US trade is further leveling off after several months of artificial intrusions. On the import side, in particular, first was a very large and obvious boost following last year’s big hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. Starting in September 2017, for four months the value of imported goods jumped by an enormous 8.3% (revised, seasonally-adjusted). Most of the bump related to [...]
Back in 2011 and 2012, apple growers in the state of Washington got the government there to declare an emergency. They were expecting a record or near-record crop of fruit but they just couldn’t find enough workers to harvest it all. Faced with a potentially devastating labor shortage, Washington’s governor turned to convicts. I wrote about it in 2013 and [...]
I ended my last piece on Brazil's depressing state with the following: And the media in the developed world will dismiss all of this as Brazil being Brazil, South America’s basket case reverting to type. The siren song of globally synchronized growth has gripped all commentary, and they aren’t about to let it go now. Certainly not for the other [...]
A recent poll in Brazil showed that one-third of Brazilians favor “military intervention.” The country had been gripped by a crippling trucker’s strike, the results of which have been almost complete economic shutdown. Intervention, as it is softly termed, would be nothing less than a coup. The direct cause of the strike is quite simple. Under former President Dilma Rousseff, [...]
First it was inflation. No, it was nuclear war in Korea. Then something about T-bills and government debt. And the ECB tapering while others were, too. Of course, before any of those there was 2a7. There’s always something, it seems, something different every time. Maybe it’s not any of them? Small “e” economics will survive where Economics will not. The [...]
The concept of bank reserves grew from the desire to avoid the periodic bank runs that plagued Western financial systems. As noted in detail starting here, the question had always been how much cash in a vault was enough? Governments around the world decided to impose a minimum requirement, both as a matter of sanctioned safety and also to reassure [...]
When you go around claiming that central bankers don’t know the first thing about money, people tend to think you are crazy. It’s not really their (people’s) fault. Not only have we been conditioned to believe in a technocracy of sorts, it is raw human nature to immediately suspect such a radically contrarian view. It would be one thing to [...]
In a week which renewed the world’s mystified acquaintance with Deutsche Bank, there are only a couple charts that could justifiably represent it. The chaos caused by Italy wasn’t, of course, really just Italy. The one to really watch is on the other side of the world. It starts in Europe where Deutsche Bank resides, but where the “dollars” flow, [...]
At a campaign rally in New Mexico in May 2016, Presidential Candidate Donald Trump returned to one of his favorite themes. It was a package deal. He first talked about NAFTA and what he considered the negative effects the trade agreement had had on American workers. That easily segued into what had by then become a campaign staple, the unemployment [...]
You need only go back a little less than two years for an example. In later 2016, Deutsche Bank was a huge problem everyone was discussing if only because they couldn’t avoid it. Despite “reflation” then gripping much of the world, the German institution stood out for all the wrong reasons. Those were easily dismissed as nothing other than an [...]
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