Skip to main content

Fed minutes reveal dismal outlook on 2008

The Federal Reserve's FOMC Minutes for the December 11 meeting were released today and bloggers and analysts have been enthusiastically commenting. Many have said there is nothing we didn't already know, to wit: economic growth is slowing, inflation is moderate but worsening, the housing market is weak and there is still trouble in credit markets.

I was struck, however, by the number of times the year 2009 was mentioned. It was as if the FOMC members had already written off 2008 as a lost cause and were looking forward to 2009. Note the following quotes forecasting a weak 2008.

  • "Real GDP was anticipated to increase at a rate noticeably below its potential in 2008."

  • "Conditions in financial markets... were expected to impose more restraint on residential construction as well as consumer and business spending in 2008 than previously expected. In addition, ..., higher oil prices and lower real income were expected to weigh on the pace of real activity throughout 2008 and 2009."

  • "By 2009, however, the staff projected that ... an improvement in mortgage credit availability would lead to a gradual recovery in the housing market. Accordingly, economic activity was expected to increase at its potential rate in 2009."

  • "The forecast for headline PCE inflation anticipated that retail energy prices would rise sharply in the first quarter of 2008 and that food price inflation would outpace core price inflation in the beginning of the year. As pressures from these sources lessened over the remainder of 2008 and in 2009, both core and headline price inflation were projected to edge down, and headline inflation was expected to moderate to a pace slightly below core inflation."

  • "... looking further ahead, participants continued to expect that, aided by an easing in the stance of monetary policy, economic growth would gradually recover as weakness in the housing sector abated and financial conditions improved, allowing the economy to expand at about its trend rate in 2009."

To me it sounds as if the Fed expects this year to be a washout and that the economy won't really get back on track until sometime in 2009. And don't even think about investing in the housing sector until the end of this year at the earliest.

Source: Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee December 11, 2007
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation
4 comments
Read more

Trade Radar gets another update

Some of our data sources changed again and it impacted our ability to load fundamental/financial data. In response, we are rolling out a new version of the software: 7.1.24 The data sourcing issues are fixed and some dead links in the Chart menu were removed. So whether you are a registered user or someone engaged in the free trial, head over to our update page and download the latest version. The update page is here:   https://tradingstockalerts.com/software/downloadpatch Contact us if you have questions or identify any new issues.
Post a Comment
Read more

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional
2 comments
Read more