Anthony Rayner: Policymakers have pressed 'pause'

The three concerns dogging markets not so long ago were supposedly higher US rates, a plummeting oil price and the US-China trade war. The US Federal Reserve clearly signposted it was moving from being ‘date-dependent' to ‘data-dependent', which is probably a sensible move in terms of where we are in the cycle. Interest rate rises being date-dependent served a purpose in the initial quantitative (QE) exit phase - to help reduce uncertainty around US monetary policy more broadly - but time has moved on and this approach had to end at some point. Markets have since priced in a much more...