Presumable Pause

Hooray, rate hikes are over! With yet another bank (PacWest) disintegrating before our eyes, a debt ceiling debacle that looks suspiciously grave, and a 3-month 10-year yield curve that is profoundly inverted, the Fed finally hauled out language suspiciously similar to what’s been previously used to signal the end of a tightening cycle, while still (theoretically) retaining a tightening bias. The pause has finally arrived. The pivot remains MIA