Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on Macro, Bitcoin, and the Big Picture Power Shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, May 2nd, and today we are talking FOMC and Macro.

Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it,

give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation,

come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash

breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Today we are digging deep in the macro landscape. Yesterday was the weirdest thing

I've ever seen. That's probably hyperbole, but it was weird. Basically, we had a Fed meeting that on the one

hand felt like a complete nothing burger, but also felt like Fed chair Jerome Powell really trying to buck against

an emerging narrative. So let's talk about what happened, and then we can get into all of that.

Wednesday's FOMC meeting saw the Fed sticking to the current path despite fears of renewed

inflation. Rates were held steady between 5.25 and 5.5%, which is the same level they've been at

since July of last year. The only change was

a slowdown in balance sheet runoff for quantitative tightening. Starting from June, 25 billion

worth of treasuries per month will be allowed to mature and fall off the Fed balance sheet. The

process was previously running at a rate of 60 billion per month. The roll-off of agency mortgage-backed

securities will continue at the current pace. Overall, the tone was that the recent uptick in inflation has been noticed but isn't a reason

for concern at this stage.

This was evident in small changes to prepared remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, particularly

the omissions.

At the previous FOMC meeting in March, the focus had been on figuring out when rate cuts

could be expected.

...