"Bad News Is Great Again" - Global Stocks Soar After Yellen Admits Global Economy Is Much Weaker

At the end of the day, it was all about the dollar.

Starting March 18, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot had risen as much as 1.9% as Fed officials including Lacker, Williams and Bullard noted upside risks on rate-hike projection and suggested a rate hike may be imminent as soon as April. And then Yellen unleashed the latest round of dovishness, when she made it very clear that the Fed is no longer just the U.S. central bank, but that of the world (and mostly China) and as such its prerogative is to not only keep stocks high, but to also assure there is no currency crisis in Beijing (where a month ago she met other G-20 central bankers to decide precisely this).

The result of Yellen's much discussed speech, was an immediate plunge in the Dollar spot index of 1.2% to 8 month lows, its worst month in 5 years, a drop which has continued this morning, and is on par to equal the dollar's tumble from the first week of March when Bill Dudley likewise came out very dovish, and when the index dropped 1.7% within a week.

What is notable about these two crying doves is that both have roundly ignored the simmering "mutiny" by the Fed's hawks (remember Hilsenrath's humorous "The Decline of Dissent at the Fed" last week) advice of central banker incubator Goldman Sachs, that it is in the US interest to push the dollar higher (it had a report just last week titled "Inflation Finally Begins to Firm"). It will be very interesting to see how this particular conflict is resolved.

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