As I wrote yesterday, “In the West, consumer prices overall are pushed around by oil. In the East, by food.” In neither case is inflation buoyed by “money printing.” Central banks both West and East are doing things, of course, but none of them amount to increasing the effective supply of money. Failure of inflation, more so economy, the predictable [...]
The real question is why no one says anything. They can continue to make these grossly untrue, often contradictory statements without fear of having to explain themselves. Don’t even think about repercussions. Even in front of politicians ostensibly being there on behalf of the public, pedigree still matters more than results. It’s actually worse than that since all that I’m [...]
There was more than enough evidence that QE didn’t work fifteen years ago. The Japanese had accumulated these monetary experiments at the dawn of the 21st century. And there was even a time when US and Western central bankers were skeptical. What happened was 2008; a dislocation so big and widespread they had no choice but to embrace the failure [...]
Language is often said to be a living thing. Common everyday usage can and does introduce new words and changes the meaning of existing ones. But this is a gradual evolution, and rarely does the process leap ahead into more drastic alterations. Central bankers, however, are challenging such preconceptions. They write words that often have specific meanings in everyday custom [...]
What is economic growth? This isn’t an easy question to answer. Most people might respond with a reference to GDP. That wouldn’t necessarily be an incorrect one, but it may not be exactly on point, either. GDP was developed in order to try and assess economic growth, and over the years has simply become a stand-in for it. That’s true [...]
Just like Jay Powell is surely hoping for some help from Mother Nature, the central bankers at the BoJ have to be wishing for more on their side of the Pacific. The US Federal Reserve will be looking for a repeat of last year’s Harvey and Irma effects out of Florence. It looks like they’ll need them. Japanese officials have [...]
By the time Shinzo Abe had been elected, he already had the wind at his back. At least it could have been described that way by Economists. While Abe was given a second chance at being Japan’s Prime Minister in the middle of December 2012, his government found the yen and stock market moving in his direction. These are called [...]
The Boston Fed held its 62nd Annual Economic Conference over the weekend. Not quite as well-known as the KC Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium, this Eastern branch’s meeting still attracts many big-name speakers. The “right” speakers, that is, meaning academic and mainstream bank Economists, supranational think tank thinkers, as well as current and former central bankers. The echo chamber is just [...]
June was a good month for Japanese workers. Real wages rose at the fastest pace in eight years, jumping nearly 3% for the first time since 2010. The data, reported by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, was the first piece of positive economic news in some time. As you might expect, the wage figures are being taken [...]
Some things are not supposed to be innovative. It’s no surprise that given the high technology of our modern lives that modern humans tend to be drawn to the new and shiny. We’ve marked the advance of society along the lines of big leaps in understanding and doing. Quite easily, we can get lost equating the two, thinking every innovation [...]
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