The way I look at the global economy, there are basically five different zones. The first is the US and the second is Europe. China might be third on this list but often second if not first in terms of what’s driving marginal changes. In behind those is Japan, not what it once was but still often a bellwether for [...]
For the third time in the last five months, inflation expectations have matched record lows. To hear officials and Economists talk, you’d think they were at or nearing record highs. The unemployment rate, after all, is at a 50-year low point which by mainstream reckoning should mean the cusp of an epic wage-driven breakout. According to the University of Michigan’s [...]
With the Democratic Party staging the first of its national debates, The New York Times found time to embed a reporter amongst a group of Trump voters in the swing state of Michigan. Situated to watch the show, and given how the election of 2016 turned out, the Rust Belt is on the minds of both parties. It doesn’t seem, [...]
In 2005, Ben Bernanke kicked up quite a bit of controversy, or what qualifies as drama in the dry space of top-level Economics. It was Alan Greenspan who really started the conversation, practically begging for someone to offer an answer. Long-term interest rates were not behaving the way they were supposed to; the maestro’s true swan song was his “conundrum.” [...]
ACT Research, the leading publisher of commercial vehicle industry data in North America, reported last week that freight rates in for-hire trucking had declined in May. It was the fourth month in row when prices had been pressured. More and more, there is a downturn growing in the transportation sector. Commenting on freight rates, Tim Denoyer, ACT’s VP and Senior [...]
Last week, for the first time since February 2008, the LIBOR curve inverted. The 3-month tenor has been on the move downward for some time. The 1-month rate has been gentler in its slope. Last Thursday, the two finally crossed. As unnatural as inversion in the UST curve or elsewhere, it’s another sign of imminent rate cuts. I am somewhat [...]
I thought this one needed a separate notation, though the same subject as the previous article. We’re still talking about the foreign repo pool, or monetary policy’s original reverse repo. It’s basically a way for overseas official governments and central banks to tell the Fed’s New York branch they’re uncomfortable with the dollar condition. How US central bankers interpret that [...]
It’s difficult a lot of times to easily and succinctly describe what’s going on inside a monetary system that; 1. Spans the entire world, easily jumping across if not erasing geographical boundaries; 2. Is located in the shadows, leaving us with no direct data or statistics; 3. Often works in a dizzying array of complexities. I have to believe that [...]
One month ago, on May 24, Chinese regulators stunned the world by announcing the first bank restructuring in modern China’s history. Based in Inner Mongolia, Baoshang Bank was seized because of what the PBOC and China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission said was “severe credit risk.” Initial reports attempted to link Baoshang’s struggles to financier Xiao Jianhua who disappeared in [...]
One reason why Japanese bond yields are approaching records like their German counterparts is the global economy indicated in Japan’s economic accounts. As in Germany, Japan is an outward facing system. It relies on the concept of global growth for marginal changes. Therefore, if the global economy is coming up short, we’d see it in Japan first and maybe best. [...]
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