Some things are not supposed to be innovative. It’s no surprise that given the high technology of our modern lives that modern humans tend to be drawn to the new and shiny. We’ve marked the advance of society along the lines of big leaps in understanding and doing. Quite easily, we can get lost equating the two, thinking every innovation [...]
Does a year matter? It seems like a sufficient length of time whereby solid conclusions might be reached. While that may be true in a lot of disciplines, it is not so in Economics. Recall that in late June 2017, ECB President Mario Draghi kicked up a minor fury over presumed “hawkish” comments. It triggered a worldwide BOND ROUT!!! as [...]
If it seemed a bit calmer yesterday in global markets than has become typical, it was likely due to the absence of Chinese influence. China’s markets were closed for the country’s annual Dragon Boat festival, a holiday tradition that supposedly dates back 2,000 years. According to state media, it’s not strictly Chinese any longer. The celebrations have apparently spread all [...]
As a starting point, the TIC data is enormously helpful. Not only does it provide some badly needed level of detail, the series’ focus is right in the area where everything matters. Ostensibly about Treasuries being bought and sold in foreign places, quite by accident the Treasury Department has captured an introductory measure of offshore “dollar” money. What’s truly helpful [...]
We’ve noted over the past few weeks just how much things have changed since earlier this year. We started off 2018 in the grips of inflation hysteria, the more extreme corollary to globally synchronized growth. Things were going to be so good, they said, it would be bad. Now there’s just growing worries about only bad. In some cases, these [...]
The Bank of Japan gathered its policymaking members in Tokyo at the end of last week. The statements released and the commentary given pursuant to it exuded a renewed darkness. When they had last met on April 26 and 27, things were already different. But the conclave before that, March 8 and 9, they were practically giddy. What a difference [...]
Well before Jerome Powell changed his dots a little, or the ECB chickened out, the Reserve Bank of India had already acted. For the first time since January 2014, on June 6 the RBI raised its benchmark repo rate. Rather than reverse the rupee’s slide it appears to have renewed it. The euro may have routed yesterday and hogged all the [...]
The People’s Bank of China won’t update its balance sheet numbers for May until later this month. Last month, as expected, the Chinese central bank allowed bank reserves to contract for the first time in nearly two years. It is, I believe, all part of the reprioritization of monetary policy goals toward CNY. How well it works in practice remains [...]
The global economy is not falling off a cliff. There isn’t even evidence it is about to or is nearing such a situation. The most alarming that might be said of how things appear right now is that conditions aren’t getting any better. It’s hardly the stuff of severe global unrest. This is why individual developments are always cast as [...]
India was not alone in having its central bank unexpectedly act in attempted defiance of the “dollar.” There was Indonesia (last week) raising rates, too, and Turkey by a lot more. Argentina was handed the largest bailout (dollar funding) in the IMF’s history. And Brazil, well, that country’s monetary officials called you stupid. Yesterday afternoon, Ilan Goldfajn, Banco do Brasil’s [...]
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