To hear the media talk, you’d think that the most pressing issue in the world right now is the dangerous prospect for rising interest rates. Rising. Its members are given this idea from the one source they rely upon no matter how many times that same source lets them down and leaves them in the lurch looking so very foolish [...]
Little noticed at the time, October 2012 was quite the roller coaster. Most anyone cared about was QE3, the wonderful, awesome flood of liquidity kindly wise-man Chairman Bernanke had restarted for reasons that didn’t seem so important. Did it matter to the public that the repo market went haywire late in that very same month, at the very same time [...]
Back in the middle of 2018, this kind of thing was at least straight forward and intuitive. If there was any confusion, it wasn’t related to the mechanics, rather most people just couldn’t handle the possibility this was real. Jay Powell said inflation, rate hikes, and accelerating growth. Absolutely hawkish across-the-board.And yet, all the way back in the middle of [...]
For awhile there, a few weeks anyway, the 30-year US Treasury long bond had become the star of the mainstream show. Showered with its 15 minutes of fame, everyone loved how, for once, it seemed to agree with Jay Powell and the preferred narrative about the effectiveness of his technocracy. The idiocy of this attention was exposed by just how [...]
The lack of issuance and supply over the last almost year or so, that’s what makes the TIC data so fascinating. And relevant, if for other reasons, too. CLO issuance, according to a bunch of sources, peaked back last June. Remember that whole “recession scare” with the yield curve last summer? It wasn’t just a scare, at least not in [...]
According to Germany’s ZEW, economic prospects for the intermediate future in that country (and for Europe, separate survey) haven’t been this positive since 2006. Back then you might remember the rip-roaring contributions of asset bubbles, and I don’t mean the stock market and valuations. A huge wave of credit expansion in pretty much every corner of the globe courtesy of [...]
On March 15, 2013, the US Treasury Department issued a request for a “large position report” (17 CFR Part 420). Any institution holding $2 billion or more of the 2% notes expiring in February 2023 (10-year maturity) had until March 21 to disclose that fact to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (faxed disclosures accepted). The repo rate for [...]
The stock market has recovered most of its losses from the March COVID-19 induced sell-off and the enthusiasm with which stocks are being bought – and sold but mostly bought – could lead one to believe that the crisis is over, that the economy has completely or nearly completely recovered. Unfortunately, other markets do not support that notion nor does [...]
It’s a behavioral shift, one we’ve seen before. Misunderstood because of idiocy like QE, even those who’ve undergone the change fail to appreciate the deeper meaning behind it. Not just at the firm-level, more so systemically. GFC1 had left everyone, even the best of businesses, essentially stranded fighting for their lives. Lost revenue was secondary to daily survival.Liquidity.Among the grandest [...]
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