The Most Powerful Woman in the World

It’s earnings season for Wall Street, but the real action is at the Fed:

The other thing Wall Street loves to obsess over is the Fed and parsing every word every governor says about the state of the job market, the broader economy, inflation and any potential hint about when interest rates may begin to rise. Fed Chair Janet Yellen heads to Capitol Hill for two days of testimony before Congress Tuesday and Wednesday, and Wall Street will be watching and listening closely, especially after the minutes from the latest policy meeting sent stocks lower in the middle of this past week.

Alan Greenspan helped get us into this mess, but at least his unintelligible mumblings and indecipherable musings to Congress were designed to keep Wall Street from having any clue about his intentions, with the idea of keeping the Street’s focus on little things — like earnings.

Those days are over. Now it’s live by the Fed, die by the Fed.