When the difference between your rhetoric and your actions is wide, inconsistency is pretty much axiomatic. However, Janet Yellen’s press conference was much more than that. I understand it’s a lot to charge blatant dishonesty, but almost everything she said is cow manure. And I make that assertion not on my own reading of the situation, but on hers. The [...]
If we are being honest and using words as they exactly mean, the recovery actually ended in 2012. My sense of dating would mark that as March 2012 since so many various data series held that month for what has been a durable inflection. It was true not just here in the US, but across the globe as 2012 was [...]
When I wrote on Friday that I was encouraged for the first time in years over the combined rise of Trump and Sanders I meant nothing by way of suggesting either as an actual candidate or what they might do should they pull it out. If anything, I implied that the political situation might have to follow the economy; that [...]
I have no idea what the Fed will do except to say it is likely to make matters worse regardless. That is the nature of monetarism in 2015 in no small part because that is where a financialized economy can only lead. Having been unable to do so this year so far, however, does seem to suggest at least a [...]
The IMF added its voice last week to the chorus of Keynesians calling for Janet Yellen to - to paraphrase Rocky Horror - can it, Janet. The "it" being, of course, a hike in interest rates. The IMF cited "substantial output gaps" and "below target inflation" to justify their call for monetary policy to remain "accommodative". I have no idea [...]
The relevant part about eurodollars these days is that the term itself is a misnomer, or at the very least not a comprehensive description. “Eurodollar” itself is not necessarily a dollar (or even “dollar”) that originates from Europe, though it has been European banks that have formed the backbone participation for decades. The word is shorthand for any “dollar” that [...]
In her testimony before Congress in July, Janet Yellen laid out the same talking points that have been propagated onto Americans time and time again these past eight years. The economy is moving forward and the Fed is doing and has done everything it can, and that there are “green shoots” still though no full and mature growth. Low oil [...]
Lost in all the stock market focus is the renewed disaster being signaled across credit markets, “inflation” expectations in particular. Here oil prices and the “dollar’s” darkening intersect with credit and broad financial settings. Quietly, market-based measures of the anticipated future “inflation” path have crashed. Inflation breakevens in TIPS hedging were as low yesterday as the lowest point from January [...]
June was the for-sure liftoff point early in the year. That followed last year’s for-sure exit as March, April at the latest. Now more than a halfway through 2015 September is increasingly in doubt. They have to start somewhere even if they claim a methodical and slow pace to ensure as little disruption (in their twisted view). As I wrote [...]
Looking back now, January was such a weird month. You had, on the one hand, the barely restrained giddiness of the mainstream media proclaiming ultimate success of 5% GDP and an Establishment Survey (and dutiful unemployment rate) that could do nothing wrong. To this view, the economy was a certainty. Yet, on the other hand, markets around the world were [...]
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