Stocks have stumbled into October with the S&P 500 down about 6% as I write this. The source of equity investors' angst is always hard to pinpoint and this is no exception but this correction doesn't seem to be due to concerns about economic growth. At least not directly. The most common explanation for the pullback in stocks - 6% [...]
April was only a half a year ago, the optimism of 2017 at that time as yet untroubled by darkening skies. What had happened earlier in the year was nothing, they said, just a little nervousness about things becoming, don’t laugh, too good. Inflation was picking up because the global economy was roaring, which would require more aggressive action on [...]
Eleven years apparently isn't near enough. For the occasion of yet another year passing since August 9, 2007, and nothing much having been done about it, in partnership with MacroVoices I published a second series of Eurodollar University. Whereas Season One focused on the history and buildup of shadow money, where it came from and why, Season Two moved on [...]
This has already been one of the longest economic expansions on record for the US and there is little in the data or markets to indicate that is about to come to an end. Current levels of the yield curve are comparable to late 2005 in the last cycle. It was almost two years later before we even had an [...]
On November 7, 1973, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation via a broadcast television appearance. The topic wasn’t what you might think. Rather than trying to reassure Americans about the unfolding Watergate scandal, Nixon instead attempted to encourage the country about its energy situation. The month before, Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise attack against Israel. Arab members of [...]
These things are processes. They take time, a lot of time. Given that, I keep coming back to what might otherwise seem an absurd idea. The best-case scenario for all of us just might be a global crash, one that would make 2008 blush. At least then it might afford the world the benefit of unambiguousness. We almost got there [...]
Who can Jerome Powell thank for the PCE Deflator? Not Janet Yellen who handed off to him instead “transitory” factors. Nor was it globally synchronized growth which was supposed to have been the deciding element. Instead, it appears more and more that the only place where Chairman Powell might legitimately offer his gratitude is the US Congress. We have to [...]
What is it that’s different in August? If there was some relative calm in global markets in June and July it certainly disappeared this month. The dollar shot higher and global liquidity indications began sinking again. Yields have fallen on safety (liquidity) instruments more apparently divorced from any other mainstream factors. One place to look for answers is Tokyo. I [...]
Americans are spending more on filling up. A lot more. According the Census Bureau, retail sales at gasoline stations had increased by nearly 20% year-over-year (unadjusted) in both May and June 2018. In the latest figures for July, released today, gasoline station sales were up by more than 21%. The last time they surged this much was September 2011, also [...]
The Q2 GDP report (+4.1% from the previous quarter, annualized) was heralded by the administration as a great achievement and certainly putting a 4 handle on quarter to quarter growth has been rare this cycle, if not unheard of (Q4 '09, Q4 '11, Q2 & Q3 '14). But looking at the GDP change year over year shows a little different [...]
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