ASSUMING FREEDOM TO DO SO

What the Trump candidacy represents to many of his detractors is a form of protectionism, globalists' worst nightmare. At least that's what their argument to derail him is now.

Buried in that term is most of the other well-chosen epithets like xenophobe, racist, homophobe, hater and so on.

What Breixt, the upcoming UK election to go or stay in the EU, represents is a form of protectionism. As so does Grexit. Protectionism is also about sovereignty, preserving one's culture, one's currency, privacy and, in the eyes of many, liberty, all things globalists disdain. Some call it simply local rule.

So the elitists and their MSM lackeys paint it as all bad. But is it? It's a form of self-determination, what the phony right to vote is suppose to be about. In the U.S. you have two parties that say: "Here, go out and vote, pick from one of our candidates and everything will be fine."

And so it will until voters pick one candidate party aprachits don't like. And that brings us back to Trump and the perceived but false threat of protectionism and a brokered convention. It also tells us why this two party monopoly is broke.

The tremors you've been feeling are from a fault all right but not the geological kind. It's the major fault of these two bankrupt parties that for decades have been serving at best 10 percent of the people. You're enfranchised, to be sure, so long as you play by their rules.

Protectionism is like sunshine, a little bit can't be all bad. Who gets to define a little bit? Well, whose been deciding what candidates you get to vote for in these jokes called presidential primaries? The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN or Fox News? It certainly isn't you. Nor are brokered conventions or their threat new.

Local and any talk of it is a globalist's second worse nightmare. They despise terms like local, liberty, self-determination, soverignty, cultural, freedom of expression. And their disdain is all cloaked in their fake meme about revering and celebrating diversity. They don't. The term globalist itself is anti-diverse. It is also anti-language. So what's going to be the language of the globe, a Western or an Eastern one? And what happens to all the others? How free is a cashless society? Sounds pretty anti-diverse to us.

Who are the real xenophobes here, the real villains? You, me, them? That's something you'll have to decide for yourself, assuming you have any freedom left to do so when the time comes?

A CUTE PARTY

 
Ever go to a cute party?

Cute parties are always staged. And we just got treated to one that could not have been more staged. The hosts were hand selected, a couple of Democrats, a couple of Republicans, all economists, all former chief central bankers.

It was an economic play on good cop-bad cop with one slight twist: there was no really, really bad guy just another shill for their main theme who played the role of lighthouse keeper--things are fine but here's a reminder. There are some shoals out there. He's a Republican, but he's wizen and wise, two reassuring traits, to be sure, speaking the word of calm caution. That should soothe some frayed rabble nerves.

 The MSM, true to it charter, jumped on this fantasy like a gaggle of obese sports journalists during a half-time free spread at the Super Bowl. Free food? You mean there's more. Rumor has it most of them double their Metformin dose that day. You can bet a week's supply of your favorite anxiolytic stash big pharma loves it.

You wonder who thought up this obvious attempt to settle the masses down by parading four people with central bank experience, economically and gender PC, a sham if there ever was one. What it tells you, like the Trump unexpected, much parodied ascendancy, real or not, they're scared, threatened to the bone. There's trouble in paradise, not your or mine--theirs.

But let's examine a bit this cast of well-chosen characters rooted out at this particular inflection point. You have a couple of blasts from the past beginning with the guy who's credited in the early 1980s with breaking inflation's spine. You also have the long-too-long standing Mr. Irrational Exuberance, Sir Alan, who in a book about the Maestro Man by that Bob Woodward openly admitted he delighted in flummoxing the media.

More recently, the astute academician who in his spare time likes to fly helicopters. He's best remembered for staring the world in the kisser and reassuring us all the subprime miasma was "well contained." The was before it imploded. Nobody saw much of him after because reports have it he's too busy going around collecting hundreds of thousands for speeches and hobnobbing with the hedge fund crowd.

