"You don't want the Fed to be a direct player in so many markets, because by definition their incentives are noncommercial," El-Erian said. "So it's in the interest of the market to have the Fed gradually—and the critical word is 'gradually'—step back to the sideline and act as a referee, not as a referee and a player."
Briefly, PIMCO's El-Arian, like Warren Buffett, sees little to no positive economic activity at the end-user level. More are coming back to the notion that though we may have stopped the massive decline, the rebound from these lower levels is practically non-existent.
We need to accustom ourselves to the reality that economic numbers during the credit bubble of the last decade were artificial, and were symptomatic of the easy-money policies of Greenspan and later Bernanke. The lower levels that we're experiencing now are the new 'normal'. Get used to it.