President Donald Trump defended his trade wars and attacked the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.
On August 14, the president criticised the Fed and its "clueless" chairman Jerome Powell for not reducing rates aggressively enough as investors flocked from United States equities into Treasury securities.
"We will Win!" Trump tweeted.
Mr. Bullard also played down the rout Wednesday in US equity markets, noting that stock prices might be more affected by trade-related uncertainty than American consumers. "Raised too much & too fast", Trump said in a series of tweets on Wednesday. Data also showed industrial output in China fell to more than a 17-year-low in July.
US allies such Germany and New Zealand have recently made significantly more aggressive rate cuts. Indices of uncertainty also have spiked.
Louis President James Bullard said Thursday the trade war between the US and China is fueling uncertainty about the economic outlook but stressed that the domestic economy appears to be on sound footing. "So the question becomes is policy going to be easing enough. or remain so tight that the economy remains vulnerable?"
In particular, low and even negative global interest rates and global economic uncertainties are driving investors worldwide to buy U.S. Treasury bonds, and all that buying pushes the yields down.
Jackie Chan sparks outrage over comments on Hong Kong protests
Protester Ah Lok, 22, shows injuries he suffered during clashes with police in Hong Kong on August 14, 2019. They clashed violently with police on Tuesday evening.
That's the sort of concern that officials worry will sap USA economic growth and helps explain why they reduced interest rates last month for the first time since 2008.
Along with the rate cut at the last Fed meeting in July, it would also mean the USA central bank will have used up nearly half the rate-cut "ammunition" assembled during a slow-moving, and ultimately truncated series of rate increases begun in 2015.
Asked whether the Fed should implement a bigger cut of 0.5 percentage point at the next meeting, Mr. Bullard demurred, saying he didn't want to prejudge its outcome.
Just ask this trader - it's bad. In conjunction with disappointing US manufacturing data, the move sparked broad repositioning that led the 3-month/10-year yield curve to invert for the first time since 2007.
Compared to the prior two recessions, the Fed may actually be ahead of the curve.
In the current case, it signaled a policy shift in January, when it removed the expectation of further rate hikes from the table, and then cut rates two weeks before Wednesday's yield curve inversion.
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