Trick or trend: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin just undermined the Fed and the economy–how bad will the damage be?

Trick or trend: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin just undermined the Fed and the economy–how bad will the damage be?

On Thursday night, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent a letter to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell announcing that he was not going to extend beyond December 31 the emergency lending support that the Federal Reserve using as a backstop in its programs to stabilize the bond market. In March, Congress ha earmarked $454 billion to support Fed lending programs as part of that months coronavirus package. The Fed, ever reluctant to take losses onto its own balance sheet, had used the Treasury cash to stand behind loan programs for medium size businessses and municipalities. Much of that money earmarked by Congress has never actually been extended to the Fed, but the Treasury did earmark $195 billion for specific loan programs at the Fed. It’s that money that Mnuchin now says will no longer be available to the Fed after December 31.

Notes You Need for May 9: Qualcomm quits, Iran fallout, WMT and FlipKart, whole sale inflation, Treasury auction, California roof top solar

Notes You Need for May 9: Qualcomm quits, Iran fallout, WMT and FlipKart, whole sale inflation, Treasury auction, California roof top solar

In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. A representative item will look like the from today: “10:20 a.m.: Bloomberg has reported that Qualcomm (QCOM) is considering exiting the market for server chips. Qualcomm started production shipments of its ARM-based 48-core Centriq 2400 server processors only last November. A Qualcomm retreat would be good news for Intel (INTC) and its 50% margins on its server chips with their $5 billion a quarter revenue rate.”