I’m not one for gratuitous Fed criticism. God knows I’m not.

I avoid, assiduously even, cheap humor and the kind of cartoonishly abrasive macro-policy commentary that passes for “analysis” in the social media era.

On some days, though, the discrepancy between what officials say and what’s actually going on across markets (and the economy) is too glaring to ignore.

This week, shares of GameStop and AMC inflected moonward due, I’m told, entirely to a social media post from “Roaring Kitty,” folk hero of the original meme stock mania.

On one hand, there’s no connection between Fed policy and the kind of gambling that sends shares of left-for-dead, 90s nostalgia stocks into the stratosphere. No one bidding up those stocks is factoring in the Fed.

On the other hand, there’s something undeniably (and profoundly) absurd about the notion that monetary policy’s restrictive and a five-month, 30% stock rally capped off with another episode of the GameStop saga.

With that in mind, I wanted to briefly highlight the annotated chart below, which shows you the recent evolution of Bloomberg’s US Financial Conditions Index.

On the heels of a three-month selloff at the long-end of the Treasury curve (accompanied by a stock swoon), Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell succeeded in catalyzing an epic easing impulse beginning during the first week of November and continuing through today.

In his latest daily, JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke offered some context. Current levels on that FCI gauge (the Bloomberg index) are among the easiest in history, he noted, while engaging in a deadpan lament for the return of the meme mania.

“The tape was engrossed by the first social media post in nearly three years by @TheRoaringKitty [who] ignite[d] short squeezes in GameStop and AMC,” O’Rourke wrote, adding that “as this episode unfolded, the Bloomberg Financial Conditions Index tested… levels extremely close to the easiest levels of 2021 [which in turn represented] the easiest financial conditions environment since 1997.”

He went on to observe that on Bloomberg’s measure, financial conditions are easier than they’ve been 97% of the time looking back 34 years. That, as Powell continues to insist, against almost all evidence, that monetary policy’s not just onerous, but meaningfully so.

“Observers must laugh when thinking about Chairman Powell spending the past year describing monetary policy and financial conditions as restrictive,” O’Rourke sighed.