Commentary
Markets trimmed over 3 percent by Friday’s close after Federal Reserve Chairman Powell offered up a stark eight-minute soliloquy telling Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” to straighten up, fast, because the Fed was not going to refill the punch bowl.
I said in my July jobs report that the prognostications of the stock peddlers-cum-“analysts” on business TV were “a bit sanguine that the Fed will loosen its tightening of rates,” and predicted the overnight federal funds rate would need to go up to as much as 5 percent to strangle inflation.
Powell seemed to reiterate that hawkish view on Friday when he said the Fed, “is moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent.”…