The amount of credit market fireworks this week is only surpassed by those of October 15. Everywhere you look, credit markets are not just growing bearish but, as I said earlier in the week, bearish in comparison with past crisis periods. The past few days have surpassed even that observation, making credit now a fast-moving indicator of still nothing good. [...]
Back at the end of August, it was becoming clear that there was a growing sense of maybe not distrust but far less blind faith emanating from credit markets all over the world. Without a single epicenter it has been far more difficult to simply side step all economic permutations as singularly important, rather the culmination of increasing worry is [...]
With Europe reporting GDP, reactions have been somewhat varied. In some places, it was taken as not as bad as feared, while others were downright cheered by a lack of total collapse, as if that is now the standard for economic progress. Since GDP tends to be noisy in the short run, the major components, the economic base, continues to [...]
As much as there has been movement and drama in US credit, the same can be said of European credit. That is, of course, no surprise given the vast linkages between the two, but that does not necessarily diminish the European “flavor” of those home “markets.” Most attention is paid to Germany and its bund market, and for very good [...]
There are “portfolio effects” for individual investors, bank balance sheets and even interbank tendencies, or at least that is according to central bankers. The rather tame ECB announcement this week did highlight and clarify what Mario Draghi and his euro monetarists wish to accomplish. The new measures will support specific market segments that play a key role in the financing [...]
With credit markets in Europe and the US taking a bit of a pause for profit-taking or reassessment, it is notable that currencies have not. The euro finally broke free of what looked like a steady range, though unfortunately to the downside. While that may be celebrated by orthodox economists in Brussels and elsewhere, it should not as such devaluation [...]
There are several misconceptions about the US$ as the world’s reserve currency, including the use of the hegemony qualifier. Part of that stems from a very persistent lack of understanding about what actually took the place of the gold exchange standard after Bretton Woods (which itself is misunderstood as it replaced other forms of exchange control). You hear the term [...]
There is a growing bid for safety in almost every corner of the globe at this moment, save for a few outliers. Even the 10-year JGP sits at 50 bps today despite the spike in consumer inflation engineered by the Bank of Japan’s QQE. Of course, with BoJ buying up almost everything in sight, that may not be a relevant [...]
With the introduction of the world’s first major negative interest rate, I believe it was fully expected that the euro would devalue. After all, it sounds very much like an act of debasement, intentional and heavy, that should move the currency “markets”, but that has not been the case. In fact, the euro appears as much captured by confused stasis [...]
The ECB and Mario Draghi made some fairly dramatic moves in European monetary policy last week. They weren't entirely unexpected but the market response indicates some disappointment that they didn't do the full monty and initiate outright QE. Draghi has spoken recently about his desire to see a lower Euro and the last couple of weeks things have been going [...]
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