Pimco's Crescenzi: Bond Investors Hostage of Fed's 'Three Musketeers'

It's the "Three Musketeers," he told CNBC: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and New York Fed President William Dudley. Their opinions outweigh market fundamentals when the two aren't in harmony, Crescenzi said.

"It's a little discomforting. . . . Plus there's no way to know what they're thinking."

To be sure, the Fed can't be faulted for acting to boost the economy, given that the rest of government is paralyzed, he said. "Congress is doing nothing," Crescenzi noted. "The Fed may not be doing things we like, but nobody else is doing it."

The central bank decided at its meeting this week to end its quantitative easing, which totaled $85 billion of bond purchases a month last year.

Now the question is when the Fed will begin raising interest rates. After the more hawkish tone of the Fed's policy statement Wednesday, many economists expect the central bank to act around the middle of next year.

As for quantitative easing, not everyone believes it had a major impact.

"It is a mistake to think that the Fed was a major driver of either bond prices, stock prices or the economy over the last four years," James Hamilton, an economist at the University of California at San Diego, told The Wall Street Journal.

"There has been some exaggeration of what this meant, both from the doomsayers as well as some of the Fed’s defenders."

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