After many years of ultra-easy monetary policy, the realization that it’s going away has frightened investors to a degree unprecedented this early in a tightening cycle.
The pre-tightening fear alone burst plenty of speculative bubbles, yet no dreaded credit-crunch/recession scenario has materialized. True, the inflation genie isn’t back in the bottle yet, but we expect it will be in coming months and without crashing the economy. … The Fed’s recently released Financial Stability Report was sanguine as well. … But our soft-landing scenario is a contrary one. So we’re keeping our eyes peeled for signs of both the recession that we don’t expect and the peaking of inflation that we do. … Also, we review “Ozark” (+ + +).
