Is it a shortage of workers, or a shortage of work? Structural issues with Americans and who they are, or macro issues about which Americans have been fed a load of crap for more than a decade? You can see why those who may have been manufacturing raw manure might have an interest in swaying the debate toward the structural. [...]
For the first half of the Great “Recession”, China and the rest of the EM world seemed immune. It was American subprime mortgages that we were told was causing all the problems, and if European banks had somehow gotten themselves entangled in the rotten real estate mess so much the better for where growth was invulnerable. This first instance of [...]
I don’t know how many different ways I can write this. Reserves are not insurance against monetary reversal, they are the calamity. If you have them, that only means you have a problem. And if you have a lot of them, well. The Financial Times yesterday writes again about Argentina. No matter what’s thrown at that country, nothing will staunch [...]
There isn’t really any doubt what happened on May 29. It was a global collateral call. Bonds all over Earth were hugely bid, especially paper in Germany and America – the pristine of the pristine. This is pure liquidity risk, meaning that no matter your feelings on the long-term solvency of the US government (or Germany’s ability to maintain the [...]
We all know, or we think we do, what happens when central banks print money. There are any number of historical images from which we can refresh our collective memory. Weimar Germany usually comes to mind, as does Venezuela or Zimbabwe in recent times. But what about the opposite? It sounds absurd. No government officials in their right mind would [...]
In 1962, physicist Wolfgang Panofsky finally obtained funding from the Atomic Energy Commission. As a faculty member at Stanford University he wanted the federal government to fund his monster. Dubbed Project M, for monster, Dr. Panofsky was seeking a method for scientists to obtain evidence for what was really going on inside the atom. The project was really a linear [...]
The Russian ruble has fared far and away much better than its EM peers. Compared to something like the Brazilian real, there is no comparison. The ruble has been relatively steady following an initial drop in April with the imposition of sanctions. April 19 came and went, and while that date is displayed prominently across all the key currencies it [...]
Inflation hysteria and the boom hysteria may both seem like they are one and the same thing. They are related, sure, and they represent similar objects. However, there are subtle differences. The mania over inflation, for example, has subsided while the one about the economy reaches its own feverish pitch. In early June, Newt Gingrich appeared on ABCNews’ The View [...]
CNY has held up over the last few days after Chinese officials intervened. Central bank actions like these tend to work if only over the very shortest timeframes. The tentative calm there, however, hasn’t extended universally. Copper, for one, has fallen right out of its Reflation #3 range. Selling off solidly for almost a month now, today it was pounded [...]
Chinese officials are getting nervous. Everyone knows that whenever your favorite sports team struggles and fans are calling for the head coach’s head, any owner or general manager who then issues the dreaded (from the coach’s perspective) vote of confidence is essentially sealing his fate. PBOC Governor Yi Gang issued a similar sort of statement today. CNY is in freefall, [...]
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