds from
- 18:14Speaker 1: maturing bonds into new security, so that money is is
- 18:17Speaker 1: cycling back in. That's actually that's supporting the bond market.
- 18:20Speaker 1: There's no question about it. But when people start talking
- 18:23Speaker 1: about whether the central banks and the Fed are are
- 18:26Speaker 1: impotent or not, they are talking really about the transition
- 18:31Speaker 1: mechanism in the sense that is the wealth in the
- 18:34Speaker 1: financial markets that the central banks have created, is that
- 18:39Speaker 1: leaking into or helping the real economy, And in a
- 18:43Speaker 1: lot of ways they're saying that it's not helping the
- 18:47Speaker 1: real economy. Take a look at them the the Atlanta
- 18:50Speaker 1: Fed in its estimates of GDP for the first quarter,
- 18:53Speaker 1: I think it's down to below one percent now the
- 18:56Speaker 1: beginning of the year was supposed to be something between
- 18:59Speaker 1: two and a half to three so that I think
- 19:01Speaker 1: when the markets see that, sees that it tells them something.
- 19:05Speaker 1: To be fair to the Atlanta Fair, that is a
- 19:07Speaker 1: tracking estimate which does change week by week depending on
- 19:11Speaker 1: incoming data. And I just wanted to say that, well,
- 19:14Speaker 1: that is the crux of what the ECB is doing
- 19:15Speaker 1: to get away from the vetch just a little bit.
- 19:18Speaker 1: They're buying program of corporate bonds. What will really matter
- 19:20Speaker 1: is whether that trickles truth too small and medium sized companies,
- 19:24Speaker 1: and as we know in Europe, those are much less
- 19:26Speaker 1: dependent on the markets and do a lot more through
- 19:29Speaker 1: bank financings. Are any of the market participants that your
- 19:33Speaker 1: teams are talking to saying that the initial stimulus, and
- 19:40Speaker 1: by initial I mean say from late two thousand and
- 19:44Speaker 1: seven through two for arguments, say, are they saying those
- 19:49Speaker 1: were ineffective in staving off depression? There's no question about it.
- 19:55Speaker 1: But but that was two thousand, two thousand ten, two
- 19:59Speaker 1: thousand seven, two thousand and ten. We're now in two
- 20:01Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. It doesn't seem to be working as effectively
- 20:05Speaker 1: as it did then. So that's an argument for diminishing returns.
- 20:09Speaker 1: It is, but remember when when the FED begins to
- 20:11Speaker 1: stop reinvestment, that's going to be another big adjustment, particularly
- 20:15Speaker 1: for one market that never gets much mentioned, which is
- 20:17Speaker 1: the mortgage backed securities market. That is going to be
- 20:19Speaker 1: something to watch. Well, Madeline, you're responsible for first word.
- 20:22Speaker 1: That means for the last word. I do have to
- 20:24Speaker 1: come back to Bob by all means well he said
- 20:30Speaker 1: it as metal as said earlier. I mean, if you're
- 20:32Speaker 1: trying to answer the questions about whether markets are right
- 20:35Speaker 1: or wrong, there is no answer to that. The markets
- 20:38Speaker 1: are going to is going to vacillate from day to
- 20:41Speaker 1: day on the incoming data. But if you take a
- 20:43Speaker 1: step back, take a look at the markets as a whole,
- 20:47Speaker 1: the message that they're signaling is that central banks can't
- 20:50Speaker 1: do it alone. And meanwhile, every Fed official says, hey,
- 20:54Speaker 1: but the April meeting is still alive. Meeting or Bob
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