There has to this point been one key element missing from “reflation.” Or maybe it hasn’t been missing, it just hasn’t been consistent with what I would consider that term to mean. The WTI price remains quite range-bound even though there is at the moment only wind at its back. OPEC had just pledged less production, and though US production [...]
The whole monetary issue as it pertains to the eurodollar system can be succinctly summed up as balance sheet capacity. In pure monetary terms, that is an enormous distinction. What counts as money is not what almost everyone still thinks it is, though those view should have been shifted almost a decade ago in August 2007. Money is instead “money”, [...]
China’s trade statistics were improved in November, further fueling the global “reflation” dreams. Imports rose 6.7% year-over-year, the second increase in the past four months (August) and the best since September 2014. Exports were nearly flat, up the tiniest fraction, 0.1%. That was the second time this year exports were positive. Again, these numbers have been very well received: “The [...]
For years it was uncontested convention that the lower the rate the better. Stimulus was, after all, intended as a borrower boost. Make the cost of adding debt low and lower, then it was assumed borrowers would borrow more than they otherwise might have with recovery the promising result. Every time rates went lower, the common refrain of “stimulus” went [...]
The JOLTS survey continues to show a lack of acceleration in the labor market. Even previously robust Job Openings estimates have plateaued. After surging throughout 2014 and into the middle of 2015, the level of estimated job openings has been more or less the same since. That might indicate the labor market reaching saturation, or it might suggest, as all [...]
In September 2013, the BIS took a closer look at offshore corporate issuance of EM obligors. The timing could not have been more relevant, which was very likely their point in undertaking the difficult exercise. The “taper tantrum” that summer had roiled domestic bond markets in the US, but was really focused in the offshore sections of the “dollar” system. [...]
There is a distinction between actual, meaningful growth and plain positive numbers. Recession everyone can agree on, as nearly every economic account (but not all) finds itself with a negative sign. Because of the binary model that the mainstream associates with all economic conditions, the absence of contraction is conflated with meaningful growth, even where the statistics are nothing like [...]
Since the ECB began the Public Sector Purchase Program (QE) in the middle of March 2015, it has purchased (through the end of November 2016) almost €1.2 trillion in securities from the financial sector. In addition to that, the central bank has bought €46.2 billion in corporate bonds, and €148 billion of covered bonds in a third iteration in that [...]
According to the BLS’s latest figures, real hourly compensation increased 2.2% Q/Q (annualized rate) in Q3. Wages and earnings are being closely watched, of course, for signs of acceleration due to the so far ethereal full employment level. That idea is taken from the unemployment rate even though, as in November, it has been as much determined by the lack [...]
Total factory orders in October 2016 were almost unchanged year-over-year (NSA) from those of October 2015, up just 0.5%. That was the second straight month of no growth, as factory orders in September were down just slightly, -0.1%, after being revised somewhat lower. Combining both September and October together, factory orders in those two months were 0.2% above the same [...]
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