David Scranton - Buckle Up as New Chairman Attempts to Land the Fed’s Experiment

David Scranton - Buckle Up as New Chairman Attempts to Land the Fed’s Experimental Plane #3912

The recent dramatic market volatility  continued throughout April, as the yield on the 10-year treasury rate topped 3 percent for the first time since 2014. Fears of rising interest rates and inflation helped drive the volatility, along with uncertainty about how aggressive the Federal Reserve might be in its efforts to “normalize” monetary policy under new chairman, Jerome Powell. The Fed plays such a key role in determining how all this uncertainty and instability will play out in the months ahead.

Wall Street knows very well that Powell’s job is a tricky one. In a sense, he’s charged with landing an experimental airplane that was launched nine years ago in response to the Financial Crisis. That’s when the Fed, under then-chairman Ben Bernanke, embarked on a historically unprecedented effort to jumpstart the economy with artificial stimulus, a.k.a. quantitative easing.