German GDP was the smallest of positives in Q4 2018, according to figures released today by DeStatis. Following a -0.2% rate in Q3, no matter how slight the plus sign was written into every headline. Most of them followed along the same format, such as CNBC’s Germany narrowly escapes recession after flat growth in the fourth quarter. That’s entirely premature. [...]
Ignore Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Those are merely an appetizer, an intentional preamble to whet the appetite of hungry consumers looking to splurge. The real action comes in December. People look, some buy, after Thanksgiving, but as anyone counts down the actual twelve days of Christmas and celebrates the eight crazy nights of Hanukkah that’s when the retail industry [...]
US inflation in January 2019 was, according to the CPI, the lowest in years. At just 1.55% year-over-year, the index hadn’t suggested this level since September 2016 right at the outset of what would become Reflation #3. Having hyped expectations over that interim, US policymakers now have to face the repercussions of unwinding the hysteria. Live by oil, now die [...]
It is the question nobody ever asks. As soon as contraction happens, the whole thing switches. Central bankers turn their attention, and move the public’s, toward fighting the thing, making sure it is as shallow and short as may be necessary. Officials pay total focus to getting out of it without ever having to answer for how they got into [...]
Were they rushed, or were they late? Middle 2000’s consensus put academic opinion on the latter. The Bank of Japan had been Japan’s central bank since 1882, but it hadn’t been allowed to become a modern one until years into the 1990’s crisis. When speaking on the topic, Economists mostly mean independence and mandate rather than monetary competence. This speaks [...]
JOLTS is at it again. The most-watched piece, Job Openings, has been surging. Ostensibly an attempt to measure the demand for labor in the private economy, the BLS figures that US businesses are in the market for whole lot of new workers. Given rising worries throughout the uncertainty of 2018, JOLTS JO has been used as a steady counterpoint. This [...]
In January 2017, there was a lot of praise for Goldman Sachs especially in London. This stood in obvious contrast to another global peer being savaged. While Deutsche Bank couldn’t pull its name out of the sewer, GS’s London unit was heralded for standing up when the market needed it. Brexit was a fascinating story in ways that had absolutely [...]
On Friday, the CFTC posted its COT data for the first week in 2019. For crude oil, capitulation. For US Treasury bond futures, capitulation. In the latter financial market, unsurprisingly the net market position utterly collapsed during December. From a relatively high (meaning market overall short) +58k contracts that last week in November when everyone piled into liquidity hedges, the [...]
I’ve observed a lot that’s purely absurd the last eleven years, trying hard to write up as much of it as I can. It's worth the effort in terms of education but also to reveal what's really going on. The catalog is too long to republish here in its entirety. One of the most ridiculous anecdotes, however, was pieced together [...]
They staked everything on inflation. In truth, central bankers had no other choice. Having backed themselves into such a narrow corner by doing the same thing over and over and over again, it was only going to be one or the other. Either it worked or for all time they would prove they really have no idea what they were [...]
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