The Daily Feather — A Bull on a Train Track
It must be Friday as it’s clear quirky Danielle is writing the Feather intro. Given the extraordinary strength in eating and drinking establishments in the (apparently) merry month of November, manifest in a robust showing in Retail Sales, I was going to regale you with the history of the world’s first pub. And then the headline hit, one that surely must have been fake, but then verified by Blomberg News: “Bull Removed from Tracks in Newark After Delaying NJ Transit.” Had I not been in a meeting in New York with a QI Pro client, who chuckled out loud thinking he’d been news spammed, I’d have missed it. My retort” “You say New Jersey or New Texas?” As things turned out, per the Bloomberg report, the situation was quickly contained: “The bull is no longer on the tracks, according to the agency. It was unclear how the bull got onto the tracks. The Newark Police Department, which is handling the investigation, said officers were able to contain the animal inside a fenced lot. The bull will be retrieved and safeguarded at a local animal sanctuary, the police said in a statement.”
One must ask: “How does the bull feel about being safely contained?” Perhaps we should ask one Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, and presumed savior of the bull market in bull markets after his delightful curtsy at the podium Wednesday, deemed to be the blessed “Powell Pivot 2.0.” ‘Tis true – the long-awaited encore to his January 2019 Powell Pivot 1.0 is fully concurred to have arrived. Back then, when he begged forgiveness for ‘needing the money’ as young as he was in 2012, when he was so idealistic as to say (out loud) that Quantitative Easing might be a policy from which officials would have a hard time extricating themselves – Japanese banks were up to their eyeballs in U.S. Collateralized Loan Obligations. That systemic impediment vanquished, Powell was freer to pivot in 2023 without signaling he was doing so to save the global financial system.
Markets have celebrated, and then some. We ask: To what end given this Powell Pivot was strategically maneuvered to front run the January 15th caucus in Iowa? What if…just saying…Powell pivoted ahead of the onset of the most contentious election year in U.S. history to ramrod home the message that he wasn’t for sale to either presumed candidate?