This goes back to the earliest days of the Federal Reserve. In 1912 and even before, in order to sell the skeptical public on another central bank – the nation’s third, and first in three-quarters of a century - in what was already going to be an uphill battle, Congress demanded that this thing be called something other than a [...]
He certainly is at least when compared to the usual beauty contest contenders like Bill Gross or Jeff Gundlach who typically flock to these occasions. Here we are in reflation again, so interest rates must have nowhere to go but up. Therefore, it follows, bonds are in for a world of hurt all because inflation is being let loose by [...]
The benchmark 10-year US Treasury has obtained some bids. Not long ago the certain harbinger of bond rout doom, the long end maybe has joined the rest of the world in its global pause if somewhat later than it had begun elsewhere (including, importantly, its own TIPS real yield backyard). Even nearer-in inflation expectations have rounded off at their current [...]
The SLR exemption is ending! The SLR exemption is ending! Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? There has been rampant speculation the last few weeks about the fate of the exemption the Fed provided banks a year ago with regard to the Supplemental Leverage Ratio that allowed them to ignore Treasuries and reserves. The banks themselves warned that [...]
Quick questions: who said the following, and when did this person say this? Our own country has tried one economic theory after another. The present Administration asked for, and received, extraordinary powers upon the assurance that these were to be temporary. Most of its proposals did not follow familiar paths to recovery. We knew they were being undertaken hastily and [...]
The Federal Reserve has allowed itself an image of a marshmallow when it comes to the banking system it is (one-third) charged with regulating. First and foremost, along with the two other (redundant) triplets, the OCC and FDIC, the US central bank is not a central bank at all; it is near exclusively a domestic bank regulator. And while “macroprudential” [...]
While the global inflation picture remains fixed at firmly normal (as in, disinflationary), US retail sales by contrast have been highly abnormal. You’d think given that, the consumer price part of the economic equation would, well, equate eventually price-wise. Consumers are spending, prices should be heading upward at a noticeable rate. To begin with, consumer spending – as pictured by [...]
Putting some charts and data behind Friday’s extensive essay about bank reserves and inflation intended to further highlight some key parallels…The precursor event to yield caps being imposed in the United States actually took place during the Great Depression. Then – as now – officials at the central bank expected their “money printing” efforts to pay off in the reverse [...]
All the signs were there, starting with the fact that the Fed and ECB together had supposedly the flooded the world with digital money yet a palpable “something” was really off. Ben Bernanke’s central bank had unleashed both ZIRP and QE, the latter of which had finished up a couple months before. In Europe, Jean Claude-Trichet’s outfit was “highly accommodative” [...]
A few have asked, so I’ve written up what is actually a shorter piece on this SLR business is all about. First, SLR stands for Supplementary Leverage Ratio (and it’s not SLF, as I managed to leave two of the same typos in the main article referenced below, to the point the mistake made it into the headline). Parts of [...]
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