Fed’s Yellen stalls for time, but December rate hike coming

Chair Janet Yellen’s remarkably bland prepared congressional testimony today did nothing to change our view that the Fed will hike interest rates at the upcoming mid-December FOMC meeting. Despite Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in last week’s presidential election, which has potentially profound implications for the direction of fiscal, trade and regulatory policy, Yellen ignored all those developments. She basically repeated the conclusions from the Fed’s November policy statement, that a rate hike “could well become appropriate relatively soon”.