Top News Headlines Turkey and Russia spar over airspace. Russian promises retaliation for fighter shoot down. Brussels shuts down for days in terrorist hunt. Chicago policeman charged with murder. Stocks little changed on the week, no follow through from last week's rally. Pfizer, Allergan agree to merge for tax benefits, politicians posture, threaten. Economic News Japan unveils new stimulus measures. [...]
Durable goods orders and shipments were estimated still consistent with the depressive environment that has “unexpectedly” lingered for the whole of 2015. Year-over-year, new orders for durable goods fell 4.13% while shipments contracted by 3.74%. That is the ninth straight decline in orders and the fourth in shipments (and five out of the last six months). The 6-month averages in [...]
While the media remains fixed on supply, the rest of the financial complex is prepared elsewhere. On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced what the mainstream has been waiting for (and often blatantly demanding) since the summer “rebound” faded into August liquidations. Given the mythical status of Saudi supply, this was the one country thought to be the only possible savior. Crude [...]
Any reasonably or relatively objective view of the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ estimates for PCE and Personal Income (personal income and outlays) render more questions than answers; more doubts than satisfaction. For one, the series continually undergoes not just heavy revisions and not just at the benchmark continuities, but all over the place. Further, these revisions, particularly between income and [...]
If China is struggling with the various facets of the interconnected nature of eurodollar function, then we don’t have to go far to see that in almost perfect clarity. By many accounts, funding and liquidity remain highly disturbed and becoming more uniformly so. From gold to francs to copper to junk debt, pricing reflects more so a combined economic and [...]
The only piece of the GDP revision to note is that the BEA is still having great difficulty estimating inventory. That isn’t surprising since businesses in this area are behaving far different than any expectation, even factoring the difficulty of the “recovery” environment. That leaves instead only Janet Yellen’s continuous pleading about the surge in consumer spending that never seems [...]
Very quietly, the PBOC has been fixing its middle exchange rate against the dollar higher and higher (in dollar terms). Today’s reference rate was 6.3895, up from 6.378 a week ago, with the CNY exchange coming close to 6.40 again for the first time since the disastrous period in late September. Unlike August, there has not been the flood of [...]
In April 2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was miffed. The country’s central bank governor, Dr. Gideon Gono, produced its first quarter monetary policy statement by reminding anyone who might read it that his actions were being duplicated the world over. Apparently still smarting over criticism by his central bank peers, Dr. Gono, an honorary degree, was more disturbed by [...]
Argentina’s election is more complicated than simple economics, but for the first time in a very long time there will be no Peronist in office. It may have been billed as a contest between the candidate of the market and that of the state, but either would have found the same bottom opening up on the nation. As so many [...]
Monetarism, at its core, is relatively quite simple. It would have to be, standing upon ground of nothing much more than generic concepts for almost every important economic factor. But all of it can be distilled into the idea of money supply; given “enough”, the economy will thrive. That view includes some of the worst of conditions so long as [...]
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