By the time this reaches you, Kevin Warsh will have given his first Jackson Hole speech as Fed chair. That stage carries weight. Bernanke used it in 2010 to signal more quantitative easing. Powell spoke for eight minutes in 2022, and the S&P finished the day down 3.4%. Whatever Warsh said in Wyoming, markets have been trading on it for days, and the September meeting is two weeks out with hike odds near two in three. A hike — not a cut. That fact alone frames the last third of 2026.
The Fed has held rates at 3.50–3.75% for five straight meetings. Inflation ran 3.4% in July, lower than May’s 4.2% but still far from target. The July vote went 9–3, all three dissents for a hike, the sharpest hawkish split in a decade. A committee this divided will make news every time the chair clears his throat.
Before Jackson Hole drew the cameras, the bond market was already talking. The thirty-year Treasury yield touched 5.3%, its highest since 2007. High enough that the Treasury Department doubled its long-bond buybacks to steady prices. In July I wrote that money had a clearer time value again. This is what it looks like when a $2.1 trillion deficit, an energy shock, and the borrowing behind the AI buildout all want long-dated money at once: the federal government finding it necessary to buy its own debt to steady that market. Warsh said he wanted his speech to frame the big questions. Looks like the bond market got there first.
Mortgage rates key off the ten-year Treasury, not the Fed’s overnight rate. So while the Fed funds rate never moved, the thirty-year mortgage drifted from about 6.30% in the spring to 6.75% in mid-August. All of that was driven by the bond market. Noise in the markets. Noise in the rates. Stability in the asset itself. Five Fed chairs came and went over the course of a thirty-year mortgage: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell, now Warsh. The house is still standing, still rented. For whoever has been collecting that rent, it has arrived every month under all five.
Noise in the markets. Noise in the rates. Stability in the asset itself.
There’s no forecast here, just a reminder to pay attention to which clock your financial decisions are being made on. Are you making decisions driven by noise in the markets and noise in the news cycle? Or are you making them based on the stability of real assets and your long-term financial habits? Fed meetings reset the conversation every six weeks. The forces that price a home move in years: the deficit, the energy shock, the four-million-home shortage I wrote about last month. Whoever chairs the Fed in 2056 hasn’t been nominated yet. The habits you build and keep between now and then don’t need to know their name.
– Jeromee (JJ) Johnson, President
