Investors should be alarmed by US president Donald Trump’s decision to nominate his chief economist, Stephen Moore, for a powerful post on the Federal Reserve Board. Hawkish then, he regurgitates Trump’s dovish position these days, recently calling on the Fed to cut rates by half a point – an extreme position – and for Fed chief Jerome Powell and his fellow board members “to be fired for economic malpractice”. As the world’s most important central bank, the Fed has always been independent and staffed by serious economists (including Trump’s prior nominees). That suspicion was reinforced by the recent yield curve inversion, with three-month US government bond yields now higher than 10-year bonds for the first time since 2007. Kicking bull marketFor all the worried talk of yield curve inversions, stocks have remained in a definite uptrend in 2019.

Source: The Irish Times April 02, 2019 04:41 UTC