The Federal Reserve is ostensibly an independent agency of the government. Already it is beset by a contradiction. How can it be independent if it is otherwise an arm of the federal structure? It’s a problem beyond mere perception that officials have struggled to overcome since its inception. Between the Banking Act of 1935 that restructured the central bank in [...]
The National Association of Realtors is confused. The trade group for real estate professionals and salespeople just reported a significant drop in the level of resales for January 2018. After peaking at an annual pace of 5.72 million (revised) in November, existing home sales declined to 5.56 million (revised) in December and now just 5.38 million last month. That’s the [...]
The housing bubble began to reverse in the middle of 2006. Strangely, Economists presented with the possibility were almost uniformly confident that it wouldn’t matter. Forgetting the market and liquidity issues, even by the middle of 2007 it was clear the end of the housing bubble had already restrained economic growth. Confidence abounded anyway, largely a result of the mistaken [...]
In mainstream monetary convention, bank reserves are at the center of the monetary pyramid. They are the byproduct of any central bank policy which requires direct action. In the US system, they had been absent, however, until around 2008. The reason was the Federal Reserve’s belief that it didn’t require any change in the corresponding balance of aggregate reserves to [...]
We have ample enough evidence for the efficacy, or inefficacy really, of tax cuts as fiscal stimulus. They have been deployed numerous times all over the world the last ten years, and the results have been nearly identical in all. Most charitably, proponents have been left with some form of “jobs saved” to describe, counterfactually, how if they had not [...]
What we know about what’s going on in Hong Kong is limited. That’s a real shame because I have no doubt what has been transpiring is important for a lot more than Hong Kong and the short run. The connections are too obvious for it to run any other way. I’ve been asked several times to diagram or further explain [...]
Home construction rebounded in January 2018, though that may have been nothing more than statistical noise. Total permits filed to build new residential structures totaled 1.396 million (SAAR) last month, up from a revised 1.300 million in December. The entirety of that increase was due to a big jump in permits for the multi-family segment. This latter category consisting of [...]
According to the US Treasury Department’s Treasury International Capital (TIC) report, foreign private holders of UST’s had been selling them steadily in the last quarter of last year. Estimates including those just released for December 2017 show a total net reduction of $24 billion. While that’s not a huge number, private overseas interests typically buy more than they sell in [...]
This is the Year of the Dog, or it will be starting tomorrow across Asia. Tonight marks the opening of celebrations for China’s Spring Festival Golden Week. These weeklong breaks in Chinese contributions to the global system have over the past few years rarely been so uneventful. Their absence has been noted both good and bad; the very worst of [...]
Industrial Production in the US was revised to a lower level for December 2017, and then was slightly lower still in the first estimates for January 2018. Year-over-year, IP was up 3.7%. However, more than two-thirds of the gain was registered in September, October, and November (and nearly all the rest in just the single month of April 2017). It [...]
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