The amount of liquidity being added to the big Chinese banks has been astounding. The vast majority of it is coming from the PBOC itself. In July 2015, just before everything broke, PBOC funding of the Big 4 State-Owned Banks was less than RMB 100 billion. As of the latest figures for December 2016, it was RMB 1.17 trillion. In [...]
Industrial production rose year-over-year in December 2016, the first plus sign in more than a year. For the month, IP was up 0.5% from the same month in 2015, following declines of 0.7% in each of the prior two months. In seasonally-adjusted, month-over-month terms, IP increased by 0.8% in December after being essentially flat for four months before. Under normal [...]
It may sound overly basic, but the times being what they are there is a very well deserved need to be elementary about certain things again. That starts with banks and really defining what is and is not one. When money was money, banking was a very simple procedure, though not quite so stylized and rudimentary as it is often [...]
November was the month where global bonds, particularly sovereign bonds, were routed in synchronized liquidation. As such, we would expect to find among various data sources evidence to suggest a monetary “dollar” background consistent with that fact. What that has meant in the months (and last several years) leading up to it was the foreign official sector in overdrive “selling [...]
For the first time since 2014, the CPI was above 2% in December. Unlike the PCE Deflator, the CPI has been above 2% on other occasions after the 2012 slowdown, notably in mid-2014 when policymakers were making the same extrapolations as to its meaning. The inflation index had been as high as 2.13% in May 2014, before the economy of [...]
Earned income rates adjusted for inflation have been near zero growth for two months in a row. Real average weekly earnings were revised significantly lower in November 2016, turning a small 0.5% gain into just 0.2%. The latest figures for December estimate the same lack of growth to end the year. In seasonally-adjusted terms, weekly earnings did not keep pace [...]
Let the fussin’ and cussin’ begin. You’re about to embark on the annual pilgrimage to income tax purgatory and will spend several weeks gathering proof of your deductions. In that process, remember the words of a wise tax sage, “Loopholes aren’t illegal. Anything in the IRS code is there to use.” In other words, don’t give more to the government [...]
In May 1999, Milton Friedman gave an interview to Forbes Magazine back when it was an actual magazine. It was an auspicious time, of course, and what he had to say then resonated, though as much in an unflattering way as that which might reflect well on him. But we are not commit the logical fallacy so often deployed to [...]
We have to start with the understanding that Alvin Hansen was completely wrong. Hansen was the American economist who in the late 1930’s worried that the Great Depression was not just a severe, catastrophic event but a permanent alteration in the economic landscape. For those who took him seriously, it was a perpetual midnight setting against robust growth that had [...]
There are a great many great things afoot, so it might be understandable some transferred excitement (or dread) into the realm of global currencies. The British are set to leave the European Union, though nobody really knows what that means let alone what it might lead to. While the US was closed for MLK remembrances, sterling was all over the [...]
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