It’s official. Rate cuts are not only on the table, but will probably be served relatively soon.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has now fully walked back its hawkish talk from last fall, the policy stance that many say was a big factor in the fourth quarter’s awful stock market performance.

And if there were any shadow of a doubt, just look at the market’s performance last week (see page 1), after the idea of Federal funds rate cut began to get strong mention, if not support, from Fed officials. Despite its continual attempts at cryptic remarks, when the Fed talks its comments get around and the signal is loud and clear.

For example, Fed Governor Lael Brainard suggested she is open to lowering rates. She told Yahoo Finance that current trade policy is a negative for the U.S. economy. It’s “definitely a downside risk to the economy and our job is to sustain the expansion and we’ll need to see going forward what that means for policy,” she said. “We’ll be prepared to adjust policy to sustain the expansion.” Clearer still were comments from St. Louis Fed head James Bullard, who has said that a cut “may be warranted.”

While Fed Chairman Jerome Powell never said a cut was warranted—why would he?—he did say last Tuesday in a speech that the bank ...

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