China isn’t the only country actively resisting the “stimulus” certainties which go for inarguable wisdom around most of the rest of the world. Xi Jinping has stated his case very plainly, only no one wants to listen to the dictator; or at least take him literally. People would rather believe there’s only the one way to respond to big economic [...]
The Chinese erstwhile dictator Xi Jinping asked the Davos gathering of the superrich, can’t we all just get along? More than a weird juxtaposition, appearing virtually before other virtual attendees, the Communist strongman wanted to make plain his view, therefore China’s, he harbors no desire for a renewal of the Cold War. Though we come from very different places and [...]
It’s not just that there isn’t much inflation evident in consumer prices. Rather, it’s a pretty big deal given the deluge of so much “money printing” this year, begun three-quarters of a year before, that consumer prices are increasing at some of the slowest rates in the data. Trillions in bank reserves, sure, but actual money can only be missing. [...]
Last week, IHS Markit reported that sentiment in Mexico’s factory sector had slipped again during December 2020. The organization’s manufacturing PMI had declined for the second straight month, having peaked recently back in October. Even then, the index hadn’t yet come close to crossing the magic 50 dividing line. The best it had managed during this global rebound was a [...]
The Chinese have never subscribed to the modern wave of “transparency” which has swept over Western central banks. The People’s Bank of China, Big Mama, very much operates instead on the doctrine which preceded it. Basically, Montagu Norman’s way of doing things. Never explain, never excuse.This mantra has been applied to what it does outside of China as much as [...]
One of the hardest things to understand as an investor is that markets sometimes - often - don't line up with economic reality. Markets rarely reflect current economic conditions and at times they seem to discount a future that seems highly unlikely at best, and delusional at worst. That seems to be the case today, as stocks sit near all-time [...]
What had given Inflation Hysteria #1 its real punch had been the benchmark 10-year Treasury note. Throughout 2017, despite the unemployment rate in the US, globally synchronized growth being declared around the world (and being declared as some momentously significant development), and whatever other tiny factors acceding to the narrative, longer-term Treasury rates just weren’t buying it. Instead, the eurodollar [...]
It was only three years ago, so you’d think narratives today would at least try to account for relevant recent history. If that prior first fit of inflation hysteria had a birthdate, it would’ve probably been December 18 or 19, 2017. On the former, the US House of Representatives passed their version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA); [...]
For the past couple months, the foreign official sector has been able to go back to buying (net) US Treasuries again. Not a lot, but it’s a change from the prior period when overseas central banks and governments would dependably dump tens of billions each month. Contrary to convention, this kind of buying corresponds to rising rates, the reflationary stuff. [...]
The number illusion is a logical fallacy of sorts, an appeal to the authority of what looks like objectivity. You can’t argue with math. While that’s true, in social sciences there is the continued absence of real proofs which dominate the hard sciences. Newtonian physics works as a worldview because the numbers throughout history have always checked out.When an Economist [...]
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