And last but not least, you have the current anointed bureaucrat who spends thirty seconds of every minute going backwards and thirty seconds of every minute going forward, a dove in dove's clothing.She's not really confused, just occasionally looks like it--all day everyday. She's been waiting for clearer signs longer than many playgoers have been waiting for Godot. If you don't smell the scent of a staged event, here's a message for you: You can't afford to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

ARROGANCE AND CONTEMPT

People who write about the prospect of bad news are usually about as welcome as bad news at a wedding celebration.

And when a GOP card carrying WSJ columnist ends her long lament about the Trump train's traction with voters by referring to "these two great parties," you know the political seas are getting rough in political paradise.

The only thing great about these two political parties is how long they've managed to bamboozle a Rip Van Winkle public trying to carve its way into what was always an uphill and now nearly impossible struggle to find their place in the middle class. Some incorrectly call this the inequality gap.That's a huge misnomer. In truth, it's a pogrom.

Getting to the middle class was an accomplishment. It gave people a sense of belonging and direction. It was about improving the breed. If not them, maybe their children could go even higher. There was a gap alright, but one middle class people knew about, even upper middle class ones, and they knew how to deal with it.

Once you wipe them out, however, cut off all possibilities of working your way there, it's over and you have what's left now, a chasm not a gap. The number of immigrants who came here, many poorer than church rodents, worked hard to reach that middle class status and nearly everyone one of them earned it. That's people. You're always going to have members of the shortcut crowd, too. That's people.

They often wind up on Wall Street or as bureaucrats in political positions seeking political power so they can tell the rest us how we should live and carry ourselves. They have names, too. Republicans and Democrats, demagogues,tyrants and elitists, members of the self-perpetuating two party system that Journal writer so nostalgically adores and wants to preserve. She, too, is an elitist, perched on her self-serving but condescending editorial throne, ever ready to tell the rest of us how we should  tie our shoes every morning.

She knows what's best. And that's these two "great parties" that have not served more than 10 percent of the people for decades. These two great self-perpetuating parties that in reality are part of the so-called one percent. Show us a Congress person who been there more than two terms and we'll show you someone out of touch and rich.

The real truth is they're the same. A long time ago a guy once noted there's not a dimes worth of difference. Well, there's is. Notwithstanding what central bankers want to tell you, there's been inflation, a lot of it. Nobody wants a dime these days.That's the only difference. They need that and much more just to exist.

The Trumpster man, hate him or otherwise, stated when he got out of the the University of Pennsylvania's School of Finance in 1968, he was worth $200,000. Whether it was daddy's money or not isn't the point. Someone bothered to calculated that out a few years back and it was worth well over $1,200,000 in today's dollars.That's what your central bankers and bureaucrats and so-called elected officials have done for you.

Some call it purchasing power and the loss thereof. That's a kind term. Broad daylight stick-up of the people is a more accurate one.

Toss in the relentless stealth taxing and smothering regulations in 50 different ways of that-dream-to-make-it-to the middle class crowd and you're ready for the official requiem that never got held. That's what the two-party system that feels that garrote tightening around its status quo gullet is shaking in their Armani suits about. That's what these "two great parties" with their military-industrial complex and wasteful social program schemes have created for you. 

Their indifference to the once respectable goal of becoming middle class has been exceeded only by their arrogance and contempt. They love their place at an already over crowded public trough. What they despise, however, is your trying to get yours.

OVERNIGHT

The yen and the export disaster. Sounds like a good title for a fairy tale. But it's no fairy tale as the yen moved to  beak a multiple year and a half high against the dollar, putting the skids to Japan's exporters.

It wasn't supposed to happen, not in the negative interest rate environment Japanese officials pushed through in late January. It was really another indirect play on beggar thy neighbor in what most in the MSM fail to admit, a currency tussle. It was suppose to work. So far it hasn't. So far it's main effect has been to further depress investor confidence in central bankers in general and Abernonics in particular.

