Some critics, especially in Europe, even believe the Fed has not moved aggressively enough to rein in what they regard as a fragile bubble economy, based more on equity speculation than solid growth.
Chinese stocks jumped Thursday after Liu Xinhua, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said authorities would promote a "stable and healthy" market, tempering concern the government wants to curb equity speculation.
The decision to keep the bond-buying programme unchanged at $85 billion per month pushed equities higher, but speculation is mounting about what the next meeting will bring.
Moreover, many private-equity firms are now demanding that endowments and other investors hand over the capital they promised during sunnier times, cash the universities would rather keep.Harvard is rumoured to be trying to raise around $1.5 billion by selling some of its limited partnerships in private-equity firms, fuelling speculation that the university is facing a cash crunch.
Yields on the 10-year note reached the highest since October after the Federal Reserve raised its assessment of the economy last week, driving investors to riskier assets like equities, and reducing speculation that the Fed would make additional asset purchases known as quantitative easing.
I've been thinking about this question based on the recent news about Apple's record-breaking quarterly results, the recent fervor over private equity takeovers and the speculation about the coming initial public offerings of LinkedIn, Groupon plus the quasi-private Goldman offering of Facebook.
Asked about the Elevation Partners investment, Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesman, said, "Facebook is a private company, and we don't typically address rumor or speculation about equity-related matters".
The former destroyed the nation's capital markets, fueling huge growth in household and business debt, serial asset bubbles and endless leveraged speculation in equities, commodities, currencies and other assets.
Indeed, when both the stock and bond markets fell sharply after the February rate increase, Mr. Greenspan said the Fed had "partially broke the back of an emerging speculation in equities".
"I think we partially broke the back of an emerging speculation in equities," Mr. Greenspan said in a telephone conference call with members of the policy committee on Feb. 28, 1994.
Meanwhile nightclub operator Luminar was steady at 36.5p after vague speculation of private equity interest.
