A Look At Yellen's (Nonsensical) Claim That Fed Is "Focused On Main Street" - Yellen cartoon 03.31.2016

In case you missed it... 

In an exclusive interview with Time magazine, Fed head Janet Yellen said:

"We are focused on Main Street, on supporting economic conditions—plentiful jobs and stable prices—that help all Americans."

 

We've been arguing that Fed policies have, in fact, perpetuated the exact opposite of Yellen's stated goal for some time now. In the charts below, via Hedgeye Senior Macro analyst Darius Dale, you can clearly see the massive build in asset prices that Fed helped create. This swelling of financial assets flowed predominantly to the balance sheets of the wealthy. Not Main Street.

As Darius Dale wrote earlier today:

"This grand central planning experiment where we've made literal market-moving rock stars out of government bureaucrats will definitely come to an end." 

More on that...

Yellen & Co. have this nonsensical line of thinking that the Fed "did not make a mistake" with its December rate hike, a pause in April rate hikes was warranted because the Fed is "willing to be cautious" about poor economic data but that, ultimately, the economy is doing "quite well" so further Fed rate hikes is one of the world's "worst-kept" secrets.

Huh?

Well, data-dependent Fed, what does the data say?

Here are a few charts via Hedgeye Senior Macro analyst Darius Dale of recent data releases. Notice the clear-cut declines across these data sets (Retail sales, PPI, and NFIB Business Survey):

Click the images below to enlarge: 

A Look At Yellen's (Nonsensical) Claim That Fed Is "Focused On Main Street" - darius retail sales

A Look At Yellen's (Nonsensical) Claim That Fed Is "Focused On Main Street" - darius ppi

A Look At Yellen's (Nonsensical) Claim That Fed Is "Focused On Main Street" - darius nfib