The main value you and me in Mohamed El-Erian’s observations on financial markets is that he has a knack for framing accurately, if longwindedly, the consensus view of financial professionals on topics of the day.  Nothing profound, but a solid base for figuring out how to fashion contrary bets.

In a piece for Yahoo Finance this week, however, Mr. El-Erian has neatly made a number of points about the fed funds rate cut that seems to be on the cards for later this month:

–there’s little justification for the cut on traditional economic grounds

–the reduction will likely have little impact on the real economy

–the cut won’t weaken the dollar, because other nations will reduce their equivalent rates

–at a time when financial speculation is already running hot, a rate cut risks adding accelerant to the fire

–cuts reduce the scope for the Fed to act in case of a real financial emergency

–the Fed will lose at least some credibility as an independent body whose signals should be followed by financial markets (my note: in fact, the parallels are already being drawn between Trump and Nixon, whose meddling with the Fed for political reasons in the early 1970s led to financial disaster later in that decade).

no good reason to cut, so why?

If everything’s going so well, why bully the Fed into easing?

I think it has to do with stock market earnings growth.  Last year overall eps for the S&P 500 grew by about 18%.  My back-of-the-envelope estimation is that operating earnings grew by 8% and the other 10% was a one-time upward adjustment for lower US taxes.  A reasonable guess for 2019–without including the negative effect of tariffs–would have been another 8% growth for the US portion of S&P earnings and, say, 6% for the foreign component.  Figuring that both are roughly equal in size, that would imply +7% for 2019 eps.

So far, though, eps are coming in about flat. And analyst predictions, always on the sunny side, are now for slight year-on-year dips for the June and September quarters.  Yes, Europe is weaker than one might have thought.  So that’s a (small) part of the disappointment.  But it seems to me the Trump tariffs + retaliation to them must be biting much deeper into the domestic economy than Wall Street (or I) had been expecting.   …and that’s without considering the longer-term structural harm I think they are likely to do.

If so, the solution is to find a face-saving way to reduce or eliminate tariffs.  it is certainly not to introduce further distortions into fixed income markets.

PS:  it seems to me that the best way to compete with China is to strengthen the education system and to support government-assisted scientific research.   Both are non-starters in today’s domestic politics.