Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to scream about everyone screaming about inflation it’s probably not a good idea to use Janet Yellen’s face as this idea’s avatar. Even if most in the public likely don’t know why, this can’t help your credibility with the rest who absolutely do. And by “the rest”, who do I mean? A [...]
Deconstructing long-term interests may seem like a purely academic exercise. This is certainly how Economists treat it, coming at them using their statistical models. The goal is always to properly interpret these most basic of economic, financial, and monetary fundamentals so as to understand where everything that matters stands. Getting this wrong is the difference between night and day; between [...]
He certainly is at least when compared to the usual beauty contest contenders like Bill Gross or Jeff Gundlach who typically flock to these occasions. Here we are in reflation again, so interest rates must have nowhere to go but up. Therefore, it follows, bonds are in for a world of hurt all because inflation is being let loose by [...]
Treasury Secretaries, like Federal Reserve Chairmen, they don’t talk much about or pay much attention to the market’s need for collateral. They may pay some, but not specifically collateral if only under the vaguely defined category of “market consideration” when setting auction supply. Collateral shortages have come and gone, however dreadful, never eliciting a direct response insofar as supply has [...]
Words have meaning for a reason, to convey precise ideas easily and readily understood by the reader or listener. If you use the term “stimulus”, as its root already suggests you’d expect something to be stimulated by whatever is being classified using this specific grouping of letters/sounds. Context rounds out the meaning.For the last twenty years, you’d have been wrong [...]
The US federal government is the brokest entity the dark side of humankind could have ever conceived. And while that’s certainly the case, it is simultaneously true that our out-of-control politicians have no trouble whatsoever selling this deepening debt to a deflationary marketplace only too willing to snap up whatever is offered as if it was somehow scarce. Count me [...]
On December 26, 2018, the US Treasury sold off $41 billion in 5-year notes. “Only” $85.8 billion in bids were submitted, weakening the widely watched bid-to-cover ratio to a chatty 2.09. The prior sale of 5s had yielded a bid-to-cover of 2.495, nearly $100 billion in bids for $40 billion on offer, so something was clearly up. Had it been [...]
Since we’re still on the topic of Treasury auctions, here’s another one to take a closer look at. Yesterday, Treasury sold $18 billion in 5-year TIPS – the inflation protected security (91282CCA7) – and though there were plenty of bids they came in at prices somewhat out of whack with the secondary market. This left two-thirds of the offering to [...]
Ben Bernanke saw it even before he took over from Alan Greenspan. Like his “maestro”, however, Bernanke didn’t really know what to make of it. So, while early in 2005 Greenspan told of his version as an interest rate “conundrum”, his successor a month later tried to add more dimensions and details to the same puzzle via recognizing its clear, [...]
Then-President Trump was eager to talk in May 2017. Having been elected in 2016 by giving voice to what he called the “fake” unemployment rate on the campaign trail, and therefore mobilizing millions of the disaffected uncounted by that official ratio’s official definitions, it was enough to put him just barely over the top. To continue with the agenda, to [...]
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