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Eyes On Jackson Hole As Powell To Confirm First Fed Cut
Jackson Hole's on deck.
That's pretty much all you need to know about the third week in what's already been an extraordinary month for markets. The theme for this year's festivities is "Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy."
Jerome Powell will speak from Wyoming at 10:00 AM ET on August 23. Obviously, he'll confirm the Fed's intention to start dialing back whatever degree of restriction current policy settings are exerting on a US economy that by and large refuses
Some who read this will probably consider my comments unfair and cynical, but from who and what I see, my guess is that most of the younger half of the population with rising debt problems has those problems because they lack self-control, not because interest rates are 3.5-5%. They want everything their friends have and a bit more. No one “needs” four or five cell phone lines to play games on with expensive data plans. Two or three cars cost money, especially when they carry good insurance. One of my hot buttons is these now common ads for debt collection companies. “I had $50,000 in debt and I didn’t know how I was going to pay for food.” Easy answer, by keeping your wallet in your pants (or purse), by not “refreshing” your wardrobe every six months. Then the deadbeats they tell you how so and so company made half their debt go away. As far as I’m concerned that’s stealing. No difference between buying stuff you don’t pay for or stealing it to sell. Someone does, in fact, have to pay for all these deadbeats and it comes in the form of higher prices, lower earnings and other effects. Nothing is free. Debts don’t go away magically; we all pay. To all the delinquents out there who can’t control themselves, wait your turn. Earn your rewards. Stop stealing them.
That’s a funny one, Lucky. Though I’m very far from young, I can still be old and naive at times. I was once, indeed, young and naive. Furthermore, I lived in a time of sparse wealth for everyone. So I had to try really hard to hurt myself. And when I erred, the pain wasn’t so profound.
I learned and moved on. But how does a young person with significant cash in his pocket learn how to manage it without making mistakes? Financial mistakes are necessary in anyone’s learning.
It’s a free country. All of us armchair traders who may have taught ourselves about how to pick stocks and manage a portfolio have had to learn lessons from time to time.