It has to be a sign of the times as well as human nature where we are compelled to either forget the (recent) past or to convince ourselves that we have moved far enough beyond the mistakes of them. There were two stories reported today that are seemingly unrelated except by how they contradict each other in principle. The first, [...]
In 2015 the combination of the “weaker” euro against the dollar as well as the fact that monetary “stimulus” in Europe accomplished even less than that here meant that for the first time since 1961 France was not Germany’s largest trading partner. Exports to the United States finally surpassed those to its close European neighbor. When the statistics showing the [...]
In all honesty, I could start almost any piece I write with the phrase “economists are stumped.” It has become something of a baseline where there is some element or condition of the global economy that doesn’t make sense to them. The latest update in JOLTS for July continues to be faithful to the seeming contradiction. By view of the [...]
Speculators are a curious bunch, not in what they do or how they do it but more so in how and really when they attain notice. When the SEC in July 2008 banned naked short selling of GSE and primary dealer stocks, they were the obvious enemy creating “unnecessary” trouble that was amplifying what was supposed to be in the [...]
On August 30, the overnight SHIBOR rate jumped above 2.05% for the first time in more than a year. As the acronym indicates, SHIBOR is to Chinese RMB interbank liquidity as LIBOR is to eurodollars in London. In the summer of 2015, SHIBOR began rising steadily and often precipitously despite monetary policy “stimulus.” On June 27, 2015, the PBOC cut [...]
The UST GC repo rate was at or near 50 bps for the ninth consecutive trading day today, fixing at 50.5 bps. In what has become routine of late, DTCC reported on-exchange volume in UST was a paltry $37.3 billion, leaving the 20-day average of volume at just $51.4 billion – the lowest in a long time. Volume in MBS [...]
Speaking yesterday in Reno, Nevada, San Francisco Fed President (and CEO) John C. Williams delivered remarks on the normalization of monetary policy. So as not to put the cart before the horse, Williams noted that first the economy must do so before the FOMC can even consider the same for their self-assigned tasks. I’ll start with a quick overview of [...]
Factory orders rose in July in seasonally-adjusted terms from a downward revised June level. As has been the case with a number of economic data points this summer, that was a drastically different result than the unadjusted comparison. Since only the narrowest monthly interpretation makes it into most commentary about the economy, let alone manufacturing, the headlines leave a lot [...]
The Federal Reserve’s Labor Market Conditions Index (LMCI) fell to contraction again in August. After rebounding in July for the first positive reading of 2016, the LMCI dropped to -0.7 in the latest update. As usual, revisions have reshaped the levels of indicated problems throughout the past two years, but overall the trend remains. From this view of the labor [...]
Just a little over a year ago, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) released its purchasing manager index for the services sector for August 2015. Though the level was down slightly from July, coming amidst the immediate aftermath of the “shocking” financial quakes starting in China and spreading to markets all over the world, the 59.0 non-manufacturing PMI was welcome [...]
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