Adding to the FOMC’s general inflation confusion about money and economy, all the major factors it is supposed to be competent about, policymakers are also having trouble figuring out why as they raise rates overall financial conditions haven’t actually tightened. According to one view, the easing of financial conditions meant that the economic effects of the Committee’s actions in gradually [...]
The markets actually turned before the Fed minutes were released, but once in the public (assuming they weren’t leaked again) the anti-“reflation” direction was amplified. Bonds have rallied as have eurodollar futures (near Friday’s recent high), JPY dropped (so you know gold was up, too), and even stocks shifted. As usual, it is being characterized as a “dovish” statement which [...]
The Asian flu of the late 1990’s might have been more accurately described as the Asian dollar flu. It was the first major global test of the mature eurodollar system, and it was a severe disruption in the global economy. It doesn’t register as much here in the United States because of the dot-com bubble and the popular imagination about [...]
In October 2015, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Bill Dudley admitted that the US economy might be slowing. In the typically understated fashion befitting the usual clownshow, he merely was acknowledging what was by then pretty obvious to anyone outside the economics profession. Dudley was at that moment, however, undaunted. His eye was cast toward the unemployment rate and that was [...]
The oil effect continued to recede in late spring for more than just WTI prices or inflation rates. US trade on both sides, inbound and outbound, while still positive has stalled since the winter. Exports grew by just 6.2% year-over-year (NSA) in June 2017, about the same pace as estimated in December 2016. After contracting for nearly two years, twenty-two [...]
In the early throes of economic devastation in 1931, Sweden found itself particularly vulnerable to any number of destabilizing factors. The global economy had been hit by depression, and the Great Contraction was bearing down on the Swedish monetary system. The krona had always been linked to the British pound, so that when the Bank of England removed gold convertibility [...]
In July 2012, the LIBOR manipulation scandal broke wide and before Congress then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used it to cleverly cover up for his crisis actions (more so inactions). He told the Senate Banking Committee that the LIBOR system was “structurally flawed” before intimating it had been that way for some time. Asked if the rates calculated by the [...]
Ben Bernanke, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, told Congress in March 2007 that subprime was contained. He will rightfully be remembered in infamy for that, but that wasn’t the most egregious example of being wrong. Even putting it in those terms risks understating the problem and why it stubbornly lingers. Being really wrong is claiming that IOER will establish [...]
How do we measure what has been lost over the last ten years? There is no single way to calculate it, let alone a correct solution. There are so many sides to an economy that choosing one risks overstating that facet at the expense of another. It’s somewhat of an impossible task already given the staggering dimensions. If someone had [...]
When Bear Stearns nearly failed, made to merge, in March 2008 it wasn’t really a surprise. Yes, markets were shocked by the demise of the ancient firm, one of the bulge bracket cartel which suggested surprise over the severity of it more than that things were going bad. For more than a year, starting in early 2007, Bear had been [...]
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