Lou Crandall, the Wrightson ICAP chief economist whose dispatches on Treasury financing and Federal Reserve operations became required reading across trading desks for nearly half a century, announced he’s ending his weekly commentary.
In his “ Money Market Observer ” column published late on Sunday, Crandall said the firm will continue to produce daily insights and forecasts on the Fed and Treasury until at least the end of the year. Wrightson is also in early talks with potential partners that may absorb some of the analysis thereafter, he wrote.
The announcement caps a 44-year run for the publication, which was launched by Crandall in 1982 as he built a career on a level of technical fluency in Treasury market plumbing — repo markets, reserve dynamics, quarterly refunding mechanics — that few on Wall Street matched.
“Anyone who knows me will probably guess that I don’t really have the willpower to do anything cold turkey,” he wrote. “I’ve done daily reserve-supply and TGA forecasts pretty much continuously ever since I started at the New York Fed in the fall of 1980. That could prove to be a hard habit to break.”
Crandall, 68, graduated from Cornell University in 1980 with a degree in economics, then worked at the New York Fed before joining Wrightson.