BEAR STEEPENER - Where's "Tin Cup" is that you Mr J. Powell?Fed wont (can't) cut rates as we go into a recession as has been the case for a very long time (since 1974 - Volker). This is one of those cases where past performance does not equal future results and you who drives a car by looking in the rear view mirror anyway unless your backing up. Unless you have a time machine, one must look forward and ween themselves off of technical overreliance. What's different you might ask? Unless you spent all of your time just drawing lines on charts, you should know that the USA is over its capacity for sustaining its hegemony and budget as a going concern (www.cbo.gov). Just the interest expense alone, at more than a trillion, speaks for itself (See chapter one of cbo link above Net interest status que projection). This is where historically empires lose their hegemony and Fed is desperate to break the human habit of self destruction while a irrefutably and factually corrupt US democrat controlled Government seem hell-bent on forcing fiscal policy spend for what is apparently their own interests in concert with China and Japan forcing the Fed to "pause" or otherwise have to "quantitatively tighten" (Seell bonds from thier balance sheet effectively draining the system of liquidity) to an order of magnitude placing the system in a more precarious state as R-STAR (Natural rate of interest) is unmeasurable since markets are not free to govern themselves for so long (40 years) price discovery is akin to "shooting in the dark" (One cannot measure with out a point of reference), they can only estimate and an overshoot is an even bigger risk than not doing anything at all (it takes a 100% return to break even from a 50% loss, thus a quantum's amplitude is quadratic and without an absolute value consensus for R-STAR, a small difference in Feds measure could mean a huge difference in outcome probability. In other words, put on a blind fold and walk through a mine field slowly throwing rocks or using mine detector or some form of mitigation while holding an alarm clock in your hand that when it goes off will detonate all mines (systemic implosion "systemic risk"). That is what the Fed is up against while facing internal and external challenges (Democrat's, China, Japan YCC (yield curve control policy change due to new governor and political regime ,basically Japan Democrats), thus the "pause." It's hard enough to shoot in the dark when you have head winds blowing from different directions metaphorically speaking. Or, a golfer facing windy conditions, especially headwinds,, is to swing normal or even slightly slower speed. This is the only measure the Fed can do while up against the national debt clock. The greater the Debt the more time dilates the greater the potential for error. Bottom line Fed has to force a recession as stated in their base case scenario. www.federalreserve.gov and www.federalreserve.gov
The Fed secretly hopes for a "black Swan" event to do the work for them and this is a good bet because never has there been so many tail risks stacked up where the bell curve is the tail risks!!!! Geopolitical being the greatest likely potential. Buckle up kiddos its going to get UGLY!!!!!
Back to the Golf analogy, where is "Tin Cup" when you need him? lol www.youtube.com