What to watch for

The truth is that we’re still actually experiencing an extended economic imbroglio that dates back to 2008.

In order to counter the potential for deflation arising from the Great Financial Crisis the Fed lowered interest rates to unprecedentedly low levels and instituted unprecedentedly radical “quantitative easing” monetary policies. In doing so, they did manage to avoid deflation. Then the task was to re-normalize rates (back to around three or four percent) and policies (lowering their balance sheet of crisis-induced purchases of financial assets).

The Fed has announced normalization intentions several times since about 2010. Each time, as they started to alter policies, the markets and the economy reacted in problematic ways. So here we are, more than ten years later, with rates still artificially low and the Fed balance sheet still artificially high.

In recent weeks they’ve started to intimate that they will soon, again, attempt to go in the direction of normalization. Watch to see if they’re able to. If not, then you’ll know that an underlying entrenched economic malaise continues to plague the capitalist system.