JP Morgan announced back in February that the firm would be scaling back, particularly in “non-operational” deposits. These were not retail deposits in the traditional sense from regular folks doing actual banking, but rather institutional “deposits” linked to shadow conduits and wholesale functions. The idea, along with some other restructuring measures, was to cut about $5 billion in costs over [...]
Given the rising concerns about the state of the US economy, and not just “overseas” problems, most commentary about it believes that a reduced chance in Federal Reserve action is driving most of asset prices and markets. Data today in the PPI (US & China, closely linked) and US retail sales were described to that effect. That contributed to the [...]
The US Producer Price Index declined 0.5% month-over-month in September, much farther than the 0.2% drop expected by economists (statisticians, really). With retail sales providing little positive emphasis even among the large segment of commentary focused exclusively on the monthly variation rather than the intense consequence of wider context, the idea that the Fed will confirm the final stage of [...]
The problem with using GDP as the primary means of economic accounting is its very nature. By attempting both comprehensiveness and precision, the resulting calculation is an agglomeration of various methods and sources, many of which are quite dynamic apart from static regressions. By that construction alone, GDP is susceptible to high degrees of kurtosis where assumptions find little. In [...]
The IMF and World Bank sponsored a great gathering of policymaking economists for a week of discussions. I can only imagine the statistics and regressions that must have been traded back and forth in lieu of actual discussions about how true capitalism needs no overlorded purveyor, or why, despite the incessant heavy hand of every central bank and central banker, [...]
With Chinese trade figures for September threatening a further reset, it is worth noting (yet again) that “dollar” funding isn’t much changed in October. In fact, there are several additional references to resuming the downward slide. Gold has been steadily bid since the September payroll report on October 2, while the eurodollar futures curve behaves much as it did (almost [...]
Unsure what to make of the renewed disaster in Chinese trade figures, there has been renewed emphasis on China being China. Almost every media story about the 20% collapse in imports references an assumed attempt by China to transform out of exports and into a consumer-driven economy without reconciling how or why that has so obviously and spectacularly failed. Nor [...]
The capital and now loss projections for Deutsche Bank are, as much as they can be, more straight forward. In terms of Credit Suisse, the dubiousness of the implications is proportional to the “story.” Whereas Deutsche last week shocked Wall Street (and Europe) with a huge potential loss in FICC activities (their CB&S segment), any actual surprise was far overdone [...]
Since some markets seem to be waiting on either longer lingering in ZIRP (US) or renewed and heavier QE (Japan, Europe) it is worth examining exactly what they are anticipating. Obviously, that desire doesn’t extend into the real economy since the downward fluctuation in 2015 pretty much dissolves and absolves any direct monetarism correlation. What is left is a high [...]
After a relief rally, risk assets are at a critical juncture. We may be seeing a bottoming in global risk assets and hopefully another up-leg in the current expansion. But pessimism and risk aversion are high. We will need to see better economic news to alleviate the fears that higher interest rates will push us into recession. The popping of [...]
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