So if your name is Honda, Sony or Toyota you might start feeling pain soon. The effect on the Nikkei 225 has been pretty obvious, down more than eight percent in the past week.

Asian shares extended losses to three-week lows on Friday, while the yen soared to a 17-month high against the dollar as investors bet Japan would be hard pressed to drive down its currency in the face of widespread foreign opposition. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacifc shares outside Japan dropped 0.5% off nearly 1% for the week, Reuters reported.

Nikkei .N225 pared earlier losses to near-two-month lows to trade 0.6 percent lower, with financials under pressure. It's on track for a decline of 3.1 percent for the week.

China's Shanghai Composite index .SSEC slid 0.9 percent, poised for a similar drop for the week. The CSI 300 .CSI300 was down 0.8 percent, set for a 1.2 percent weekly decline. Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI slipped 0.7 percent, headed for 1.9 percent loss for the week. 
Bank shares led losses in Europe and the U.S. markets on Thursday, amid talk of more layoffs and cutbacks planned by Europe's major lenders as they struggle with zero rates.

The U.S. S&P 500 Index .SPX lost 1.2 percent, with financial shares .SPSY falling 1.9 percent. In Europe, the FTSEurofirst 300 closed down 0.8 percent, hurt by a drop of more than 2 percent in financials.
 
The yen strengthened to 107.67 to the dollar on Thursday, its highest since October 2014, and last stood at 108.64, heading for a weekly gain of 2.6 percent.
The dollar index .DXY, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six rival currencies, was up about 0.1 percent at 94.583, poised for a flat weekly performance.
The euro EUR= also hit a six-month high of $1.1454 the previous day and last fetched $1.1361, set to end the week up 0.2 percent.

On the other hand, commodity-linked currencies and many emerging economy currencies stepped back from recent multi-month highs as risk-averse mood took hold on investors.
 
The Australian dollar traded at $0.7533 AUD=D4, having fallen 1.3 percent on Thursday.
In the commodities market, copper suffered its biggest fall in more than six months on Thursday, slumping 2.8 percent on the day and hitting a six-week low of $4,631 a tonne.

HERE'S THE FEAR

Here's the fear.

The Fed's March minutes were scanned and re-scanned Wednesday looking for clues--anything-- to reveal where, when and by how much interest rates are changing, if indeed they are changing.

The consensus seems to be the Fed will hold back until the global economy picks up. And that's the fear few want to face, especially the MSM myrmidons who constantly shill for the idea that central bankers know what they're doing. They don't.

What if questions are usually too scary, too unpalatable. Up to now they've perceived that at some point--tipping, inflection, magical or whatever--the global economy will hit it and things will turn around like its always done before. But if you start with a false premise and expect your conclusion to be anything but false, well, you get the idea.

The false premise is the Yellens, Draghis, Carneys of the central banking world know what they're doing. They don't. And neither does anyone else for that matter. The "like before" has never been anything magical, just the usual papering over effects just like now. The infrastructure's rotten to its core, but the curb appeal covers many of the blemishes.

On the Internet you will find more than one article these days about celebrities--mostly attractive women--swim suit models and the like showing what they really look like without the make-up. Few people realize let alone know what the real global economy looks like without all the phony make-up. Think Fox News analyst Megyn Kelly. Mean statement? No. Factual one? Yes.

Here's what they fear. China, an economy that's wearing a lot of phony government applied make-up. So the Fed cuts a deal at the February G20 meeting. It's a highly deceptive, arrogant  and dishonest deal. Suddenly, the Fed changes from its previously prideful announcements about never deviating from its two mandates, jobs and inflation. Keep in mind those are domestic jobs and inflation.

Forget transparency.That's never going to happen. Show me a transparent government and I'll show you a government no longer governing anything or anybody. One of the things those recently released "Panama Papers"proved is make-up, like a lot of things, comes in different packages.

Forget transparency. That's the emperor without make-up. And now you know the fear.

