Durable goods orders were up a seasonally-adjusted 6.5% in the month of June 2017. Nearly all of that gain, however, was due to a jump (131%) in new orders for civilian aircraft. That meant demand for transportation equipment, a highly volatile segment, rose 19% in the month. Excluding all that, durable goods were up just 0.2% month-over-month. Sentiment indicators like [...]
I suspect President Trump has been told that markets don’t like radical changes. If there is one thing that any elected official is afraid of, it’s the internet flooded with reports of grave financial instability. We need only go back a year to find otherwise confident authorities suddenly reassessing their whole outlook. On the campaign trail, candidate Trump was very [...]
The TIC data for May was inconsistent. It has been that way for several months, and importantly describes what I think is the operative “dollar” condition. Though the data is several months old already, we can tell by certain real-time prices and indications that the difference between 2016 and 2017 is very clear in some parts, and none in others. [...]
It is like a great many things forgotten now, but five years ago today the head of the ECB compared Europe to a bumblebee. That’s not quite right, however, as Mario Draghi really said the euro was like a bumblebee, but you’d be forgiven for mixing the two up. The purpose of his folksy analogy was so that Europe and [...]
Updated statistics from the People’s Bank of China shed some light on changing money conditions in RMB. The Big 4 State-owned banks have been the primary liquidity conduit for all policies and activities going back to 2014. These institutions had been since the middle of 2016 increasingly squeezed as to excess funding available to be forwarded into money markets. This [...]
In a report released last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that Multi-Factor Productivity rose in only 21 of the 86 categories of the manufacturing industry in 2015. Unlike labor productivity which is more easily calculated, Multi-Factor Productivity measures attempt to take account of all business inputs (including labor). Capitalism is by its nature the combination of all [...]
Copper prices are up very sharply today, igniting across markets a reborn “reflation.” Treasuries along with eurodollar futures have been stuck in anti-“reflation” for quite some time. Copper, on the other hand, is not just now breaking from the pack. Going back to May 9, this important economic indication has been so far steadily bucking the trend. When we talk [...]
Part of “reflation” was always going to be banks making more money in money. These days that is called FICC – Fixed Income, Currency, Commodities. There’s a bunch of activities included in that mix, but it’s mostly derivative trading books forming the backbone of math-as-money money. The better the revenue conditions in FICC, the more likely banks are going to [...]
There was a funny sort of Congressional exchange all the way back in November 2005 that in a weird way defines our world today. At the nomination proceedings on whether to confirm Ben Bernanke as Alan Greenspan’s successor, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky wanted the prospective Fed Chairman to first answer for M3. It had become something of a conspiracy [...]
Well, that clears that up. In case you missed it, back on June 27 Mario Draghi triggered the latest declared BOND ROUT!!! with what was characterized as a very upbeat economic assessment for Europe. And if things are moving forward there, they just have to be everywhere else. It came off as “hawkish” in the sense that if real acceleration [...]
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