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 [...]
Jay Powell has a lot of catching up to do, and very little time to do it. He's squandered so much already. First his emergency rate cut blew up in his face and now his dud of a bazooka. Before the market got going, officials had already added a 25-day allotment (of bank reserves, of course) on top of the [...]
Is the dollar rising, or falling? Does it matter? In one sense, obviously it does. The way in which the dollar behaves dictates how everything else goes. The potential mix-up and confusion start when we have to define exactly what we mean by “dollar.” Or rising. The rising dollar doesn’t always rise. If we are talking about the US currency’s [...]
Being a member of the institutional “elite” means never having to say you’re sorry; or even admit that you have no idea what you are doing. For Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi’s retirement from the European Central Bank could not have come at a more opportune moment. Fresh off the Argentina debacle, she failed herself upward to an even better gig. [...]
What’s going on in China? It’s a question that is on everyone’s mind. While most attention is focused on the unfolding human tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic, the potential for it to be compounded by any economic fallout makes for even more urgency. The sad truth is that China was in rough shape heading into the coronavirus. How rough, though? [...]
I actually wanted to focus on this yesterday but confirmation wasn’t forthcoming until today. So, it ended up being a broader note on the dollar which only included some mention of Brazil in passing. Still a worthwhile couple of minutes. There were rumors that Banco (central) do Brasil was intervening or was going to intervene in its local currency markets, [...]
Fears over machines aren’t anything new. The Terminator franchise got started in the eighties and was hardly original back then. In gross economic terms, it may seem like the robot invasion is a 21st century phenomenon. It isn’t. One need only go back to Alberta of all places and learn about the Canadian Clifford Hugh Douglas. Douglas preached something called [...]
I’m going to go back to Mexico for the third day in a row. First it was imports (meaning Mexico’s exports) then automobile manufacturing and now Industrial Production. I’ll probably come back to this tomorrow when INEGI updates that last number for November 2019. For now, through October will do just fine, especially in light of where automobile production is [...]
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