For the record. The logic is straightforward: Wall Street is selling risk assets because the Federal Reserve, already well behind the curve, refuses to act. A December rate cut that should have been preemptive, a risk control measure, will now come too late, and even then, its impact wouldn’t be felt for years. The Powell Fed owns the housing recession. It has demonstrated a poor grasp of basic economic fundamentals, choosing to remain paralyzed by lagging government data that will inevitably be revised. Quantitative tightening has gone on far too long. The Fed’s persistent reliance on stale indicators while dismissing real-time, market-based measures reflects an institution detached from economic reality. It cannot see that shelter costs, specifically Owners’ Equivalent Rent, are the primary distortion in CPI, nor does it acknowledge that the natural rate of interest is falling. They have turned a blind eye to the deteriorating credit maket and labor market. The central bank’s independence, once justified by credible expertise, now appears untenable. Returning to a framework closer to the pre-1951 arrangement may be necessary. Powell’s FOMC has become one of the least competent assemblies of policymakers in the modern era, technically deficient, politically motivated, and chronically reactive.