Back in early July, Bloomberg published a rather curious article that sounded like it was written from within the People’s Bank of China - or any other global central bank for that matter. The most prominent correlation over the past year had been CNY and everything else; or, as I wrote earlier in the year, CNY down = bad. The [...]
In June 2015, Japan’s Cabinet Office, the section of the government charged with tabulating and publishing gross domestic product estimates, revised Q1 2015 GDP significantly higher to 3.9% from its preliminary 2.7% figure. Not only was that the second straight quarter of positive growth, the acceleration indicated seemed to confirm that the Japanese economy had finally shaken off the effects [...]
With auto sales coming in exceptionally weak in the retail sales report today and given the importance of the auto sector in an otherwise awful economy, it makes sense to go further in detail to try to tease out corroboration. The Bureau of Economic Analysis provides a wealth of supplementary data on motor vehicles that it uses to construct GDP. [...]
Economists setting their expectations for China and PBOC “stimulus” should have been paying attention to retail sales; not Chinese retail sales, but American. They keep seeing a rebound that just doesn’t exist. US consumers, as the central marginal marketplace for the world economy of goods, have steadfastly refused the invitation of the unemployment rate to produce a worldwide economic resurgence. [...]
For the most part in 2016 retail sales had been better. “Better” is, of course, a relative term, and despite intentional colorization with respect to these types of economic accounts doesn’t automatically equate to “good.” Consumer spending data throughout 2015 was simply atrocious, not just on par with past recessions but among some of the worst months in the history [...]
On Wednesday, October 8, 2008, the FOMC voted for an emergency 50 bps cut in the federal funds rate, bringing it down to 1.50%. The day prior, the Fed announced that it would be buying short-term debt from businesses after suggesting the day before that it would fund up to $300 billion for “bad” assets. The Friday before that, Congress [...]
It’s not an exact fit or correlation, but that’s not the point. One follows the other, though the manner in which they relate is outside of any view. The point here is common sense, unclouded by the increasing absurdity with which this simple relationship is denied: Repo fails are an indication of collateral “tightness.” Dealer net long inventory is an [...]
Though the media rushes to defend it as benign but prudent regulatory changes, there is going to be fallout from rising LIBOR “tightness.” And it will likely start where it can be least afforded, especially after last year’s rout. Payments on floating rate loans issued by dozens of companies are set to increase as US dollar Libor for a period [...]
Basic economics has proven that when the supply of something dwindles, absent an offsetting drop in demand the price should rise. When translating these fundamental terms to the labor market especially of the past few years, the supply means “slack” or the available pool of workers not yet working; demand has been, we are told repeatedly, very robust; therefore the [...]
The fact that we are still discussing illiquidity in “dollar” markets everywhere shows just how little has changed despite so much time and effort. It is August 9 again, the ninth anniversary of the day that changed everything. Even though it has been almost a decade, it’s as if “we” learned nothing from the experience. There are indications in 2016 [...]
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