STILL SOME PROFITS THERE

The ploy is usually almost always the same. They're from the government or some quasi-government agency and they're here to help (protect) you. And just as usually that means getting those bad boys and girls who choose to play outside the foul lines. Their foul lines.

One such quasi-government clutch is the International Monetary Fund or IMF. They thrive on spreading bad news so you will feel an urgency to keep this behemoth bureaucratic den of deception and international loan sharks around. Their leader is Christine LeGarde.

Here's an excerpt that discusses the situation better than we might from thedailybell.com/news-analysis/protect-yourself-against-those-running-the-worlds-economy-for-your-benefit

The IMF is back at work spreading fear. That’s not what we are supposed to think of course. We’re supposed to believe that the IMF has our best interests at heart and that its ranks are filled with caring, decent people.

But in this article we want to review important financial facilities along with the banking elite itself to reemphasize that they are not what they seem.

We’ll remind you of why they are not to be trusted and how the current economic system worldwide has been rigged to collapse, and to take you down with it.

The IMF, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the larger central banks and top banking elites are all complicit.

In the world of high finance, nothing is as it seems. Each element in engaged in subtle interplay with the others. The goal is always destabilization along with the ruin of the middle classes and the enrichment of just a few, worldwide.

This has been going on since the Great Depression and then again since the end of World War II.

Let’s examine main players.

The IMF is part of a financial tag-team that smashes whole countries on the shoals of sovereign debt. First the World Bank lends to irresponsible government leaders and then the IMF offers additional funds.

But those funds come at a price. The IMF insists on imposing high taxes on already impoverished people. And it often forces countries to sell off valuable national enterprises to Western multinationals.

The IMF and the World Bank deal with political leaders and business tycoons. Central banks have a different role to play and the largest ones are directly involved in fine-tuning the world’s monetary system.

Secret deals are a constant occurrence when it comes to the world’s central-banks. That’s because central banking is a legalized monopoly and central bankers are supposed to conspire together. The Bank for International Settlements acts like a Mafioso Kingpin, supervising the secret arrangements.

The most recent secret deal was negotiated in February at the G20 meeting. Here, top central bank officials agreed to boost the Chinese economy via interest rate manipulation.

It was hoped this would help the doomed Chinese economy while not further damaging Western economies. In fact, the damage from decades of massive credit flows has so injured the world’s economy that no matter what central bankers do, it’s not going to be any good.

Ideally, they would step out of the way. But they won’t. They’ll just make things worse.

Their remedies are laughably simplistic anyway. They either print money or they don’t.

If they print money by creating more credit, then they will contribute to asset bubbles. If they tighten, they will puncture those bubbles prematurely and add trillions in further debt to a world already catastrophically over leveraged.

One country that is over leveraged to the point of bankruptcy is Greece. Just recently a transcript leaked showing top IMF officials mulling over some sort of “economic event” that would destabilize Greece and force Germany back to the negotiating table.

What arrogance! Powerful individuals in high places ought not to be conspiring to make others miserable  – even for the cause of economic stability.

But the Greek controversy was nearly extinguished by the most recent leak, a gargantuan one of more than ten million emails hacked from a Panamanian law firm.

The leak has come in for an enormous amount of scrutiny because it exposed a number of very important politicians and business people to various kinds of legal jeopardy including tax evasion charges.

As it has turned out, many of the individuals exposed seem in some sense opposed to the current Western-supervised financial system or its leading interests. In other words, the leak was a titanic false flag aimed at attacking enemies of transnational leadership facilities.

These two recent leaks show us once again how closely the world is controlled at the top. IMF officials can plot the further ruination of a whole country. And elite banking interests apparently can cause a financial law firm to be hacked with such exquisite accuracy that their most serious foes are targeted.

Just as world leaders cannot be trusted, neither can markets themselves.

As we can see from the IMF’s warning at the beginning of this article, Asian markets are fragile and on a downward course.

