The PCE Deflator rose 2.31% year-over-year in July 2018, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That makes five in a row for Jay Powell to try to make his case. Prior to March, the central bank had missed its target for the PCE Deflator in 68 out of 70 months using the 2012 dollar reference. Has something changed? Yes [...]
There are a few pretty good indications that inflation hysteria is long dead. Since this was one of the more extreme forms, it’s also relevant in parsing any shift from reflation back to deflation. There are any number of markets suggesting as much already. Still, this one really has to sting for sunny, confident Jerome Powell. From the St. Louis [...]
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 [...]
The UST yield curve continues to flatten (as it does elsewhere). All sorts of mainstream articles have been published lately about it. Many of them often refer to academic pieces ostensibly trying assuage all fears about the yield curve’s threatening inversion. Fret not the distortion, they say. And they are right. As I constantly remind people, it’s not inversion that [...]
Effective federal funds (EFF) was 1.92% again yesterday. That’s now eight in a row just 3 bps underneath the “technically adjusted” IOER. If indeed the FOMC has to make another one to this tortured tool we know already who will be blamed for it. The Treasury Department announced yesterday that it will be auctioning off $65 billion in 4-week bills [...]
On June 13, the day the eurodollar futures curve inverted, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was at his regularly scheduled press conference following the regularly scheduled FOMC meeting. Nobody asked him about eurodollar futures, of course, because why bring that up? The press did inquire about IOER, though. The Fed had decided to make a “technical adjustment” in its policy [...]
Deutsche Bank wasn’t the only global institution under the gun of the US Justice Department. While the German bank settled for a record fine earlier this year, RBS was also hit. Theirs was an eye popping $4.9 billion settlement. The ostensibly British bank had already set aside $3.4 billion for the anticipated civil penalty, meaning that only $1.4 billion (and [...]
At this particular juncture eight months into 2018, the only thing that will help is abrupt and serious acceleration. On this side of May 29, it is way past time for it to get real. The global economy either synchronizes in a major, unambiguous breakout or markets retrench even more. That’s been the basis of this thing from Day 1; [...]
I suppose it’s only fair. After all, they started it. Earlier in the year, Federal Reserve officials including Chairman Jay Powell suggested it was all Trump’s fault. The abrupt difficulties presented by the dollar were, they said, the result of tax cuts swelling the deficit and thereby threatening capital markets with a “deluge” of Treasury bills to digest. This past [...]
What is it that’s different in August? If there was some relative calm in global markets in June and July it certainly disappeared this month. The dollar shot higher and global liquidity indications began sinking again. Yields have fallen on safety (liquidity) instruments more apparently divorced from any other mainstream factors. One place to look for answers is Tokyo. I [...]
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