Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
St Louis Fed head James Bullard is out on the wires saying there could still be tapering in 2013.
- St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said the central bank could taper its $85-billion-a-month bond-buying program during its October meeting. “This was a close decision here in September,” Bullard said in an interview with Bloomberg, emphasizing the role that economic data has played and will continue to play in Fed decisions
This reminds me after the May comments by Bernanke that tapering might be on the horizon, a bevy of Fed speakers came out in the following week to counterbalance that by saying it is very conditional on economic data and nothing is guaranteed. Now we have the exact opposite… Bernanke surprised everyone by doing nothing so now they send out minions to say “but we just might do in the future…any moment now!” Yada yada yada. One thing Bernanke really had been good with was utilizing the bully pulpit and he could use his gift of gab in lieu of action at times… but now it is difficult to take what he says with credibility.  If they did not do it this meeting it is (a) difficult to see them doing it in a meeting without a news conference immediately after to react to the insufferable whining from the stock market community and (b) since the next meeting with a news conference is not until the holidays, do you think Ben is going to ruin Christmas like that?  Sure seems to not be his style. I thought he would start to taper mostly because he wanted to set the precedent before he left office but even that doesn’t seem to matter so it seems status quo until 2014.
Two more Fed speakers later today including the only hawk. But all this is noise now.
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