Currencies

It’s Not Nothing, It’s Everything (including crypto)

By |2022-06-13T20:07:16-04:00June 13th, 2022|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Markets got aggressive long before the FOMC did. Everything, and I mean everything, has been trending the other way. Jay Powell says inflation risks are most pressing when markets have consistently priced the opposite for a whole lot longer. It’ll be revised history when ultimately the mainstream attempts to write it over the months ahead, many will try to snatch [...]

Curve Inversion 101: US CPI Politics Up Front, China PPI Down(ing) The Back

By |2022-06-13T18:54:55-04:00June 13th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While the world fixated on the US CPI, it was other “inflation” data from across the Pacific that is telling the real economic story. Having conflated the former with a red-hot economy, the fact American consumer prices aren’t tied to the actual economic situation has been lost in the shuffle of the FOMC’s hawkishness, with markets obliged to price wrong-way [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: No One Said This Was Easy

By |2022-06-13T13:37:04-04:00June 12th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffett People are always asking me where's the outlook good, but that's the wrong question. The right question is: Where is the outlook the most miserable? Sir John Templeton, The Principle of Maximum Pessimism I don't know if we're at the point of maximum pessimism yet but [...]

Update The Conflict of Interest Rate(s)

By |2022-06-10T20:14:48-04:00June 10th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

What changed? For over a month, the Treasury market had the Fed and its rate hiking figured out. Rising recession risks had been confirmed by almost every piece of incoming data, including, importantly, labor data. It is the jobs market where much of the official “inflation” jawboning is centered, all that Phillips Curve stuff. So, whatever might seriously undermine Phillips [...]

Prices As Curative Punishment

By |2022-06-10T18:14:54-04:00June 10th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It wasn’t exactly a secret, though the raw data doesn’t ever tell you why something might’ve changed in it. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, confirmed by industry sources, US new car sales absolutely tanked in May 2022. At a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 12.7 million, it was a quarter fewer than sales put down in May 2021 and [...]

Simple Economics and Money Math

By |2022-06-09T20:08:48-04:00June 9th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The BLS’s most recent labor market data is, well, troubling. Even the preferred if artificially-smooth Establishment Survey indicates that something has changed since around March. A slowdown at least, leaving more questions than answers (from President Phillips).That as much because of the other employment figures, the Household Survey. April and May, in particular, not just a slowdown but a drop [...]

A Volcker Pan Recession

By |2022-06-08T20:37:01-04:00June 8th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Volcker Myth is simple because there isn’t math for it just voodoo economics (to borrow George HW Bush’s phrase). In theory, the FOMC finally realized after more than a decade of currency devastation and its economic, financial, and social consequences, hey, inflation and money. Once Paul Volcker took over in ’79, he acted on the belated realization, seeking to [...]

World Bank Tries Reconciling Rapidly Rising Recession Risk

By |2022-06-07T20:03:45-04:00June 7th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As it now stands, the World Bank isn’t currently forecasting recession sweeping across the globe. Instead, the organization is merely warning this is a growing possibility. Econometric models abhor making big changes to projections within small timeframes, yet the regressions employed here couldn’t be helped this time.Back in January, at the last issue of the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects, [...]

“Inflation” Not Inflation, Through The Eyes of Inventory

By |2022-06-07T18:48:32-04:00June 7th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It isn’t just semantics, nor some trivial, egotistical use of quotation marks. There is an actual and vast difference between inflation and “inflation.” And in the final results, that difference isn’t strictly or even mainly about consumer prices.Who cares, most people wonder. After all, what does it really matter why prices are going up so far? The pain this causes [...]

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