Tag: Consumer Spending

The narrative around the Fed’s increasingly hawkish stance is that it’s reacting to consumer price inflation. That’s part of it, but I’m convinced Powell & Co. are playing at a much bigger game. Ever since the great financial crisis, asset markets have become unhealthily dependent on easy money. Besides exacerbating inequality, artificially inflated asset markets are prone to bubbles and bust. That’s why the most incisive market watchers have been saying for a long time that the Fed’s biggest challenge is to end this dependency once and for all. If that’s what the Fed is doing, how’s it going to affect markets? More importantly, which assets will suffer, and which will prosper?