Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve moves in mysterious ways that are sometimes harmful not only to the US economy but also to emerging market economies.
The Fed caused US equity valuations to rise by the end of last year, to nosebleed levels experienced only once before in the past 100 years. It also caused housing prices to rise to levels above those in 2006 before the last US housing bust and money to flow to the emerging market economies on an enormous scale.
The Fed’s recent shift to a more hawkish monetary policy stance is already causing the asset and credit market bubbles to burst. Since the start of the year US equities and bonds have lost more than 20% of their value, while the cryptocurrency market has plummeted about 70%. This has caused a combined loss of US household wealth of about $15-trillion, or 70% of GDP.