Mohamed A. El-Erian , Columnist

The Fed Should Resist Placating Markets

The central bank needs to avoid being rushed into another policy mistake by making an emergency interest-rate cut.

August 6, 2024 at 9:00 AM UTC

Mohamed A. El-Erian is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former chief executive officer of Pimco, he is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge; chief economic adviser at Allianz SE; and chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He is author of “The Only Game in Town.”

Shaping the narrative.
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Family Feud, a popular game show when I was growing up, would ask contestants to guess how a group of people had answered a specific question. It served as a regular and early reminder for me of the importance of supplementing one’s thinking with external perspectives.

If, in the tradition of Family Feud, we were to poll market participants about the turmoil we’ve seen since Friday’s worse-than-expected US jobs report, I suspect we would get quite specific responses on what is causing the global stock selloff as well as what would be the best circuit breaker to avoid further big losses. Let’s consider what I think that list would look like before departing from the game show’s format and exploring what I believe the answers should be.