Europeans are growing more downbeat again. While ostensibly many are more worried about a new set of restrictions due to (even more overreactions about) COVID, that’s only part of the problem. The bigger factor, economically speaking, is that Europe’s economy has barely moved, or at most not moved near enough, off the bottom. To interrupt now what has already proved [...]
Their experience with COVID has been different in each case. Their response to the outbreak and pandemic hardly uniform. Mexico, for example, has reported 855,000 cases of the coronavirus from which more than 86,000 have died (or were found to have the disease when they died). Japan, on the other hand, just 93,000 cases with only 1,600 fatalities. We all [...]
Because it worked out so well for Jay Powell? No. They have no idea what to do now. Zero. And they are out of ideas. I’m writing about the ECB here, but it begins first with the Federal Reserve Flustered by years of a very low unemployment rate stuck several points below where “full employment” had been estimated as late [...]
It’s just not fast enough. And with the labor market spitting out numbers across a broad economic cross-section that look increasingly tired suggesting an economy running out of momentum, there’s the added urgency of time. Late summer figures still aren’t close to where they need to be even though when you view them in isolation they can look tremendous.Start with [...]
Mario Draghi was a very polarizing figure for him to be atop a central bank that has no natural constituency. Sure, there is a European Central Bank but there remain National Central Banks which had retained their own powers and influence following the monetary union. Draghi’s approach rubbed critics the wrong way, a growing legion of them, a lot of [...]
On June 24, Europe’s central bank, the ECB, settled what it called T-LTRO III. Technically, this was an open market operation (OMO) and therefore a specific kind of LTRO. The “T” part of the program doesn’t really matter unless you happen to be running the short desk at a major European bank. For the public, the Roman numeral “III” added [...]
According to the latest figures, Japan has tallied 56,074 total coronavirus cases since the outbreak began, leading to the death of an estimated 1,103 Japanese citizens. Out of a total population north of 125 million, it’s hugely incongruous. For now, however, it does present an obvious reason why the government there didn’t go to such deliberate lockdown extremes as so [...]
These are not numbers that are consistent with a robust rebound. In fact, they don’t indicate very much of one at all. IHS Markit’s flash PMI’s for July 2020 instead look way too much like the sentiment indicators in Germany and Japan. Though they are now back near 50, both services and manufacturing, that doesn’t actually indicate what everyone seems [...]
Italy had been one of hardest hit countries, if not the worst for a good while. For months rather than weeks, life was shut down in an effort to get ahead of COVID-19 while it ravaged seemingly unchecked. It became a buzzword of sorts, the name of the nation synonymous with the pandemic itself. Don’t be Italy.As a result, the [...]
Unlike some sentiment indicators, the ISM Non-manufacturing, in particular, actual trade in goods continued to contract in May 2020. Both exports and imports fell further, though the rate of descent has improved. In fact, that’s all the other, more subdued PMI’s like Markit’s have been suggesting. Getting closer to a bottom.Unlike any of the sentiment numbers, however, these trade figures [...]
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