It was a startling statement for the time. Mario Draghi had only been on the job as President of the European Central Bank for a few months by then, taking over for the hapless Jean Claude-Trichet who was unceremoniously retired at the end of October 2011 amidst “unexpected” chaos and turmoil. It was Trichet who contributed much to the tumult, [...]
It’s the forward-looking indicators right now that look the worst. This is why we think Euro$ #4 is still closer to its beginning than its end. Even though it may be entering its fifth quarter of existence here in Q2 2019, these things are long processes that take a lot of time to fully play out. Euro$ #3, for example, [...]
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut its benchmark money rate for the second straight meeting. Reducing its repo rate by 25 bps, down to 6%, the central bank once gripped by political turmoil has certainly shifted gears. Former Governor Urjit Patel was essentially removed (he resigned) in December after feuding with the federal government over his perceived hawkish stance. [...]
According to Germany’s Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, or ZEW, the slump in the country’s economy has now reached its fourteenth month. The institute’s sentiment index has improved in the last two, but only slightly. As of the latest calculation released today, it stands at -3.6. That’s up from -24.7 back in October, though sentiment had likewise improved at one point [...]
We're changing the format on our Macro updates, breaking the report into two parts. This is part one, a review of the data released the previous month with charts to highlight the ones we deem important. We'll post another one next week that will be more commentary and the market based indicators we use to monitor recession risk. We are [...]
German GDP was the smallest of positives in Q4 2018, according to figures released today by DeStatis. Following a -0.2% rate in Q3, no matter how slight the plus sign was written into every headline. Most of them followed along the same format, such as CNBC’s Germany narrowly escapes recession after flat growth in the fourth quarter. That’s entirely premature. [...]
Germany is a tough one to get around. Argentina falls into a bad recession, you can get by believing that’s not particularly unusual or interesting. If its neighbor Brazil becomes shaky, you can still chalk it up to EM volatility. Italy is Europe’s perpetual basket case. China’s a little more difficult, but still that country has its own unique problems. [...]
The US economic data begins to trickle in slowly. Today, the reopened Census Bureau reports on orders and shipments to and from US factories dating back to last November. New orders for durable goods rose just 4.5% year-over-year in that month, while shipments gained 4.7%. The 6-month average for new orders was in November pulled down to just 6.6%, the [...]
Ambiguity favors the path of least resistance. If there isn’t any direct refutation of the thing everyone believes in, everyone will continue to believe in that thing and only that thing. Human nature. In economy terms, people respond near exclusively to negative numbers. This is less evolution and more a process of modern times. There is a very strong attachment [...]
This will be a fairly quick update as I just posted a Mid-Year Review yesterday that covers a lot of the same ground. There were, as you'll see below, some fairly positive reports since the last update but the markets are not responding to the better data. Markets seem to be more focused on the trade wars and the potential [...]
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