And recently, Business Insider posted an article explaining that, “One of the best signals in the stock market is saying it may be time to sell.”

This is the trailing 12-month price-to-earnings multiple.  Once stocks in aggregate looked cheap. Now, we learn, “based on the same indicator, it looks as if the market is nearing the top.”

The article concludes, “stay tuned.” But we don’t need to. We already know how this story ends. Badly for you, better for a handful of others.

The response in Iceland was the correct one. But there's a larger point here as we pointed out in our recent blog,SO WHICH IS IT? What deal was cut?  If you think such is an isolated event, know that you do so at your own peril.

Greed is about the fear of missing out on more, not about taking some profits. The financial shock jockey, the Howard Stern of this presidential election, The Donald, has it right. Don't put any more money into this market. In fact, take some of the table while there's still some profits there.

SOME QUESTONS FOR YOU

Here's a question for you irrespective of your age: Is the world more screwed up today, more dangerous than any time in your recall?

Now that covers a lot of ground from countries facing unsustainable debt obligations to wars and famine, elections and the like. It's also a question you need to ask and answer for yourself if your considering buying gold.

Gold is like the wayward one in a family; it gets a lot of discussion, not much respect. Is it or does it, for example, provide a store of value and if so against what? If you're a fiat currency fan, you probable have an attitude when it comes to gold.

People who don't like it argue it doesn't pay or yield any return while your holding it. That sounds much like one of my ex-girl friends. If you know how many central banks today around the globe have invoked negative interest rates in an attempt to either avoid or stimulate their economies from a slowdown in growth, does gold return anything in those situation? and what about your check books and savings accounts? Or those COLAs for social security recipients for the next two years?

Are gold bugs, a pejorative term to be sure, just some looney tooney farts, mostly old and out of touch like that term and those who toss it around suggest?  Would you bother to pick it up if you found a piece laying on the ground? Would those who say it's a fraud compared to paper assets the world now reveres bother to pick it up?

We will spare you all the shopworn debates about whether it's a safe haven, yields anything, storage costs and the rest. What we have noticed for some time now, fewer and fewer bother to pick up pennies when they come across them in the street.

Are pennies symbolic of fiat currencies? A fellow named Ben Franklin once thought so much of them, he argued one saved is one earned. Now Ben's been missing for a longtime, but plenty of others who once subscribed to that belief are still around. It goes by another name, purchasing power.

How many nickels and dimes and quarters and fifty cent pieces play an intricate part in your financial world today?  Better yet, when is the last time you even saw a fifty cent piece?  There was a time when they had actual silver in them and they made a distinctive ringing sound when dropped on the table or floor. If you can find one around today drop it and see what sound it makes.That should tell you something about inflation and if there's really any around.

Does the piece of paper you hold called an insurance policy on your abode or your car pay anything year after year you keep buying it unless something you never want to happen happens? We call those insurance policies put options. Also decaying assets. They have a time limit, like you and me. And they usually yield nothing in the way of income and wind up going to zero, something gold in your lifetime or mine or even in its history has never done.

Those policies with few exceptions are pretty illiquid. You might not like the offered price, but we're willing to bet push versus shove time, you could get something for that gold. Not so sure about those policies. So the next time you read some wanna be pundit citing the reasons gold isn't worth holding, doesn't yield anything and never grows in value like fiat assets, think about some of these questions.

And, oh yea, you might want to see if any of those coins we mentioned have returned to their previous glamour and place in your daily financial world. We're willing to bet some gold with you--if you have any--that they haven't.

The stock market topped out in 1929 in August. The real damage didn't start until October of that year. Though there were some rallies along the way off the 1932 nadir, it took 25 years before the market surpassed it August 1929 Dow high.  Back then there was no S&P 500. A lot of cemeteries got filled up during that time.

In the early 1980s when gold hit its high above $800 an ounce, the U.S. Mint as is its wont floated some commemorative one ounce gold coins named after an American Indian lady. Lots of people purchased them for their gold content at $700. $690, $550 $300 right on down to where the price of gold bottomed years later in the $200 range.

