The Brazil strategy isn’t, of course, truly Brazilian. Like the Spanish flu which became famous for where it was first noticed and reported rather than where it originated, this monetary policy was thought up elsewhere and Banco do Brasil is merely the central bank which decided it was worth sharing.What is this Brazil (my term, by the way) policy? “Contingent [...]
While the world is taking the smallest of baby steps in the right direction, mostly it’s been related to the part of the eurodollar system that everyone can see. Not bank reserves and the Fed’s “money printing”, though you can see them and we’re told to obsess about them those things don’t matter. I mean instead the dollar’s exchange value; [...]
The way you hear it nowadays, the dollar just can’t catch a break. If it’s not a load of “V’s” indicated by some obscure data point (like the otherworldly spike in US home ownership levels), then it is Jay Powell who is clearly gunning for the US currency. He can’t kill it fast enough, having had more than enough of [...]
According to Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), the production of light automobiles rebounded in May 2020. Up more than 494% from April, the country managed to piece together 22 thousand units last month. And that was still 93.7% fewer than had been assembled during May 2019.Auto production had been down almost 99%, so the rebound to -93.7% [...]
Technically, by showing one decimal place maybe this doesn’t exactly qualify. Then again, I was only half serious. When Mexico’s government reported earlier this week that auto production fell by almost 100% in April, I wrote it was suggestive of the great possibly lingering difficulties being forecast for the other side of this economic dislocation. Automakers, basically, aren’t buying the [...]
What connects March 2020 with February 2008 as well as the Crash of ’87 all then with the Great Contraction which initiated the Great Depression? If you said economic and financial chaos, you’d be partly right. There wasn’t really much or any of that in 1987, though there was with the other three. People including politicians and central bankers don’t [...]
It’s actually pretty easy to see why the IMF is in a hurry to secure more resources. I’m not talking about potential bailout candidates banging down the doors; that’s already happened. The fund itself is doing two contradictory things simultaneously: telling the world, repeatedly, that it has a highly encouraging $1 trillion in bailout capacity at the same time it [...]
Hold all the congratulations. Jay Powell is, with a huge assist from the financial media, trying to pre-empt what comes next by taking a premature victory lap. The Fed isn’t just your central bank it is your friend. The amount of pure propaganda being put out lately is understandable if still disgusting. March was a good month to include [...]
Following up on what I wrote earlier, there were no Lehman’s or anything like it during March 2020. Does that mean there hadn’t been a crisis? According to some, yes. If you were talking specifically about a bank crisis, then, of course, that would be true. There was no bank crisis last month. It would be hard, however, to claim [...]
Is it over? That’s the question everyone is asking about both major crises, the answer is more obvious for only the one. As it pertains to the pandemic, no, it is not. Still the early stages. The other crisis, the global dollar run? Not looking like it, either. Stocks rebounded because of “major helicopter stimulus” or because that’s just what [...]
Stay In Touch