Verbal intervention now becomes real/The other side wants to influence the Fed too/Other

I'll start the week with a great quote from movie director James Cameron that I read in the Weekend FT on AI. "We're all generative AI's - we're all vast data sets of every experience we've ever had. Generative AI can give you a bitmap and give you an image, but can't give you an emotion."

Well, finally the Japanese couldn't take the yen weakness anymore as verbal intervention has become actual "according to people familiar with the matter" cites Dow Jones, but thus no official acknowledgement. 160 was the apparent line in the sand and we trade now just below 156. It looks like it started at around midnight est time. It's never easy fighting the market and typically it's a lost cause if the real reason for the yen weakness is not addressed, that being a huge interest rate differential between them and us. That said, the yen is cheap for sure but FX intervention itself very rarely works on a sustainable basis and the Japanese know themselves that very well.

It's not just the Trump side that wants to influence and manipulate the Fed and its monetary policy, it's the other side too. In case you didn't see the NY Times article on Friday, "The White House has repeatedly cited the Fed's independence as the reason that Mr. Biden will not push the Fed to cut interest rates. But some Democrats are now urging the president to jettison that approach. That is because the central bank, which was expected to cut rates early in 2024, is now unlikely to start reducing them anytime soon..."As higher rates weigh on voter sentiment, some Democratic strategists say it is time for Mr. Biden to emulate former President Donald J. Trump, who routinely browbeat the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell to lower rates."