Just as there is gradation for positive numbers, there is color to negative ones, too. On the plus side, consistently small increments marked by the infrequent jump is never to be associated with a healthy economy let alone one that is booming. A truly booming economy is one in which the small positive numbers are rare. The recovery phase preceding [...]
Ambiguity favors the path of least resistance. If there isn’t any direct refutation of the thing everyone believes in, everyone will continue to believe in that thing and only that thing. Human nature. In economy terms, people respond near exclusively to negative numbers. This is less evolution and more a process of modern times. There is a very strong attachment [...]
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. Buddha Review It's that time of year again, time to cast the runes, consult the iChing, shake the Magic Eight Ball and read the tea leaves. What will [...]
These transition periods are often just this sort of whirlwind. One day the economy looks awful, the next impervious to any downside. Today, it has been the latter with the BLS providing the warm comfort of headline payrolls. For now, it won’t matter how hollow. Yesterday, completely different story. Apple got it started downhill and the ISM pushed it off [...]
We’ve seen all this before, almost exactly the same. Back in the middle of 2011, European officials remained fully confident even though things were already working backward. The ECB had in May 2010 “bailed out” markets as well as PIIGS, or so the media claimed. All that was left was time. On their side was Brent oil. Jean-Claude Trichet, Europe’s [...]
On Friday, February, 2, 2001, the BLS reported stellar headline numbers for its Employment Situation release. Preliminary estimates for the Establishment Survey suggested US payrolls had gained +268k in the month of January. To put it in perspective, that would equate to +324k in today’s population, or a bit better than the latest figure. The economic climate of the time [...]
Clothed in immense self-denial, hung up on absurd self-confidence, Federal Reserve officials gathered on August 7, 2007, to discuss how things really weren’t as bad as everyone seemed to think. There were several key conversations taking place at the FOMC meeting held then all leading nowhere. Policymakers would literally laugh off obvious distress in crucial markets. Here’s one example: MR. [...]
The Chinese warned the world all the way back on October 8. The PBOC cut the RRR for a third time this year. Require reserves really had little to do with what was, and is, going wrong. Because the dollars just aren’t flowing to China. They didn’t last year, either, at least not directly (HK) even though CNY rose as [...]
The politics of oil are complicated, to say the least. There’s any number of important players, from OPEC to North American shale to sanctions. Relating to that last one, the US government has sought to impose serious restrictions upon the Iranian regime. Choking off a major piece of that country’s revenue, and source for dollars, has been a stated US [...]
It was only near the quarter end, that’s what made it so unnerving. We may have become used to these calendar bottlenecks over the years, but they still remind us what they are. Late October 2012 was a little different, though. On October 29, the GC repo rate for UST collateral (DTCC) surged to 52.6 bps. The money market floor, [...]
Stay In Touch