Six months ago back in October, IBM reported what seemed to be encouraging results. Though revenues at the company were down for the eighteenth consecutive quarter, they were so by the slimmest of margins, just -0.3%. For Big Blue, that had been the best revenue comparison since the first quarter of 2012 back when global recovery was the most plausible. [...]
The textbook says that whenever the central bank raises its policy rate that means tightening. Actual experience over more than just this last lost decade demonstrates that at the very least it is much more complicated than that. There is far more evidence of monetary policy being nothing more than a response, as that reverse condition can absolutely be established [...]
First quarter GDP in China rose 6.9%, better than expected and above the government’s target (6.5%) for 2017. It stands to reason, however, that if Communist officials thought they could get 6.9% to last for the whole year they would have made it their target, especially since 6.5% would be less than the GDP growth rate for 2016 (6.7%). In [...]
I suspect that Federal Reserve officials would prefer to not speak about inflation, nor ever again be asked about it. When oil prices first crashed at the end of 2014, they said it was a “transitory” phenomenon not worthy of much attention. Or if it was to be given some consideration, it was a benefit to consumers, another positive “tailwind” [...]
At the end of February, FRBNY President Bill Dudley made what was a widely shared remark that “animal spirits had been unleashed.” Confidence of just this sort is exactly what monetary policy is after, using all kinds of tools by which to get people happy about the future. According to rational expectations theory, which guides every post-Great Inflation model, if [...]
As with all statistics, there are discrepancies that from time to time may obscure the meaning or validity of the particular estimate in question. For the vast majority of the time, any such uncertainties amount to very little. Overall, harmony among the major accounts reduces the signal noise from any one featuring a significant inconsistency. There are, of course, various [...]
In June 2012, Janet Yellen, then the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, addressed an audience in Boston with what for the time seemed like a radical departure. It was the latest in a string of them, for conditions throughout the “recovery” period never did quite seem to hit the recovery stride. Because of that, there was constant stream of [...]
Primary dealer holdings of UST securities have been on the rise again. This sort of warehouse activity is drastically misunderstood, exemplified best when last year around this time surging dealer inventory was blamed on those banks’ purported inability to sell off their holdings. It was an absolutely absurd idea for several reasons, but most prominently the overwhelming demand at the [...]
In the early trading on Friday, it looked as if “reflation” might break down entirely. The flurry of information seemed to be uniformly bad, from Syria to payrolls there wasn’t much for optimism to remain relevant. All of a sudden, however, it all reversed so that trading in the latter part of the day was as if related to an [...]
Bundesrepublik Deutscheland Finanzagentur GmbH (German Finance Agency) was created on September 19, 2000, in order to manage the German government’s short run liquidity needs. GFA took over the task after three separate agencies (Federal Ministry of Finance, Federal Securities Administration, and Deutsche Bundesbank) had previously shared responsibility for it. On September 17, 2014, almost exactly fourteen years later, GFA managed [...]
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