I guess in some ways it’s a race against the clock. What the optimists are really saying is the equivalent of the old eighties neo-Keynesian notion of filling in the troughs. That’s what government spending and monetary “stimulus” intend to accomplish, to limit the downside in a bid to buy time. Time for what? The economy to heal on its [...]
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 [...]
They merely repeat the words, as it is intended. With major fanfare and widespread praise, the Federal Reserve weeks ago had announced it was going to buy corporate bonds. Well, not actual bonds but ETFs. It hasn’t bought a single one of those, either, at least not until today and yet the program is being assigned the usual magical properties. [...]
On March 2, the Bank of Japan leapt into the stock market, Haruhiko Kuroda burnishing his Superman cape as he flew in to rescue the Nikkei. Purchasing a record amount of ETF’s that day, shares in Tokyo surged. It was a clear message, or so everyone thought. Don’t fight the Fed nor the Bank of Japan, not when they can [...]
The Federal Reserve announced the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) on March 23. The intent of this program was to calm the corporate bond market (secondary) then experiencing a massive blowout. Credit spreads of all kinds of corporate securities were exploding, the market in danger of completely shutting down.According to its latest balance sheet statement as of this afternoon, [...]
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