Today we get the last vestiges of Janet Yellen as the minutes to her final meeting are released Wednesday.
I’ll assume from Yellen’s comments after leaving the Fed, that all of a sudden she will see inflation worries and a need to raise four times this year.
All during her tenure, Yellen cited inflation running below the 2% target. But now as new Chairman Jerome Powell takes the seat at the head of the table.
As I have stated earlier, there is price inflation, but since most Americans have not seen a raise in 10 years, the bump up in wages brought about by the Trump tax cut bonuses, is not enough to create inflation woes.
But I could see Yellen sounding the alarm at the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 30-31 meeting, so as to get the credit for getting the economy growing again after a decade of near zero interest rates.
We’ll get our first impression of Powell while he testifies before Congress on Feb. 28 and March 1.