Are we heading for another financial crisis?

Try as it might, the Federal Reserve can't keep the coming crisis at bay forever.

"Talk about a mixed message," says The Wall Street Journal. Last week the US Federal Reserve dropped the word "patient" from its interest-rate outlook. Markets had expected the wording change, which was seen as heralding an interest-rate hike in June.

But Fed boss Janet Yellen indulged in so much "caution and hedging" in her press conference including a nod to the fact that the strengthening dollar had weakened export growth that investors decided a rate hike was further off than they'd thought. So they "indulged in another easy-money rally". We now might not see the first rate hike until the autumn at least.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.