“The coronavirus could be the proverbial Black Swan event. No one saw that coming. We’ve seen everything else [up to this point] that’s coming. The Fed saw something coming in September and it wasn’t coronavirus.”

All it took was a 10% sell-off in the S&P 500. On Tuesday the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points to a target range between 1% and 1.25% over fears the coronavirus will have a negative impact on the U.S. economy. I am confident that the rate cut was targeting the stock market because that’s all the Fed, the White House and Wall Street have as “evidence” the economy is fine. The bond market is suggesting otherwise, the yield curve has compressed to record low yields.

David Stockman perfectly describes the scenario facing the country: “The coronavirus is now exposing a far more deadly disease: Namely, the poisonous brew of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians.” (LINK)

Chris Marcus of Arcadia Economics and I discuss the market forces causing the stock and bond market chaos of the last few weeks: