The Monetary Politbureau And The Markets – A Game Of Chicken

December FOMC Decree

Prior to the announcement of the FOMC decision on Wednesday, it was widely expected that the verbiage in the statement would be changed so as to convey an increasingly hawkish stance. Specifically, it was expected that the following phrase, which has been a mainstay of FOMC statements for many moons, would finally be given the boot and no longer appear:

“…it likely will be appropriate to maintain the 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time”  

It is inter alia this bizarre focus on little turns of phrase in the FOMC statement that has caused us to compare the analysis of the actions of the monetary bureaucracy with the art of “Kremlinology” of yore. The Committee is indeed reminiscent of the Soviet Politbureau in many respects. It is unelected, it is engaged in central planning, and its pronouncements are cloaked in an aura of mysticism, akin to decrees handed down from Olympus.

While it is fairly easy (and in our opinion, absolutely necessary) to make fun of this, it is unfortunately affecting the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. The only exceptions that come to mind are Indian tribes in remote areas of the rain forest, since they don’t use money and possess no capitalistic production structure.

Fed chair Janet Yellen: “A couple. You know, a pair. What the Russians call “dva”, although I hear the Russians are no longer as familiar with such low numbers as they once used to be. My dictionary says it means “two”. One less than the number one is supposed to count to before throwing the holy hand grenade of Antioch after its pin has been removed. Not one, definitely not five, absolutely not four and not three either. Two.”

Photo credit: Agence France-Presse / Getty Images

So what has happened to the above mentioned phrase? It has indeed been altered. Instead we got this:

“Based on its current assessment, the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.”

Crikey! What to make of this? The committee is evidently aware though of the plight of professional Kremlinologists who have to decipher these cryptic semantic changes and therefore has added the following by way of explanation:

“The Committee sees this guidance as consistent with its previous statement that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time following the end of its asset purchase program in October, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run goal, and provided that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored. However, if incoming information indicates faster progress toward the Committee’s employment and inflation objectives than the Committee now expects, then increases in the target range for the federal funds rate are likely to occur sooner than currently anticipated. Conversely, if progress proves slower than expected, then increases in the target range are likely to occur later than currently anticipated.”

Okey dokey, so “patient” actually means exactly the same as “considerable time”. The algos that interpret news releases to guide fully automated trading decisions in the stock market probably only needed to see the term “considerable” again, because the DJIA was up more than 300 points within an eye-blink after the release.