Good morning. The new European defence fund says it will only buy weapons from EU sources, or from countries with defence agreements with the bloc. This strikes us as sensible from the European point of view but, as believers in global capitalism, it makes us despair a bit. Email us and tell us how we ought to feel: [email protected] and [email protected].

The Fed’s outlook and the market’s response

The market liked what it heard from Jay Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee yesterday. No one was doing cartwheels, but stocks, which had been enjoying a solid day before the statement and the press conference, rose further afterward, though enthusiasm waned a bit at the end of the day. Treasury yields fell — the two year by three basis points, then the 10-year by one. A dovish meeting, then?

Not really. It’s easy to imagine a world in which investors listened to what the bank had to say yesterday and didn’t like it one bit. The committee reduced its outlook for growth meaningfully, increased its outlook for unemployment by a hair, and bumped up its inflation outlook, too. Here are the median numbers as presented in the Fed’s summary, with arrows added by Unhedged: