Jerome Powell will deliver the Fed’s semi-annual testimony on monetary policy (formerly known as the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony)  to Congress this week.  He’ll likely bore us to tears bloviating about “low inflation” and a “tight labor market” and a “healthy economy with some downside risks.”  Of course everyone watching will strain their ears to hear some indication of when the Fed will cut rates and by how much.

But the Fed is backed into a corner.  First, if it were to start cutting rates, it would contradict the message about a “healthy economy.”  Hard to believe someone in control of policy would lie to the public, right?  Furthermore, the Fed is well aware that it has created a dangerous financial asset bubble and that price inflation is running several multiples higher than the number reported by the Government using its heavily massaged CPI index.

Finally, the Fed needs to keep support beneath the dollar because, once the debt ceiling is lifted again, the Treasury will be highly dependent on foreign capital to fund the enormous new Treasury bond issuance that will accompany the raising, or possible removal, of the debt ceiling.  If the Fed starts slashing rates toward zero, the dollar will begin to head south and foreigners will be loathe buy dollar-based assets.

However, if the Fed does cut rates at the July FOMC meeting, it’s because Powell and his cohorts are well aware of the deteriorating economic conditions which are driving the data embedded in these charts which show that US corporate “sentiment” toward the economy and business conditions is in a free-fall:

The chart on the left is Morgan Stanley’s Business Conditions index. The index is designed to capture turning points in the economy. It fell to 13 in June from 45 in May. It was the largest one-month decline in the history of the index. It’s also the lowest reading on the index since December 2008.

The chart on the right  shows business/manufacturing executives’ business expectations (blue line) vs consumer expectations. Businesses have become quite negative in their outlook for economic conditions. You’ll note the spread between business and consumer expectations (business minus consumer) is the widest and most negative since the tech stock bubble popped in 2000.

Regardless of the nonsense you might read in the mainstream media or hear on the bubblevision cable channels, the U.S. and global economies are spiraling into a deep recession.  Aside from the progression of the business cycle, which has been hindered from its natural completion since 2008 by money printing and ZIRP from Central Banks, the world is awash in too much debt,  especially at the household level. The Central Banks can stimulate consumption if they want to subsidize negative interest rates for credit card companies.  But short of that, the economy is in big trouble.

I publish the Short Seller’s Journal, which features economic analysis similar to the commentary above plus short selling opportunities to take advantage of stocks that are mis-priced based on fundamentals.  You can learn more about this weekly newsletter here: Short Seller’s Journal information.