Was this taking it a little too far, a little too obvious? Central bankers, since they aren’t real central bankers, their entire job is to project confidence. We get that. No matter what happens along the way, you can be sure policymakers aren’t going to ever let on in public they’re concerned. Think the famous scene in the Naked Gun [...]
Have European banks begun to lend in a way that will lead to actual inflation? For Europe’s central bankers, this is a huge question. For so many years despite almost constant QE, banks have consistently refused to do so. Even with supercharged asset purchases begun in 2020, there still hasn’t been any correlation between ECB activities and bank lending.This is [...]
All eyes on Europe today where ECB Governor Christine Lagarde tried very hard to avoid committing to either rate hikes or the timing of them. Always conditional, she says. However, everyone knows different. With her counterparts at the Federal Reserve already committed to panicking over CPI rates, the latest HICP inflation numbers in Europe are not going to take any [...]
The economy was in danger of running hot, too hot they all said. In order to stay ahead of such inflation potential, as central bankers saw it, first it would be necessary to wind down quantitative easing. Taper then terminate. After that, rate hikes.Hawks buzzing around everywhere.But Mario Draghi’s ECB had a problem. The inflationary pressures were there, he reasoned, [...]
The bond market’s verdict has already been rendered. In fact, the judgment was made even before this year’s CPIs surged to the highest they’d been in a long time. The most consistently accurate and only historically validated source for sorting and signaling inflation, low yields aren’t just skeptical in being low they are unequivocal in remaining steadfastly ultra-low.For those who [...]
Bring on the tantrum. Forget this prevaricating, we should want and expect interest rates to get on with normalizing. It’s been a long time, verging to the insanity of a decade and a half already that keeps trending more downward through time. What’s the holdup? You can’t blame COVID at the tail end for a woeful string which actually dates [...]
We’ve got one central bank over here in America which appears as if its members can’t wait to “taper”, bringing up both the topic and using that particular word as much as possible. Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve obviously intends to buoy confidence by projecting as much when it does cut back on the pace of its (irrelevant) QE6. On the [...]
Barely more than two weeks. That’s all was needed for the headlines to scream “bloodbath”, “end of the bull market”, and the always popular BOND ROUT!!! The 10-year Treasury yield had bottomed out in August and by mid-September 2019 this key benchmark rate screamed upward by 43 bps in just seven sessions. Yes, seven. To think, the financial media has [...]
We are going to start here with Europe before heading to Australia and then getting to China – and then currency. Why the ECB? It is going through the same pangs of dissatisfaction as its cousin the Federal Reserve had last summer. Like the Fed in 2020, Europe’s central bank in 2021 has climbed to the end of its grand [...]
It has taken nearly two years for Germany’s ZEW to finally close its gap. The index for sentiment had popped all the way back in September 2019 buoyed by the ECB restarting QE; these peculiar German businesspersons who make up this particular survey panel do love their “stimulus” announcements no matter how many times the actual policy fails to stimulate [...]
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