"The Fed is in the business of price-fixing.
It fixes interest rates and then tries to predict the future. "
- Jim Grant
The U.S. Federal Reserve system is cutting about 300 people from its payroll this year, a small but rare reduction in headcount…due to fall by more than 500 positions from 2022 to 2023, from 24,428 to 23,895 (2.1%).
Note the above excludes the thousands that work at the Eccles Building in Washington D.C. Bloomberg had to sue to get that information years ago. Fed transparency you know...
"Everyone who said inflation would be transitory and contributed to these policy errors - I'm sure they all work at the Fed still, so there's really no accountability."
Friend of the show Zerohedge had a headline: “With Most Central Banks Ending Their Tightening Cycle, The BOJ Remains Too Terrified To Even Start”
Various 1-Month Government Yields
(As of around 9/22/23 - note that the timeframes are not identical below)
Japan - still negative!
Live Feed of the Bank of Japan
Almost Daily Grant’s, January 15, 2021
Bloomberg noted yesterday that the Sherman Ratio, (named after the inventor, DoubleLine’s deputy chief investment officer Jeffrey Sherman) which measures the amount of yield on offer for each unit of duration, reached a record low of 0.1968 on Dec. 31, down nearly half from the 0.3468 seen at the start of 2020. In other words, as Bloomberg’s Brian Chappatta put it yesterday, “investors were more susceptible to losses from a move higher in interest rates than at any time in history.”
Since these words were written, the TLT ETF has lost 43.7%, and has given up all share price gains since 2012.
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