According to the TIC estimates, more than half a trillion in UST’s have been perhaps liquidated from foreign official holdings since October 2014. More than half of that total has taken place just in 2016 alone in the eight months through August. And, of course, in that time UST nominal rates have only fallen and sharply so, contradicting the nightmare [...]
There is absolutely no need whatsoever to pay any attention to what Janet Yellen says. There is even less call for parsing the increasingly ridiculous FOMC statement, particularly with regard to inflation where it will continue to suggest “professional forecasters” are the only way (left) to measure monetary policy effectiveness. Instead, four times a year the FOMC meeting coincides with [...]
One of the articles referenced in Janet Yellen’s Jackson Hole speech last week was a piece written for the Peterson Institute for International Economics by Senior Fellow Olivier Blanchard. Dr. Blanchard has, as noted earlier today, all the “right” credentials, which is why his conjecture gets included into the speeches of Federal Reserve Chairmen. Having taught at both Harvard and [...]
Basic economics has proven that when the supply of something dwindles, absent an offsetting drop in demand the price should rise. When translating these fundamental terms to the labor market especially of the past few years, the supply means “slack” or the available pool of workers not yet working; demand has been, we are told repeatedly, very robust; therefore the [...]
Some legitimate scientists are legitimately worried about the spread of information. The lack of boundaries afforded by an open internet has left the world awash in it, and with no shortage of opinion. This is a good thing. However, there is a downside in that unfiltered and unrefined information as it can be used to mislead both the person wielding [...]
With the housing recovery, it is perhaps because it has been much more visible and earnest that the disparity is more easily appreciated and understood. Prices have surged in some places as much as the housing mania portion of the great bubble of the 2000’s, yet that has taken place despite levels of overall activity at only fractions of that [...]
It makes for quite the juxtaposition, though perhaps not so jarring given that global banks are still enormous and disparate operations. On the one hand, Citigroup’s CEO was eminently confident from within the confines of Davos and the status quo: The market is "adjusting" to a series of headwinds that can be overcome, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said Thursday, a [...]
The proper use of statistics is, well, the proper use of statistics. While that is certainly a tautology it is also a valid criticism. The more “modern” we have become, the more the math is applied as if it were a substitute for general (and generous) scientific inquiry. Far too often, what is purported as such is nothing more than [...]
The Jackson Hole gathering may end up providing at least some clarification, but not even close to the manner in which everyone seems intent on inferring. With Janet Yellen’s notable absence, there isn’t the same sort of celebrity about what would have been the media hanging upon every word; that is, after all, what the Federal Reserve has become, not [...]
The last year has been a tough one for investors. There are a few places one could have booked a double digit gain in the last 12 months but not many and certainly not in assets that are in the standard portfolio. Currency hedged ETFs for European and Japanese stocks produced big gains but a lot of the gain was [...]
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