41.1 Has the US Treasury Bond Rout Begun? (No.) [Emil's Summary] Mary Toft had delivered a litter of rabbits - that was the news that reached the court of King George I in 1726. Obstetrician John Howard arrived at Toft's bedside in September where he was presented with several animal parts, ostensibly from the supernatural womb. In October, she delivered [...]
ADP let the cat of the bag on Wednesday when the payroll processing provider announced it believed the level of private employment had declined in December 2020. Since it wasn’t likely to have been wildly inaccurate, it set the stage for a renewed negative number in the main government payroll report released today.According to those BLS’s Current Employment Statistics (CES), [...]
Did anyone back when this whole thing started think that by the first week of the new year, 2021, jobless claims would still be significantly higher than every previous record worst level? We aren’t just revisiting the numbers, it’s completely rewriting the circumstances. The “V” hopes were dashed so long ago, and so thoroughly, the letter itself has completely dropped [...]
Is it a race against time? Or is it trying to set aside today so as to focus entirely on a specific kind of tomorrow? It’s easy to do the latter especially when today is what it is; you can’t change what’s already gone on. You can, however, think that today won’t impede or even impact a much better tomorrow [...]
Between November 1998 and February 1999, Japan’s government bond (JGB) market was utterly decimated. You want to find an historical example of a real bond rout (no caps nor exclamations necessary), take a look at what happened during those three exhilarating (if you were a government official) months. The JGB 10-year yield had dropped to a low of just 77.2 [...]
In mid-December 2019, before the world had heard of COVID, China’s Central Economic Work Conference had released a rather startling statement for the world to consume. In the West, everything was said to be on the up. Central banks had responded, forcefully, many claimed, more than enough to deal with that year’s “unexpected” globally synchronized downturn.This view had been punctuated [...]
Is there a difference between inflation or reflation, and whatever this is? Not mere semantics, it may be everything for what the future ultimately looks like. Yet, the only one ever talked about is the first, as if a foregone conclusion. Why?We’re conditioned to believe in only one or the other, recession still contracting or otherwise total recovery, on top [...]
Gold’s not buying. Neither is the bond market. Inflation Hysteria #2 has so much less to it than #1 in 2017-18 ever did. But this one isn’t completely empty. There are some asset classes which have been absolutely on fire thus seemingly consistent with the “money printing” excesses of Fed and feds. Investors fearing for currency “debasement” and fiscal breakdown [...]
You’d think Larry Summers would know better. Not that he stepped in it, again, but rather why he did this particular time. Making a big deal out of inflationary aggregate demand when he’s been practically the lone mainstream Economist to look at the post-2008 economy in an honest and serious fashion to then somehow failing to incorporate that view into [...]
It was late on a Tuesday night, in the middle of last week, Christmas week of all weeks, with most people already checked out. Having finally obtained Congressional support and approval, the $900 billion plus “stimulus” (read: stipend) was on its way to becoming reality after months of politically-motivated uncertainty. Not one to sit idly by while everyone else had [...]
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