With the sudden interjection of uncertainty halting the surge in Brexit odds since the unfortunate attack on British MP Jo Cox last week, the financial world has benefitted from the pound’s resurrection. Sterling has had a very good couple of days in this reversal, especially today. As it rises it adds the same as we saw on the day of [...]
Looking back it almost sounds like a completely different world. In the end, however, the world hasn’t changed, perceptions have. On May 10, 2012, German newspaper Spiegel reported that Bundesbank’s (Germany’s central bank) chief of its economics department, Jens Ulbricht, testified in the German parliament that German inflation was likely to be, “somewhat above the average within in the European [...]
Around 150 AD Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria (Ptolemy) wrote perhaps the most significant ancient astronomical text, his Mathematike Syntaxis. Part of its durability was due to Ptolemy’s careful and laborious summation of ancient thought up to that time. Divided into 13 books, it was the last five that added most of his original work. They set up geometric models to [...]
There are those who are calling for James Bullard to be fired. While that might be deserved given recent history, I believe keeping his place at the head of the St. Louis Fed will do the world far more good. To recap, in March Bullard was unequivocal that the Fed must raise rates or risk facing “devastating bubbles.” Just three [...]
The June FOMC meeting coincides with the quarterly update of the Federal Reserve’s modeled economic and policy projections. As usual, the economy forecasts have been cut for both 2016 and 2017. The upper bound for the “central tendency” of real GDP in 2016 was 3% in the modeled calculations made at the end of 2014, those that saw no fallout [...]
Earlier I posted an article detailing the BEA's benchmark update for State & Regional level real GDP. After further research, I cannot verify the exact comparability between the two data series (vs. NIPA) leaving too many questions about the accuracy of my calculations. Rather than risk being misleading, I have removed the post altogether with a view toward updating the comparisons [...]
This is all starting to look very familiar and predictably so: Especially this: It is utterly extraordinary that the June 2023 eurodollar futures contract closed trading at 98.00, much less than on February 11 and a collapse of more than 150 bps in anticipated 3M LIBOR seven years in the future just since last July. It is, again, entirely anticipated given the [...]
So the FOMC voted against another rate hike yesterday, which in itself deserves no comment. Not even Esther George could muster a dissent as she has done nine of the previous eleven times. Notably the last time Ms. George voted with the all the rest of the committee against the symbolic raising of the irrelevant federal funds rate was the [...]
The Treasury International Capital (TIC) update for April showed a very large net decline in foreign (registered) holdings of US securities. The total net drop was $68.7 billion, the largest in one month since the severe “dollar warning” in June 2013. Though we have become accustomed to these kinds of results, the biggest factor in April 2016 was on the [...]
Last week, the National Bureau of Statistics in China released what seemed like import levels that suggested “stimulus” was finally paying off and the economy had struck bottom. Among these more glowing results was an absolute surge in the importation of oil, which was blindly parroted as if Chinese demand due to the expected economic revival were the cause. Instead, [...]
Stay In Touch