The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. Buddha Review It's that time of year again, time to cast the runes, consult the iChing, shake the Magic Eight Ball and read the tea leaves. What will [...]
It is time to start paying attention to PMI’s again, some of them. There are those like the ISM’s Manufacturing Index which remains off in a world of its own. The version of the goods economy suggested by this one index is very different than almost every other. It skyrocketed in late summer last year way out of line (highest [...]
The first central banker to blink wasn’t Jay Powell it was Stephen Poloz. The Bank of Canada has been steadily raising its policy rate like the Fed, or had been. It was widely expected that Canada’s central bank would skip this last meeting but there was no doubt about another 25 bps increase next month. Instead, things are a little [...]
Is the Fed's monetary tightening about over? Maybe, maybe not but there does seem to be some disagreement between Jerome Powell and his Vice Chair, Richard Clarida. Powell said just a little over a month ago that the Fed Funds rate was still "a long way from neutral" and that the Fed may ultimately need to go past neutral. Clarida [...]
The risk budget is again unchanged this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between bonds and risk assets is 50/50. Why is the stock market falling? Is it fear of a trade related slowdown? Or of an overly aggressive Fed hiking rates too far and killing one of the longest US expansions on record? Or is it more [...]
In September 2015, the US EPA issued a notice of violation to Volkswagen. The European carmaker had, apparently, engineered its turbocharged direct injection diesel engines to turn on the vehicle’s emissions control only during testing. Discrepancies had been discovered by California regulators the year before, many involving European makes and models. The Volkswagen emissions scandal touched off a global regulatory [...]
As always, it’s about the whole thing. A true economic boom spreads out real gains to the vast majority of the population. There will always be some proportion of people who are left out. But in the good ones, the true upswings, that share is minimal. This is the big problem right now, especially as GDP has been positive in [...]
Inflation hysteria was as much crude oil as anything else. After all, it was the sudden spike higher in oil prices that would eventually push the US CPI, PCE Deflator, Europe’s HICP, and even Japan’s moribund inflation index. Central bankers were giddy, as was mainstream commentary extrapolating these trajectories into actual economic acceleration. For a time, even the unbreakable skepticism [...]
True to form, whoever holds the government it is for them the best economy ever. It doesn’t matter political parties or otherwise affiliations. The rhetoric has become so unhinged that in the US former President Obama is trying to take credit for current President Trump’s economic “miracle” – that doesn’t actually exist. In India, the Modi government is following the [...]
The calendar last month hadn’t yet run out on US Industrial Production as it had for US Retail Sales. The hurricane interruption of 2017 for industry unlike consumer spending extended into last September. Therefore, the base comparison for 2018 is against that artificial low. As such, US IP rose by 5.1% year-over-year last month. That’s the largest gain since 2010. [...]
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