There is a growing body of public work that suggests Federal Reserve officials are prepared now for a very different sort of normalization than what had been envisioned up until this year. That comes, as noted earlier, with the realization that the economy is not just in rough shape but likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. The [...]
It has been my contention for some long while that one of the biggest parts of this “rising dollar”, that is, again, nothing more than a euphemism for the various ways in which there is a “dollar” shortage, is balance sheet math. The problem in as simple terms as perhaps possible is that positions were taken, balance sheets constructed, and [...]
It is a long road to recovery, an actual one, if we are to be left to the pace of economists struggling to make sense of the analog world. They are truly digital creatures, who would look at information and make no judgment until the models tell them what to think. You or I would find troubling data and seek [...]
In early July, the Bank of Japan may or may not have contemplated the mother of all “stimulus.” Rumors began to fly that the Japanese central bank was, in fact, seriously considering an actual monetary helicopter as a way to boost flagging confidence rightly suspicious of any more QQE (or NIRP). We won’t know for some time (when the meeting [...]
It is often very difficult not to smile even though there is little lately to smile about. Every so often the world produces an absurdity that proves yet again God has a sense of humor, or that cosmic irony is a real thing. In economics and finance, all of the past few decades have revolved around actual money, which has [...]
Does anyone actually believe the employment statistics? https://twitter.com/JordanChariton/status/789492137498931201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw In one public tweet, the current head of the DNC plays up the BLS numbers as if they alone indicated something significantly positive. Privately, the same head of the DNC appears very sympathetic to the idea that there really is nothing much to them. I think people are more in despair about [...]
Earlier this year it was reported that a great many OPEC nations were on track to repay China in oil rather than “dollars.” Reuters had calculated that between $30 and $50 billion of prior loans were to be closed out via each country’s crude capacities. As the price of the black stuff has dropped, however, that leaves them with little [...]
What do you do if you are China? As that question pertains to the “dollar”, they have been asking themselves as well as the rest of the world since the panic. In various ways, the Chinese have been positioning as if for the end of the dollar system, which has given critics (economists) cause to dismiss it as nothing more [...]
Maybe it is just too complicated to do much more, but for the most part central banks work in the here and now. They may stray from time to time into strategic thinking, but given the mathematical limitations of traditional statistics, weaknesses we all know too well in 2016, that is of limited value. Even in normal times monetary policy [...]
Home resales rebounded in September according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) from an admittedly lackluster summer. Outside of that narrow view of just the past three months, resales, however, really haven’t grown at all going back to last summer. Year-over-year, sales were down 1.8% in July, up just 0.2% in August, and only 0.6% in September. Like Ford’s [...]
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