2023: The Fed Declares Victory; 2024: The Year of Hubris and Nemesis

Are the crowds ready for the curtain of Fed omnipotence to be pulled aside? What will push markets ever higher if the Fed's alchemy fails?

For 15 long years, the Federal Reserve has conjured an economy and financial system without crisis or lengthy recession (setting aside that spot of bother triggered by the pandemic shutdown as a "bolt from the blue"), all with god-like mastery of the financial dials of bond yields, interest rates, vast purchases of mortgages, the subsidizing of the bank…