It’s not recession fears, those are in the past. For much if not most (vast majority) of mainstream pundits and newsmedia alike, unlike regular folks this is all news to them (the irony, huh?) Economists and central bankers everywhere had said last year was a boom, a true inflationary inferno raging worldwide. For once, CPIs (or European HICPs) seemed to [...]
It’s an ominous though hardly surprising development. This has been shocking for those involved. Many if not most shipping companies had convinced themselves that once Shanghai and China’s vast harbor facilities were opened back up there’d be at least a mini-boom, a surge in activity for the world (America) to make up for lost time. Container rates were widely anticipated [...]
It’s not just the 4-week T-bill rate which is defying the Fed’s illusion of control, though that’s where the incidents are most evident. The front bill is nowhere close to the official RRP “floor” which can only mean one thing: collateral shortage, a large and persistent liquidity premium. Therefore, the further under said floor, the more the competition for the [...]
Xi Jinping’s earlier “stimulus” promises had originally stimulated the Keynesian-addled imaginations of Western observers and Economists. Hearing only that single word, they didn’t appear much interested in any of its details. Like how Emperors facing increasingly grave difficulties historically tend to stimulate their own capacity for remaining Emperor above everything else.For a very brief moment, as Shanghai reopened, there were [...]
The only thing that changed was the CPI. What distinguishes 2021-22 from the prior post-crisis period 2007-20 is merely the performance of whatever consumer price index. This latter has been called inflation, yet the data conclusively support the market verdict pricing how it never was.What data? The "everything" data, the most comprehensive financial and monetary compendium yet available: The Financial [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun gives his Mid-Year 2022 update on the financial markets; what's happened, surprises, and anomalies.
Over the weekend, Bitcoin tumbled again. Reaching an ultra-ugly low of $17,641 (before retracing back above $20k), even the self-styled premier digital “store of value” has thrown in the towel. As I wrote last week, winter isn’t coming it is here.One crucial reason why, the Japan’s Ministry of Finance reported last week how imports into that country during the tumultuous [...]
Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other [...]
At his last press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims, none of which were called out or even questioned by the assembled reporters. These rituals are designed to project authority not conduct inquiry, and this one was perhaps the best representation of that intent.Powell’s job is to put the current predicament in the best [...]
If the March gasoline/oil spike hit a weak global economy really hard and caused what more and more looks like a recessionary shock, a(n un)healthy part of it was the acceleration of Euro$ #5 concurrently rippling through the global reserve system. This much was apparent right from the start, with financial markets gone haywire three months ago (mid-March seasonal bottleneck), [...]
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