Call me chicken or ambition challenged, but I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell right about now. Sure, he has free limousine rides everywhere, bodyguards and everyone hangs on his every word.

But right now Powell and his crew are facing the worst stock market bear since the Great Recession. He cannot just stand there, even if it were to be the best to let the market sort itself out. He has to do something.

Given we are only days away from the next Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting (March 17-18), I think we might not see Fed action until then—unless the market continues to tank before then. As bad as things look, the Fed might want the dust to settle before loosening shock and awe.

The CME’s Fed futures market, which has been historically a better predictor of Fed funds rate moves than the famous Fed “dot plots,” is effectively saying there is a very strong probability that the Fed funds rate will drop from 1.00%-1.25% to 0.25%-0.75% and strong probability it will return to zero-0.25%.

That appears to be taken as a given by investors. The wildcard is Quantitative Easing, or QE. The market is buzzing with speculation that some kind of new QE program will be announced. The previous QE saw the Fed expand i...

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