For anyone who might take issue with Ellison's assessment of the Fed's power over banks, he says, "The Fed can say to banks, 'You can't pay a dividend.' What other industry can do that?" he asked.
Ellison poked fun at Bernanke's assertion that it's time to raise rates by saying, "It's amazing what you learn when you try to write a book."
Margie Patel, Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager for Wells Capital Management
"The Fed has put itself into an impossible box," Patel said. She cited Yellen's abruptly ending a speech at the end of September because of "dehydration." "They've been on this zero-interest rate campaign for seven years. Two percent would be normal and we're not there." She finds it ironic that people are worried about inflation when the Fed is actually "deflationary," freezing up interbank lending. "[Banks] might as well lend to the Fed and get a risk-free return from that," she said, adding that we are likely looking at this deflationary, no-growth world for a number of years.
"The Fed holds 40 percent of the Treasury debt," said Patel, calling the Fed "one of the bad actors" in a stagnant economy. As if delivering the TMZ-like zingers of the Fed being a frigid, caged, deflationary bad actor is not descriptive enough, she warned, "If the Fed doesn't normalize, it's on the path to Europe."
Richard Bernstein, CEO/CIO of Richard Bernstein Advisors
Bernstein said that we are in a very minor profits recession right now and that "whenever the Fed raises interest rates, it is a negative for the stock market." However, he qualified, "The positive of profits growth overwhelms the negative of rising interest rates."
Yet another money manager not eager to sign the Fed's yearbook, Bernstein said, "The Fed is now threatening to raise rates in a time when there is very little growth in profits or when profits growth is negative." Bernstein attributes this simple concept to continuing volatility. He believes that earnings growth will rebound next year.
"It's all PR for the Fed," Bernstein said, adding that the "impossible question" that we should all be asking is, "What is the probability that the entire world becomes Japan?" He believes that the deflation of the global credit bubble has essentially turned the whole world into Japan. "In a period of credit deflation, monetary policy would be impotent," Bernstein said, noting that he thinks this will continue to be the case. Bernstein is another all-star money manager who slams the Fed for her "impotence" and feels that we have made money worthless (try to digest that thought the next time you misplace your money clip).
Adding to the backhanded compliments, Bernstein said, "The U.S. economy doesn't suck." He said that it is printing money and using it to create credit that creates inflation. He cites the point when the yield curve inverts as the telltale sign that the Fed has tightened too much.
Srikanth Iyer, Ignacio Sosa, Chris Remington, James Swanson and Dan Fuss
Srikanth Iyer of Guardian Capital, in a presentation with Aston Funds, focused on how to assess global dividends. Iyer was not without his firm's thoughts on the Fed. "We are in fatigue stage right now as far as Yellen goes," he said, "Waiting for her ... is an erroneous way to manage money." He added that "the U.S. is literally the center of the world right now. The whole world depends on the U.S. to bail them out."
Ignacio Sosa, DoubleLine Capital's director of product solutions, called the International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde "the Fed's most vocal cheerleader." Lagarde has repeatedly warned that the Fed should not raise interest rates unless it intends to keep them raised.