It took quite a while before gold started up again, settling into what became a 12 year bull run. We haven't priced what a one ounce set of those coins goes for today based on just their gold value let alone any added collector value they night have. But we're willing to bet if any of those people are still around most of them are more than even given gold's current price just above $1200 an ounce.

In this same 1980s there was something called the Asian Tigers, the most famous of which was the Japanese Nikkei. It just kept rising and though it traded at nearly 40,000 at its top, perceived wisdom frequently said at the time 80,000 was a realistic top. In fact, there was what many bull markets illustrate near their end an air of arrogance and certainty.

  Japan NIKKEI 225 Index decreased 18 points or 0.11% to 15715 on Wednesday April 6 from 15733 in the previous trading session. Japan NIKKEI 225 Index lost 3926 points or 19.99 percent during the last 12 months from 19,640.54 points in April of 2015. Historically, the Japan NIKKEI 225 Stock Market Index reached an all time high of 38915.87 in December of 1989 and a record low of 85.25 in July of 1950.

As you can see the old Nikkei high hasn't been exceeded since, a 25 year period so far. Land is scarce in Japan. But you get the idea about burials along the way of those waiting to get even.

As for that yellow metal, here's a look at it.

 

 

 

Here a preface to the next chart.
If you’re someone who’s skeptical of government-reported numbers, you’ll find the following chart confirms your suspicions. And if you’re someone who’s attracted to value, you’ll love the chart.   

There is a lot of criticism of the government’s CPI number simply because it doesn’t really seem to reflect what the average person experiences. Even with gas prices in decline, other segments of our society have seen prices accelerate. Healthcare and college costs are two biggies, rising far more than the current 0.2% reading. And many food items have scary trajectories—ground beef has more than doubled since 2010.

Meanwhile, the gold price has fallen by roughly a third over the past three-plus years and been flat for the past four to five months. But is it a good value at current prices?
Since 1980, the CPI formula has been modified at least a dozen times. Heck, they even implemented a new “estimation system” this year. Most nongovernment economists (like you and I) think those changes have made the reading less accurate, not more. So I asked John Williams of Shadow Stats to calculate the gold price in March 2015 dollars (the latest data available) based on the CPI-U formula from 1980.
Here’s what he found.

 

Casey is a known bear, but so what. Do you know any known bulls? MSM is full of them. In  reference to the above chart, we will draw the line with his last statement below and let you decide for yourself.

Adjusted for the 1980 inflation measure, the gold price is approaching its bear market low of 2001. In fact, gold is now below the 1975 price when it became legal to own it again! These data clearly show that when measured against a more realistic view of inflation, gold is dramatically undervalued.
And with total worldwide debt levels up by a whopping $57 trillion since the end of 2007, the need to own it is as important as ever. So if you're looking for a helping hand, look no further than the end of your own wrist.  Do your own research if you can. And don't forget to keep asking those questions. The purchasing power you preserve might be your own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OVERNIGHT

One of investor fears in Japan has been the strong yen against the dollar.  The fear centered on Japan's attempt to weaken its currency and help trade its way to sounder economic times.

Overnight the yen came off a 17-month high against the buck causing more than some angst for investors and putting in question Abernomics after officials expressed reluctance to intervene to slow the currency's appreciation, sources said. Meanwhile, the Nikkei edged higher 0.3% to trade at 15,777.13 after dropping nearly 12% during the first quarter. The WSJ reported that: "The yen has held on to its gains despite warnings from Japanese officials that the country would not tolerate excessive strength in its currency."

The U.S markets didn't helps things out, falling for the second straight day as gold, Treasuries and the yen were perceived again as safe haven places. Oil finished the end of the day slightly higher, too.The quest for a safe haven also pushed yields on government bonds lower in the U.S.,UK and Germany.

