There are those people who will remain convinced forever forward that the Federal Reserve is run by capable technocrats absolutely skilled at maintaining for the free peoples of the United States their financial freedom. At a general level, they are thought to do so by signaling to market and economic participants just how these should respond to monetary policy inputs. [...]
44.1 Linking the Long and Great Depressions to TodaySocial upheaval, mass unemployment and economic desperation - this isn't the first time. We look at how the modern unemployment rate came about during the crises of The Long Depression. Also, real GDP-per-capita growth comparisons between The Long and Great Depressions to today. [Emil’s Summary] Ad Astra is Latin for "to the stars", [...]
Is there a charmed fiscal number that unlocks the inflationary promised-land? Central bank Economists have spent more than a decade in the West, two in Japan, desperately seeking the magic number QE. Though their own research is substantial and conclusive that LSAP’s like QE don’t work, and never have, officials conclude instead that it always comes up short because it [...]
There are those people who will remain convinced forever forward that the Federal Reserve is run by evil geniuses absolutely intent upon robbing the free peoples of the United States of their financial freedom. As evidence, they point to one unsuccessful, controversial monetary policy after another, none of them effective at accomplishing their main task of putting the economic and [...]
If you remember 2018’s economic “boom”, you’ll likely recall that year’s second quarter. Set up by December 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act, when the BEA published GDP estimates for those three months that July, the unusual 4% growth rate seemed to have confirmed the positive effects of tax reform “stimulus” funded by a substantial increase in the fiscal deficit. [...]
China isn’t the only country actively resisting the “stimulus” certainties which go for inarguable wisdom around most of the rest of the world. Xi Jinping has stated his case very plainly, only no one wants to listen to the dictator; or at least take him literally. People would rather believe there’s only the one way to respond to big economic [...]
The post-Pfizer vaccine rush pushed most of the contango out of the WTI futures curve. The aftermath of the Georgia Senate vote, and with it dreams of even larger, more carefree fiscal “stimulus”, drained all the rest. As of this week, the entire crude curve is once more contango-free; backwardation front to back.The physical markets have been able to fundamentally [...]
43.2 Asset Bubbles & Money Financed Fiscal ExpansionHow does one define an asset bubble? Might there be fundamental, non-speculative reasons why prices are persistently high? Also, why did money-financed fiscal expansion fail in Japan? What does that experience tell us about the present? [Emil’s Summary] As many listeners have long suspected, your podcast host did, as a child, run away and [...]
When the going got rough, Bernanke…blamed the weather? It was September 24, 2008, amidst financial chaos the likes of which the entire world hadn’t seen since the early thirties. Hauled up before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee to explain what was going on, or attempt some kind of reasonable sounding explanation, Bernanke pointed to a few positives out there despite so [...]
On August 1, 2018, the Treasury Department announced that it was introducing the 8-week T-bill. With deficits up and going higher due mostly to December 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), the government was becoming creative in how it would deal with its trickier funding needs. Not only the new bill maturity, note auctions were going to be bumped [...]
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