This afternoon President Donald Trump nominated Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell (known as Jay) to replace Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve. Powell, a extremely wealthy Republican who worked in the private equity business, was initially appointed to the central bank’s board of governors by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Today it’s JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon telling a conference that the unwinding of central bank bond-buying programs is an unprecedented challenge that may be more disruptive than people think. Tomorrow it’s Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen giving Congress some clue (maybe) on when the Fed will begin to reduce its $4.5 trillion portfolio of Treasury and mortgage-backed debt instruments.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen didn’t say anything new in her speech this morning at the Fed’s Jackson Hole conference. That’s pretty much the non-news that the U.S. financial markets were hoping for
Despite better than expected second quarter earnings from big Wall Street banks Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase, U.S. stocks have moved lower today on a Fed report that called valuations for biotechnology and social media “substantially stretched.”
