The retail sales report for the month of May 2018 was generally positive on the headline, which is to say it was one of the better months of recent years. Total sales growth was 6.35% year-over-year (unadjusted). A big part of it was due to an 18% year-over-year gain in retail sales at gasoline stations. The problem remains calibration, meaning [...]
The problem with global growth, synchronized or not, is that it isn’t really a thing. It is a made-up concept that accompanies confusion. Why is the economy about to pick up when there is no evidence for that expectation? Global growth. It’s a nonspecific bogeyman that anyone can point to and expect little or often no pushback. It’s nothing more [...]
As anticipated, the FOMC voted on both proposals in front of it. There should only be the one, but even routine monetary policy no longer is. Alan Greenspan’s Fed charged ahead with seventeen consecutive moves (the last few completed under Ben Bernanke) with little discussion about uncertainty in the economy (though there was, conundrums and all) let alone in the [...]
The FOMC is almost certainly going to raise the federal funds corridor today. The only question is whether IOER and RRP will go up by the same amount. The issue with federal funds as an offshoot or reverberation of what really matters (offshore) should take center stage, but it won’t. Instead, the Committee will pretend this is about wages. They [...]
The People’s Bank of China won’t update its balance sheet numbers for May until later this month. Last month, as expected, the Chinese central bank allowed bank reserves to contract for the first time in nearly two years. It is, I believe, all part of the reprioritization of monetary policy goals toward CNY. How well it works in practice remains [...]
Even the apocalypse is a process that takes time. Like a financial crash that isn’t really a condensed all-at-once occurrence, the retail industry’s long-described reset has for another year reached even greater proportions in 2018. It’s not clear when the term first showed up, but by now it is a mainstream staple. No article on the state of retailers is [...]
What a difference a few months make. Perhaps given all that has happened since January people have regained some badly needed perspective. The core of inflation hysteria was the belief the economy was about to take off which would exacerbate underlying price pressures. That would necessitate more aggressive Federal Reserve reaction, corroborated by an epic bond market selloff. Had last [...]
The global economy is not falling off a cliff. There isn’t even evidence it is about to or is nearing such a situation. The most alarming that might be said of how things appear right now is that conditions aren’t getting any better. It’s hardly the stuff of severe global unrest. This is why individual developments are always cast as [...]
Last week, it was overseas central bankers who stole the show. Many of them particularly in EM locations have had a really rough go of late, and a few in particular wanted the world to pay attention to dollars. Not any dollars, of course, as that would be far too easy. Rather, offshore “dollar” markets have found a few voices. [...]
India was not alone in having its central bank unexpectedly act in attempted defiance of the “dollar.” There was Indonesia (last week) raising rates, too, and Turkey by a lot more. Argentina was handed the largest bailout (dollar funding) in the IMF’s history. And Brazil, well, that country’s monetary officials called you stupid. Yesterday afternoon, Ilan Goldfajn, Banco do Brasil’s [...]
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