The Fed’s Alice In Wonderland Economy – What Happens Next?

After the president of the United States, the most powerful person on the planet is the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Ask almost anyone on the street for the name of the U.S. president, and you’ll get a quick answer.

But if you ask the same person what the Federal Reserve is, you’ll likely get a blank stare.

They don’t know – partly due to the institution’s deliberately obscure name – that the Fed is really the third iteration of the country’s central bank. Or that the Fed manipulates the nation’s economic destiny by controlling the money supply.

And that’s just how the Fed likes it. They’d prefer Boobus americanus not understand the king-like power they wield.

By simply choosing to utter the right words, the chairman of the Fed can create or extinguish trillions of dollars of wealth both in and outside of the U.S. He holds the economic fate of billions of people in his hands.

So it’s no shocker that investors carefully parse everything he says. They have to, if they want to be successful. Some even go as far as to analyze the almighty chairman’s body language. Of course, the mainstream financial media revere the Fed.

You may recall the unhealthy spectacle that occurred in 1996. That’s when Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman at the time, spoke the now famous phrase “irrational exuberance” in what should have otherwise been a dull and forgettable speech.

Investors heard Greenspan’s phrase to mean that the Fed would soon raise interest rates to slow the global economy.

It’s worth mentioning that Greenspan didn’t actually say the Fed would raise rates. Nor did he intend to signal that.

Nonetheless, the reaction was swift and panicky. U.S. markets were closed at the time, but stocks in Japan and Hong Kong dropped 3%. The German stock market fell 4%. When trading started in the U.S. market the next day, the market opened down 2%.

Billions of dollars of wealth vanished in a period of 16 hours.