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Financial markets were volatile last week as investors parsed the risks around bank closures, central banks offered additional protections for depositors, and regulators took a harder look at bank balance sheets. “For much of last year, volatility was elevated, but the risks were somewhat ‘known’ (chiefly inflation and recession)…Now, the introduction of the banking crisis has created a new unknown, which could ultimately mean a sharper increase in volatility (if worse than expected) or a quick reprieve (if fears prove unfounded),” opined a source cited by Nicholas Jasinski of Barron’s. Unknown risks create uncertainty, and you know what they say about markets and uncertainty. Yields on Treasuries dropped sharply as investors sought opportunities they perceived to be safe, reported Lawrence C. Strauss of Barron’s. The yield on the two-year U.S. Treasury dropped from 4.6 percent to 3.8 percent, and the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury fell from 3.7 percent to 3.6 percent.

Early last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress the Fed is committed to bringing inflation down to 2 percent. If economic data continues to come in hot, he said, then it’s likely the Fed will raise rates higher than expected and keep them higher for longer. Economist Lawrence Summers estimates there is 50 percent chance that the Federal funds rate will be 6 percent or higher before the Fed will reach its inflation target, reported Chris Anstey of Bloomberg. Currently, the effective Fed funds rate is 4.57 percent.

Stocks and bonds are two of the better-known asset classes in the family of potential investments. Last week, they were in opposition. Bond yields have been moving higher in anticipation of the Federal Reserve raising rates again. For a while last week, every maturity of the Treasury – from the 1-month Treasury bill to the 30-year Treasury bond – boasted a yield above 4 percent. Some shorter-maturity Treasuries yielded more than 5 percent. When bond rates move higher, borrowing becomes more expensive for companies. As the cost of doing business rises, the outlook for company earnings tends to moderate, pushing stock prices lower. (Companies in the financial industry are often an exception because financial companies often benefit from higher rates.) In addition, higher bond yields may lead to lower stock prices as investors who seek income and prefer to take less risk, move some assets from stocks to bonds. For example, more conservative investors who have held dividend-paying stocks to help achieve retirement income goals might choose to move some assets into bonds.

There were some unwelcome surprises in last week’s economic data that caused markets to reassess expectations for 2023. For example: Inflation didn’t fall as fast as expected. Last week, the Consumer Price Index showed inflation rose 6.4 percent, year-over-year, in January. That was an improvement over December’s pace and the seventh consecutive month of falling prices, but economists expected price increases to slow more quickly, reported Megan Cassella of Barron’s. “Look into the details, and it is easy to see that the inflation problem is not fixed. America’s ‘core’ prices, which exclude volatile food and energy, grew at an annualized pace of 4.6% over the past three months, and have started gently accelerating. The main source of inflation is now the services sector, which is more exposed to labor costs…It is hard to see how underlying inflation can dissipate while labor markets stay so tight,” reported The Economist. Consumer spending accelerated. Americans were in a buying mood. Retail sales, which is a proxy for consumer spending, rose 3.0 percent in January after declining in November and December of last year, reported the U.S. Census Bureau. John Authers of Bloomberg opined: “Another day, another item of evidence that the U.S. economy isn’t slowing down anything like as much as many had thought. U.S. retail sales in January rose the most in almost two years, reinforcing the narrative that consumer demand remains strong.”

There has been a lot of speculation about how the Federal Reserve’s policies will affect the United States economy. Economists have differing opinions about whether the country is headed for: A recession, which occurs when the economy stops growing and begins to contract; or A soft landing, which occurs when economic growth slows but does not decline. It’s an important question because recessions often are accompanied by layoffs, rising unemployment rates, dwindling investor confidence, lower consumer spending, and stock market downturns. Recently, a new theory bubbled up. The United States may be experiencing rolling recessions, reported Rich Miller of Bloomberg. “Now there’s a new economic meme making the rounds. It’s called a rolling recession, and it’s a bit of a hybrid. One industry suffers a contraction, then another, but the economy as a whole never swoons, and the job market largely holds up…That framework doesn’t explain everything that’s going on with this puzzling post-pandemic economy, but it’s as good a description as any of what the U.S. has been going through since the Federal Reserve began lifting interest rates from zero in March of last year.”

What do Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) and the current economic expansion have in common? Author and humorist Twain was prematurely reported to be dead. It first happened in 1897. Twain was on a speaking tour in London when rumors that he had fallen ill and died began to circulate. Then, about a decade later, The New York Times reported that a yacht Twain was on had sunk. Ben Welter of the StarTribune wrote that Twain responded to the latter story by saying, “I sincerely hope that the report is not true and I suggest that all my friends suspend judgment until such time as I can ascertain the true state of affairs.” There has been a lot of speculation about the death of the current economic expansion in the United States, too. The Federal Reserve has increased the federal funds rate at an unprecedented pace in 2022 to slow economic growth and price increases. Economists, business leaders, and even Fed officials have indicated that a recession – a period of economic contraction – may be ahead. Last week’s economic data suggests that reports about the death of economic growth may have been exaggerated. The Bureau of Labor S