Other issues weighing on the markets is first quarter earnings reports. In the U.S. analysts are expecting S&P 500 companies’ first-quarter earnings to fall 8.5% from the year-earlier period, according to FactSet.

Don't forget investors will be pouring over the Fed minutes tomorrow.

IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY.

Here's a bit of news for Rhode Island Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse he might be interested in since he likes to use comparisons with those evil tobacco firms. The climate change zealot recently bragged about those state attorneys generals who nailed big tobacco to their PC cross to make a point in one of his screeds against the WSJ.

In the broad daylight heist of big tobacco companies California was one of the big hogs. Just how much of that settlement money, if any, found its way into the state's massive retirement fund is moot.

First you stick a gun in their ribs, vilify them and steal money, now after your less than sterling investment record you want make more money off them. That sounds like some bureaucrats. Most of the tobacco firms were driven off shore. That sounds like what happened to a lot of jobs.

But there's another irony here. California is one of the most angry ardent anti-smoking places on the planet, running ugly, hardcore media ads to ban smoking anywhere in the state. Oh yea, and that means beaches and your own backyard and bathroom..

Forget public health: it has always been about the money. And so, too, is the religion of climate change. Maybe someone should tip off the mayor of Chicago. He was recently looking for some retirement fund money.

Hello, Mr. Whitehouse.

cnbc.com/2016/04/04/calpers-could-put-money-back-into-tobacco-stocks

MIXED MESSAGES

Are Fed members this mixed up or is it just a ploy they're playing on the American people to keep them guessing?

Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengen spoke Monday, sending a mixed message from what Chair Janet Yellen just said a few days ago that settled markets and caused a rally in stocks. It wouldn't be the first time this happened. Former Chairman Alan Greenspan took great delight sending out mixed messages despite his incessant call for more transparency.

This is all the more reason the Fed should be put under tighter scrutiny and possible disbandment. It's pretty clear either this is a ploy or they have not got a clue as in one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. This from CNBC.

 Futures markets are wrong, and the Federal Reserve likely should hike rates sooner than they imply, Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren said Monday. 

 
In prepared remarks for a speech in Boston, Rosengren — a Federal Open Market Committee voter and historically one of its dovish members — also said markets are too slow in pricing in rate hikes, and that their path of hikes is too low. 

"A weak forecast doesn't seem to explain the path expected for the funds rate," he said in prepared remarks. "As I see it, the risks seem to be abating that problems from abroad would be severe enough to disrupt the U.S. recovery. Financial-market volatility has fallen, and most economic forecasts do not reflect expected large spillovers from continued headwinds from abroad."

The U.S. "has weathered foreign shocks quite well," Rosengren said, adding that the risks from abroad are easing overall. Those comments potentially stand in contrast to remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who last week pointed to weakened international conditions in explaining her cautious outlook. 

Rosengren, who is historically considered to be about as dovish as Yellen, said he expects a strong economy and full employment. He also said he expects inflation will rise gradually.
On Friday afternoon, markets were only pricing a 5 percent chance of a rate hike in April, according to CME Group data. As of Friday, the first month with a better-than-50-percent chance of a rate hike was September, according to CME Group. 

"With financial market volatility subsiding since earlier this year, it is to me surprising that the expected path of monetary policy embedded in futures markets is so low," Rosengren said Monday. 

It was only last Tuesday that Yellen sounded a dovish note in a speech, acknowledging that economic and financial conditions are in some respects less favorable now than in December.
In that speech, Yellen cited global concerns as one of the reasons behind her tepid economic outlook. And responding to a question after her remarks, Yellen said the "major thing that's changed" between December and March affecting the Fed's baseline outlook is "a slightly weaker projected pace of global growth." 

A dovish Fed left interest rates unchanged in March. In its statement, the FOMC noted that "global economic and financial developments continue to pose risks" to U.S. economic growth, and that inflation was "expected to remain low in the near term."