David Rosenberg, chief economist of Gluskin Sheff + Associates, doesn't see the Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday to taper its bond buying as terribly important.
The Fed will reduce its monthly purchases by $10 billion to a total of $75 billion.
The importance of the tapering is minimized by the fact that the Fed had indicated for months that it was coming, Rosenberg says, according to
The New York Times.
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In addition, the Fed made clear last week that the federal funds rate target will likely stay at its record low of zero to 0.25 percent through 2015, Rosenberg notes. So Fed policy is staying quite accommodative.
"Going from $85 billion of monthly asset purchases to $75 billion is akin to taking the Corvette to 140 mph from 160 mph," Rosenberg writes in a commentary obtained by The Times.
But Salil Mehta, an independent statistician who teaches at Georgetown University, thinks the tapering indeed carries significance for financial markets.
That's because the Fed's bond buying is the main reason for the recent lack of volatility in financial markets, he tells The Times. Mehta believes stocks could drop at least 5 percent over the next two months.
"A lot of people focus on the bond market when they think about the Fed," he notes, "but the effects on the stock market are much, much greater."
Meanwhile, Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, doesn't even think the tapering will last.
As the Fed withdraws quantitative easing, the economy will stumble, and the stock and real estate markets will probably plummet, he writes in a guest column for
Yahoo.
"I suspect that when the economic data begins to disappoint, the Fed will quickly reverse course and increase the size of its monthly purchases," Schiff explains.
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