Where have you gone, green shoots? The Fed turned dovish, a bunch of transitory factors, and, above all, so much Chinese stimulus. That’s what got everyone through the winter. Markets were truly harsh to end 2018, a sharp slap in the face after all year the unemployment rate. One of the big ones that seemed evidence for green shoots was [...]
The FOMC hates the bond market. Hates everything about it, especially how it tells these Economists they don’t know what they are doing. Monetary policy being little more than a vanity project, that’s not going to work for the people practicing it. OK, if you don’t like bonds then how about something else besides the stock market? Some independent corroboration [...]
It’s a tell-tale sign of someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. In the realm of global currency systems, anyone who brings up China’s massive stockpile of US Treasury assets inevitably they assign all the power to the Chinese. Xi could destroy Trump if he wanted, bringing down the US in a righteous fit of trade war anger. [...]
In the continued absence of regular data, as the US federal government attempts to get back up to speed before the next lull, it is perhaps appropriate to continue on with this week’s parade of anecdotes. Here I’ll discuss three of them, each seemingly unrelated to the others. To begin, we start with Chinese robots. It is the age of [...]
These things are processes. They take time, a lot of time. Given that, I keep coming back to what might otherwise seem an absurd idea. The best-case scenario for all of us just might be a global crash, one that would make 2008 blush. At least then it might afford the world the benefit of unambiguousness. We almost got there [...]
It was never really all that much. The best that might have been said was that it was a pause in the building of renewed deflationary pressures. The dollar had “risen” again especially in April and May, but then traded sideways through July. It wasn’t a rebound or even much that was positive, just less immediate heaviness. That appears to [...]
I’ve seen a lot of commentary lately describe conditions as if things are calmed down. There was a bit of growth scare, a little T-bill indigestion earlier in the year. The Chinese are somehow both stimulating their export sector by devaluing CNY, and also controlling the price of gold while they do it. The contradictory inflation/deflation signals have apparently just [...]
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Russians became hyperaware of US and NATO countermovements. There was an increase in bellicose rhetoric on both sides, and the Andropov years had left the Soviet leadership weakened by economic stagnation increasingly worried that the US just might launch a first-strike attack. The Communists developed a systematic intelligence approach in response. [...]
The term "decoupling" was invented in early 2008 really because of oil prices. It was widely believed that though the US economy might stumble that year (because of nothing other than subprime mortgages, naturally) the rest of the world would be insulated from any fallout. EM economies like China's were immune from such folly, they said. Like every other economic [...]
The PBOC really needn’t have conducted the last few of its RRR raises. By the time they were in the books, Chinese inflation was already well underway toward being tamed. Though their CPI wouldn’t register for a few more months still, peaking in July 2011, commodities had already turned decidedly downward. Copper went first, hitting its high on Valentine’s Day. [...]
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