Free Republic

The US economy will likely avoid a recession or even a slowdown as inflation cools, according to Ed Yardeni. "I'm not in the recession camp. I'm in the soft landing camp now and I'm wondering whether it should be in the no landing camp," Yardeni told CNBC.

There's reason to be concerned about bond vigilantes, who are no longer under "lock and key" and are free to push yields higher, Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni told CNBC on Friday. Yardeni, a market historian, coined the term bond vigilantes in the 1980s to refer to investors who sell their holdings in an effort to enforce fiscal discipline. Having fewer buyers drives prices down — and drives yields up — in the fixed-income market. That, in turn, makes it more expensive for the government to borrow and spend. "They had been sort of put under lock and key by...

When investors are nervous, they flee risky assets like stocks for the safety of cash. That's exactly what's been happening lately. Since July 1, cash and money market funds have easily been the world's most popular asset class, attracting $208 billion of inflows, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. By comparison, investors have poured a relatively paltry $7 billion into stocks and yanked $46 billion from bonds. It's the latest evidence of the jitters ripping through financial markets amid crashing oil prices, a slowdown in China and soft U.S. economic activity. "The individual investor is scared by the volatility....