The market will be awaiting Bernanke’s pronouncements this Wednesday in his monetary policy report to Congress. Ben will likely have prepared two speeches, one hawkish and the other dovish. Almost a month ago Bernanke telegraphed the Fed’s intention to eventually taper off QE. Since then the Fed has prevaricated and indicated that monetary policy would

The risk that faces the Fed today is that it will not be able to taper of its asset purchase program. All indicators point to a sustainable, albeit weak recovery. It is only reasonable that if this were true, the Fed would at some stage be well advised to reduce its balance sheet, if nothing

As expected the Fed is prevaricating over its plan to slow the pace of QE. The Fed was always going to telegraph its intentions well in advance and to prevaricate publicly until the market was weaned off the idea of perpetual QE before they actually taper it off. 

  Lest we forget, the job of the Fed is not to support equity and bond markets but to promote price stability and stable economic growth, the former a stated goal, the latter an implied one. Yet market participants continually watch the Fed as if it was the primary driver of asset markets, at least

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