July FOMC Minutes: Hawkish Split Meets Treasury Buyback

The Federal Reserve just told markets it is more divided than anyone assumed, and markets shrugged. That is the strange part of this week's macro story. FOMC minutes released August 19 showed the Fed's July 28-29 meeting produced a 9-3 hold vote where "several" officials wanted to raise rates outright and "many" argued financial conditions were still too loose to bring inflation back to 2%. It was the most fractured hold vote the committee has delivered in years. Yet the minutes barely moved a market that was already consumed by something else entirely: a bond selloff that pushed the 30-year Treasury yield to 5.34% intraday on August 18, its highest level since 2007, followed a day later by…