He Speaks — The three little pigs, three french hens, three strikes and you’re out - three really is the magic number. Add to that list three rate hikes in 2022, because that’s what Mr. JPow himself has elucidated as the Fed’s game plan going into the new year. 

U.S. markets broadly opened lower yesterday morning. JPow, a notorious bear hater, immediately turned things around once he took the stage. Prior to his press conference, the market was dying to be let in on what the economic gods see as risks and how they plan to combat those, if they do, going forward. Now, the smoke is at least partially cleared and investors seem pretty satisfied.

For starters, Powell addressed inflation head on. The Chairman said there was a risk that inflation may stay “persistently high”, in other words, it’s definitely not transitory. “We thought that was the appropriate way to go” was the super-scientific language used to described the Fed’s thinking around doubling the speed of tapering, with Powell adding that “we are basically two meetings away now from finishing the taper.”

In other developments, JPow said the Omicron variant is a risk that will continue to be monitored but isn’t anything to stress too much about right now. In other words, the new variant isn’t an input in the Central Bank’s decision making just yet.

Lastly, the other hot topic of conversation was the labor market. The balancing act of maintaining appropriate levels of inflation and unemployment is a challenging endeavor, but right now, this challenge has escalated. The U.S. economy per the most recent data is seeing 6.8% annual inflation with 4.2% unemployment. While that unemployment figure is strong, labor force participation remains weak. On this subject, Powell spit game saying “It could well have been that this cycle was different because of the short nature of it, and a very strong number of job openings…we have to make policy now and inflation is well above target, so this is something we need to take into take into account.” Fire.

All things considered, the market was friendly with the Fed yesterday.

The 20 Minutes Millionaires— The term “wild west” is often employed to describe the modern state of the crypto market. Based on developments this week, I think that “Mars” or “bottom of the Mariana’s Trench” is more apt.

Pricing something is hard. Supply, demand, and all that jazz can get tricky fast, but that’s why we have exchanges because that is literally their entire job. Unfortunately, sometimes those exchanges completely sh*t the bed. On Tuesday, Coinbase along with CoinMarket Cap, a data provider, pulled off maybe the best prank of 2021.

Although it wasn’t intentional (allegedly), it was still pretty hilarious. The two companies and the prices of coins they display suddenly glitched and showed sky-high prices for certain crypto assets that were definitely not accurate. This led many users to think they had suddenly become millionaires, only to be slapped by the truth when the firm’s clarified the glitch on social media a short time later.

Imagine that? You check your Coinbase account and see that all the sudden you’re literally a millionaire just to have it wiped away moments later. Crypto is wild, but this is what we signed up for…right?