The problem with talking about inflation, and there is a lot of it recently, is conflation. Modern measures and concepts about pricing mash together every kind and form to create something that doesn’t really mean what was intended. On the “up” side we have monetary debasement coupling with orthodox concepts of “pricing power” and thrown together with supply shortages and [...]
Back in September 2012 at the press conference for Ben Bernanke’s announcement of QE, the Chairman was asked point blank by Pedro da Costa of Reuters about perceptions of it being a program that seemed more directed toward Wall Street than Main Street. The answer was the standard boiler plate assumptions that orthodox economists make in terms of aggregate demand. [...]
It is only one word, but it has been repeated so many times by FOMC members in the past year or so it has taken on the imprimatur of officialdom vernacular. Whenever speaking of bubbles, these policymakers inevitably include the word, “obvious.” Long is the list of internal literature that purports to place bubbles in the same category with the [...]
The term consumer exhaustion can apply to several circumstances, but typically they all relate to exhaustion of resources. Households can appeal to wages, transfers, savings or debt, and usually some combination of the four, to maintain living standards and discretionary budgets. So exhaustion, like that of yesterday’s GDP, could be due to any one segment failing more than the others [...]
Economists blaming weather for the real estate/housing “pause” were cautiously optimistic for March ahead of this week’s housing data windfall. Economists expect that sales rose 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 450,000 last month, according to a survey by FactSet. New-home buying dipped 3.3 percent in February. Harsh winter storms that month curtailed purchases in the Northeast, [...]
I mentioned earlier today that pretty much the only sector of the economy (outside of government run lending for university waste) acting favorably toward interest rate “stimulus” was autos. Prior to the historic credit selloff and MBS rout in the middle of last year, you could add housing to the list. The latest figures for March 2014 from the National [...]
I speculated in May last year that the introduction of the taper concept was in large part due to what Jeremy Stein articulated in February 2013, namely the idea that certain “markets” were becoming overheated in the “reach for yield.” In essence, it amounted to an attempt to “talk down” assets, chief among them the raging price appreciation once again [...]
Herb Stein was an economist that drew the unenviable task (though I don’t think he saw it as such) of being chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was a man who knew imbalance up close and personal. To that end, he once quipped, “Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go [...]
The theme of stock margin debt and its obvious correlation to QE episodes continued into December. Margin debt levels are at record highs, but more importantly investor net worth in the aggregate has finally closed in on the dot-com levels. While just a bit short of the most extreme month of the dot-com mania, margin debt and negative net worth [...]
I suppose the key difference this January is that taper is a reality and not just some theoretical jawboning. But he we are again in January discussing FOMC ruminations about what might appear “slightly” concerning about asset prices and levels. As Janet Yellen takes over to focus the Fed’s considerable (in its models’ estimations) might in trying to “alleviate all [...]
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