If you don’t like the facts, pick another set.
I believe the career of St. Louis Fed President James Bullard will be defined by his panicky comments about keeping the QE printing presses running in October as stock markets had a short-lived fright.
Bullard is generally a hawk but there are no athiests in foxholes and when the going got tough, he wanted to print some more.
What set him off were 5-year breakevens, which implied 1.50% inflation then. Now, they’re even lower at 1.39% (although up from 1.08% early this month) and he’s now casting them aside.
He says rates markets are skewed by the ECB and flows and that the Fed knows better than the market. He also said, ironically, that markets are too dovish.
Maybe markets know that at the soonest sign of trouble that James “the hawk” Bullard will turn white and fly with the doves.
A dove in hawk’s clothing
