43.2 Asset Bubbles & Money Financed Fiscal ExpansionHow does one define an asset bubble? Might there be fundamental, non-speculative reasons why prices are persistently high? Also, why did money-financed fiscal expansion fail in Japan? What does that experience tell us about the present? [Emil’s Summary] As many listeners have long suspected, your podcast host did, as a child, run away and [...]
On August 1, 2018, the Treasury Department announced that it was introducing the 8-week T-bill. With deficits up and going higher due mostly to December 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), the government was becoming creative in how it would deal with its trickier funding needs. Not only the new bill maturity, note auctions were going to be bumped [...]
43.1 The Fed doesn't do Money so it offers SuasionCentral banks cannot define, identify, measure or map modern money. And they haven't been able to since the 1970s. So instead they offer "moral suasion". That's a fancy word for threats, posturing and coercion. That's all fine and well until the global economy requires money. [Emil's Summary] As many listeners have [...]
The company isn’t bankrupt, it just doesn’t have the right currency in its reach to repay debts coming due. YPF is Argentina’s (former) gold mine, in this case the black gold of energy exploitation. State-owned, the business has obviously close ties to the ruling powers-that-be and a privileged place to go along with them. Its formal name, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, [...]
42.2 Real Yields Near Record Lows say Economy's AwfulReal yields recently hit RECORD lows. Yes, inflation is rising but is that due to the real economy expanding? Real yields say, "No!". Real yields say, 'The real economy is AWFUL!' So what is driving inflation expectations higher? Fuel. Oil prices are up - but the economy isn't. [Emil’s Summary] A recent [...]
The ECB wants everyone to know that it is in control, and therefore has everything under control. Through an almost certainly carefully placed leak, European central bank officials have let it be known current monetary policy is practicing a kind of yield curve control. Not just the usual QE in terms of bond buying, but tailoring specific parameters within the [...]
42.1 WSJ Columnist asks Fed: 'What the...?' Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler recently spoke with Jeff Snider about central banks and monetary policy. He ended a recent column with, "The least the Fed can do is get out of the way. End QE now". [Emil's Summary] A recent Hidden Forces podcast with Demetri Kofinas featured professor Kevin Vallier and [...]
If you tally up the amount of local government debt and add it to the total owed by Japan’s central government, at the close of fiscal year 1991 it wasn’t too bad. The Japanese had always been fiscally responsible especially when compared to any of that nation’s big economy peers. In those early days of the “lost decade”, the balance [...]
If you had known in October all that would transpire over the next 2 ½ months, how would you have positioned your portfolio? The conventional wisdom before the election was that a Biden win would be negative for stocks because he has promised to raise taxes and specifically corporate taxes. In 2016, conventional wisdom was that a Trump victory would [...]
The months of November and December aren’t always easily comparable year to year when it comes to American shopping habits. For a retailer, these are the big ones. The Christmas shopping season and the amount of spending which takes place during it makes or breaks the typical year (though last year, there was that whole thing in March and April [...]
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