Waving Goodbye To Our $4.5 Trillion Friend

So the Fed is getting ready to announce balance sheet normalization.

Right, so the Fed is getting ready to announce balance sheet normalization. We previewed that last night.

Supposedly, the initial announcement won’t do anything to upset any apple carts because Janet is good a foreplay where “foreplay” of course means telegraphing what run-off is going to look like (what else would foreplay mean in that context?).

So there will be no tantrum, at least not immediately and everyone will focus on the committee’s assessment of the inflation outlook and that will be so carefully worded that it will bore people to tears and somehow, stocks will close higher on the day. That’s the plan for Wednesday. And you know what they say about “the best-laid plans”: they always work out just the way they’re supposed to (I think that’s how the old saying goes, but I could be wrong).

Anyway, people like pictures much better than they like words – just ask the folks charged with giving Donald Trump his intel briefings. So what we thought we’d do is show you the following two very simply visuals from Goldman which together serve as a kind of farewell homage to the Fed’s balance sheet as we prepare to watch it slide from 24% of GDP to 13% of GDP over four years.

Admittedly, there are some annoying words in these visuals, but the font is big and everything is rendered in aesthetically pleasing hues of blue for your viewing pleasure.

Nothing profound, just a retrospective as we wave goodbye to our $4.5 trillion friend…

BalanceSheet

BalanceSheet2

[Goldman]

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