With quarterly earnings we get quarterly bank earnings. Interest in them should be heightened by all that has happened since June 2014. And it is, only for seemingly the wrong reasons. Deutsche Bank, the latest, reported shockingly negative preliminary results which only continued the trend. Even though the media largely gets it backwards, at some point as enough time passes [...]
It is said that a tsunami announces itself when the ocean suddenly and for no apparent reason recedes back farther than anyone could imagine. Left stranded are everything from beachgoers to fishing vessels of all sizes and even marine wildlife suddenly exposed to the open air. The spectacle creates a dangerous curiosity which the naturally curious humankind has difficulty avoiding. [...]
Despite continued cuts in production and supply chain activity, inventory through November persists in great imbalance. With December retail sales demonstrating a Christmas sales season only worse in 2008 and 2009, that isn’t like to have changed. It’s not as if manufacturers and imports have been robust to build that much inventory; production is already in clear recession. The only [...]
One follow up point to this morning’s missive about why the economy seems to be converging in recession rather than full and blossoming recovery: There must be something said about the manner of redistribution in this “cycle” as different from all others. In other words, the Fed has been attempting greater and greater redistribution efforts via monetary interference ever since [...]
Today’s radical reversal in stocks notwithstanding, the continuing hits of liquidations are not achieving their settled ends. In purely financial terms, the entire process of liquidation is to renew a settled state. Local imbalances force restriction of financial resources (what used to be money but now is something recognizable as such but truly not money) which triggers a cascade of [...]
For something that central bankers and economists were so sure wasn’t ever going to be troubling, oil seems to have become something of a communicable financial disease at the outset of 2016. If 2015 was somewhat sour and disappointing, 2016 was supposed to leave no doubt; it is, just not in the manner predicted. This morning’s headlines tell you all [...]
The official word from China, in the sense that whispers and unofficial back channels counts for any kind of imprimatur, was that last week’s huge surge in offshore yuan money rates was at the request of the PBOC using state banks to squeeze those damned speculators. It was perhaps an usual step to take in that the PBOC’s major efforts [...]
When the Fed is revered as it is in certain circles, its superstitions afford unwavering faith and even straight up desire. It is much, much easier and comforting to believe in a benevolent guiding spirit, an all-powerful force of good that removes all the nightmares. The cultivation of that ideal started in the 1980’s but reached its apex in the [...]
Ben Bernanke has shown a singular capacity from his entire time as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, one that he has clearly held onto and even nurtured in the nearly two years since he left office. Unlike many other notable economists, Bernanke still has the ability to astound, to produce an uneven marvel at how the man ever got so [...]
China’s economic update for December and Q4 were uniformly ugly. GDP fell to 6.8% and 6.9% for the full year. Industrial production was back below 6%, estimated at just 5.9% and once more denying all those that claimed November’s slight uptick was the start of renewal. Retail sales disappointed at 11.1%, down from 11.2% in November (no difference) while Fixed [...]
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