- Alan Greenspan called it a "conundrum," but some just saw it as another failure of the Fed's central planning.
- “We wanted to control the federal funds rate, but ran into trouble because long-term rates did not, as they always had previously, respond to the rise in short-term rates,” recently said the Maestro, harking back to the middle of the last decade when yields at the long end of the curve fell despite the stomping of Greenspan's feet.
- Today's crop of bond investors is again betting on the market instead of the Fed, taking long-term rates down even as central bankers prep hikes on the short end. A rising short end combined with a stable or falling long end could quickly lead to an inverted yield curve, "turn(ing) credit creation on its head," says economics professor Tim Duy. "I'm sort of wondering what's the game plan here."
- One tool today's crop of central bankers has that Greenspan didn't: A $4.49T portfolio accumulated thanks to three rounds of QE. A sale of some of those assets could be a way to lift long-term rates, suggests Barclays' Michael Gapen. Ugh.
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