William Pesek

IN 11 CHARTS: Fed Remains On Hold, But Still Leans Towards Easing

Jun 19, 2025 5 min read paid

President Donald Trump has been calling on Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. The Fed chair has been the object of intensifying schoolyard jabs from the President. "We have a stupid person, frankly, at the Fed," Trump told reporters following the Fed's stand-pat decision on Wednesday. "Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I'd do a much better job

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

"UNCONDITONAL SURRENDER"

Jun 17, 2025 3 min read paid

The stock market held up remarkably well today considering that President Donald Trump abruptly left the Group of Seven meeting in the Canadian Rockies this morning. On his way home, he warned Tehran's residents to get out of town immediately. He also warned Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he is an "easy target" and "our patience is wearing thin." In a subsequent post,

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: June 16–20

Jun 15, 2025 3 min read paid

The moment Fed watchers have waited for is finally here—albeit with less drama than many believed a few weeks back. As we've long said, the two-day June Federal Open Market Committee meeting (Tue-Wed) should come and go with the federal funds rate still in the 4.25%-4.50% range that it's been in since December. Even as headline inflation measures appear to moderate, the

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: June 9 - 13

Jun 8, 2025 4 min read

Many of the questions the Fed has about how Trump's trade war is impacting the inflation outlook will get timely answers this week. Well, updates at least, since only President Donald Trump knows how long Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT) will continue disrupting the world's biggest economy. On Friday, we learned that half of Fed's dual mandate is doing just fine. The full-employment

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: June 2 - 6

Jun 1, 2025 3 min read

There's no question that President Donald Trump is stress testing the resilience of the economy with what we've been (objectively) calling Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT). The latest developments on Friday: Trump declared that China is violating terms agreed upon in its trade deal with the US, and he raised the tariff on aluminum and steel from 25% to 50%. Nevertheless, the resilience of the

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

Checks and Balances

May 29, 2025 3 min read paid

The US is a federal republic. It isn't a democracy, where the majority always rules. The constitutional system was designed by the Founding Fathers, who were mostly lawyers, to provide checks and balances to avert the concentration of political power and to protect the rights of minority parties against abuses by the majority as well as by those in power. The three branches of government were designed to

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

WEEKLY WEBCAST: Japan’s Brawl With The Bond Vigilantes

May 28, 2025 1 min read paid

After last week’s portentous Japanese government bond auction, in which demand was so weak as to be off the charts, William explains what went wrong and why. Contributing factors included the BOJ’s halted tightening owing to “tariff haze,” the Prime Minister’s unfortunate remark likening the nation’s fiscal situation to that of Greece, and vestiges of Japan’s economic past. But having Japan-specific causes doesn’t detract

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: May 27 - 30

May 26, 2025 3 min read paid

The week ahead is starting with another tariff whiplash. On April 2, President Donald Trump imposed hefty reciprocal tariffs on America's trading partners but postponed them for 90 days on April 9. On Friday, he threatened new tariffs on the European Union, Apple Inc., and perhaps Samsung and other tech giants to be named later. But on Sunday, he postponed Friday's June 1 tariff of 50%

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

DEEP DIVE: Demographics Entrench Deflation In China

May 24, 2025 3 min read paid

For a decade now, economists have been theorizing about how China’s aging and shrinking population might affect its economic growth potential (Fig. 1 below and Fig. 2 below). Yet there’s nothing conjectural about the ways demographics are now exacerbating the nation’s deflation troubles. As Japan’s experience since the 1990s has highlighted, few Asians in their mid-60s and higher consume with gusto as twenty- and thirty-somethings do.

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

The Elephants In The Room

May 22, 2025 3 min read

The elephant is as good a metaphor as there is for the US government bond market. Its scale, power, memory, emotional intelligence, and tendency to live in complex family groups—just like the broad array of debt instruments—are right on the nose . . . er, trunk. Yet this week, we saw that the room in which the bond market operates has more than one elephant. The other large mammal in question

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: May 19–23

May 18, 2025 3 min read

The week ahead is light on economic indicators. Fed officials undoubtedly will make some headlines. They are likely to reiterate Fed Chair Jerome Powell's basic message during his May 7 presser: "We may find ourselves in the challenging scenario in which our dual-mandate goals are in tension. If that were to occur, we would consider how far the economy is from each goal, and the potentially different

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

Not Much Stagflation Today

May 15, 2025 4 min read

Earlier this year, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he and President Donald Trump were focusing on the 10-year Treasury bond yield as a key metric for economic health, rather than the Fed's short-term interest rate. He stated, "He and I are focused on the 10-year Treasury," indicating a strategy to manage borrowing costs through fiscal policy rather than pressuring the Fed to cut rates.

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

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