I’m beginning to have my doubts about the Federal Reserve stewardship of Jerome “Jay” Powell, both in form and content.

The form has been somewhat cack-handed, as demonstrated by the parlous performance he put on at a press conference last Wednesday in which he announced a 25bp cut in the federal funds rate - the first cut since the global financial crisis erupted a decade ago.

He described the rate cut as a “mid cycle adjustment in policy,” spooking markets in the process. Although the rate cut was perhaps the most widely anticipated in recent memory, markets had expected him to indicate that this was the start of a deeper rate-easing dynamic.

His failure to commit on that topic, as well as to explain with clarity just why he had cut rates prompted the biggest one-day decline in the S&P - of 1.1% - in over two months. That was followed on Monday by the biggest daily fall this year.

Alright, the move by the Chinese financial authorities to allow the renminbi to fall below the symbolically important level of 7.0 renmminbi to the US dollar which materialized that day might have something to do with this move, amid talk that China was “weaponizing” its currency in the face of President Trump’s trade war.

But I suspect Powell’s less than authoritative, reactive stance may well have something to do with it; people are losing confidence in the Fed.

Prior occupants of the Fed chair over the past 40 years had managed to captivate markets - even the gnomic Alan Greenspan always got his message across with absolute authority - and the recent trend at the central bank for greater clarity under the umbrella of “forward guidance” propounded by former chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen seemed to have been shredded by the apparently befuddled Powell.

Then an extraordinary op-ed penned by those three former Fed chairs plus Paul Volcker was published in the Wall Street Journal on the day of the market’s precipitous fall in which the four illustrious figures called for Fed independence.

Their statement that “we are united in the conviction that the Fed and its chair must be permitted to act independently and in the best interest of the economy, free of short-term political pressures” hardly helped the institution’s current reputation.

Admittedly Powell has had a hard time of it under a president who has openly stated - via his ubiquitous tweeting - his desire to unseat the Fed chairman for failing to provide the necessary accommodative monetary stance.

The irony in all this is that Powell has actually delivered what the president was after - albeit in a less generous amount than the president desired. Could that be a possible read of the op-ed piece?

Powell begins to look as if he has bowed to the steadily building pressure from the tough guy in the White House.

And so to look at the content: there has been a rate cut, and Fed Funds futures are pricing in another by the autumn.

Should Powell have kept his powder dry? I suspect he should. US unemployment is at a 50-year low, inflation is tame (admittedly under the Fed’s stated target) and the only justification for this cut, which has apparently been the underlying reason, and recently accepted as market orthodoxy, was to protect against the fallout from Donald Trump’s manufactured trade war with China.

The renminbi repricing begins to make the Fed’s move look too much like part of the White House script. I somehow doubt Powell’s predecessors would have been cutting against the current US economic backdrop, and never in response short-term market volatility.

And Powell may need much more ammunition later if the long-anticipated US recession emerges; he should have kept a higher base from which to cut if a major economic slowdown emerges.

My guess in all this is that long-end US yields are headed for substantial compression - the much-hyped “end of the US Treasury bull market”has not transpired, just as I have flagged in this column, while leading market pundits such as PIMCO’s Bill Gross were calling the start of a bear market in US government bonds.

One reason is the falling cost of hedging US dollar debt. Investors in Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can earn a carry over local government debt by buying hedged US dollar debt positions, and if the Fed Funds futures market is correct, those hedging costs are set to get cheaper as the easing dynamic continues.

It would be rather fatal for equity markets if investors have lost faith in the Fed, and in my opinion from all I’ve seen, that august institution’s messenger is of the hapless variety and seemingly apt to deliver such a loss of confidence.

I expect that further downside volatility in US equities is around the corner. However, for US dollar-denominated debt investors he’s rather good news even if the form and content fall short of his illustrious predecessors. And I’ve little doubt their opinion piece did him zero favours whatsover.