Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is back in Congress on Tuesday for the first day of her semiannual testimony on monetary policy. Yellen’s remarks to the Senate Banking Committee are slated to start at 10 a.m. ET with a pre-released speech. Afterwards, lawmakers will most likely strive to get Yellen’s answers on at least two major issues, as Business Insider’s Pedro da Costa outlined in his preview, The first big question for Yellen is on the future of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations created after the Great Recession. This is Yellen’s first congressional testimony since President Donald Trump took office and started the process of scaling back reforms that the Fed helped to implement. The second key issue is on legislation to “Audit the Fed.” Although the Fed is already audited, some lawmakers say the central bank is not transparent enough. Besides these topics, markets will impulsively skim Yellen’s words for hints on the timing of interest-rate hikes. The Fed has indicated three increases in 2017, although the market-implied probability of that number — reflecting investor expectations — has dropped steadily this year. There will also be interest in anything Yellen says on the Fed’s timetable for unwinding its balance sheet, which it stoked to over $US4 trillion by buying bonds in response to the financial crisis. “Our base case is Yellen will largely dance around the question but will nonetheless leave the door wide open to a wide range of possibilities because she can’t close any options off until the…more detail
