The NBER has made its formal declaration. Surprising no one, as usual this group of mainstream academic Economists wishes to tell us what we already know. At least this time their determination of recession is noticeably closer to the beginning of the actual event. The Great “Recession”, you might recall, wasn’t even classified as an “official” contraction until December 2008 [...]
Credit card use entails a degree of risk appreciated at the most basic level. Americans had certainly become more comfortable with debt in all its forms over the many decades since the Great Depression, but the regular employment of revolving credit was perhaps the apex of this transformation. Does any commercial package on TV today not include one or more [...]
iTunes: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mY Google: https://shorturl.at/fpsEJ Alhambra-tube: https://youtu.be/9xDka3RtxEk Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIP Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowski Art: https://davidparkins.com/ [Emil's Summary] Millennials may not know this, but many centuries ago mail came by bag not by vibration nor beep. Legendary figures took on the mantle of "Mail Carrier!" including: founding father Benjamin Franklin, Wells Fargo cowboys of the Pony Express, and nice guy Mr. McFeely from Mr. [...]
A perpetual motion machine is impossible, but what about a perpetual inflation machine? This is supposed to be the printing press and central banks are, they like to say, putting it to good and heavy use. But never the inflation by which to confirm it.So round and round we go. The printing press necessary to bring about consumer price acceleration, [...]
So, you’re convinced that low rates are powerful stimulus. You believe, like any good standing Economist, that reduced interest costs can only lead to more credit across-the-board. That with more credit will emerge more economic activity and, better, activity of the inflationary variety. A recovery, in other words. Ceteris paribus. What happens, however, if you also believe you’ve been responsible [...]
It’s called survivor’s or survival euphoria. Having just gone through a traumatically dangerous experience, and lived, a person might naturally become euphoric for it. Not uncommon in combat situations, your body marshals all its resources including many physiological responses and counteractions. When it’s all over, there’s evolution working overtime in your brain rewarding these survival instincts.And it can be a [...]
I suppose you can admire their zeal and persistence, but then again what is a zealot without his or her zeal? The desperation by which to rescue the Fed’s money printing exercise is palpable. Stocks, sure, bonds, however, aren’t making it easy. Especially inflation expectations which are crucial to Jay Powell’s fairy tale.That whole flood. Over the last several days, [...]
Time may not heal all wounds, after all. One thing it does do is clarify. There was a time not all that long ago when 20 million sounded absolutely enormous. How quaint today. At the end of March, initial jobless claims in the US were surpassing that unthinkable level leaving everyone to hope it wouldn’t get much worse. Having blown [...]
The thing about PMI’s is they are all second derivative. The focus on fifty is misleading, beginning with the idea that these things can ever be so precise as to clearly delineate the exact moment between contraction and growth. When the indices are high, say like 60 or better, that simply means many more respondents are claiming to see increasing [...]
In a scene straight out of the Stalinist playbook, no one dared anything but to do their part pitching in with thunderous applause. Five hundred deputies from across China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region showed up at the regional “people’s” Congress in January 2018 to elect the delegates who would represent them and the region’s 25 million inhabitants at the National [...]
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