On Monday, November, 9, pharma company Pfizer announced that in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech the pair had finally come up with the answer. The world infested with COVID could breathe easier safe in the knowledge a vaccine had been discovered, proven, and already close to approvals and production. “Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set [...]
It’s easy to pick on Bill Gross because he made it so easy for everyone to do so. Time and again, he called for an end to the bond market “bull”, seeking to make huge profits on the fixed income massacre he said would soon follow whichever one of those decrees. There were several and they weren’t limited to just [...]
Europe’s problems are more immediate. Encouraging news about Pfizer’s vaccine won’t change the European circumstances in near enough time to avoid what’s more and more looking like a real possibility for a retrenchment. In this case, COVID cases are a primary culprit, meaning how authorities over there are responding to their rise. As such, it has taken the shine off [...]
We've been documenting for weeks now how every chart, therefore every market, shows some kind of inflection around and immediately after August 27. This was Jay Powell’s big Jackson Hole fiasco, questions about the global “V” having already multiplied since June were further compounded by the absolute joke that was average inflation targeting. As noted earlier, even Germany’s bund market [...]
If we are going to see negative nominal Treasury rates, what would guide yields toward such a plunge? It seems like a recession is the ticket, the only way would have to be a major economic downturn. Since we’ve already experienced one in 2020, a big one no less, and are already on our way back up to recovery (some [...]
It had been an unusually heated gathering, one marked by temper tantrums and often publicly expressed rancor. Slamming tables, undiplomatic rudeness. Europe’s leaders had been brought together by the uncomfortable even dangerous fact that the economic dislocation they’ve put their countries through is going to sustain enormously negative pressures all throughout them. What would a “united” European system do to [...]
It’s one of those things I wish I had more time to thoroughly investigate. What can these Germans possibly be thinking? While the ZEW sentiment indicator actually came back down a bit in July 2020 from its 2005-style perch in June, the ZEW for all of Europe actually went further upward. Either that means Christine Lagarde has been successful (at [...]
That’s the thing about these eurodollar cycles; they aren’t short. We’re conditioned on the belief that the business cycle is, or at least the recession piece. According to convention, the economy peaks and within a relatively short period of time it falls apart. The shock and its very immediate aftermath. The lengths of time involved here in the post-crisis era [...]
Germany’s Finance Minister Olaf Scholz ignited and invited controversy today when he signaled that the federal government is looking at a possible suspension to constitutional budget measures. With a nasty political fight certain to follow, even temporarily adjourning the country’s so-called debt brake would not be easy. With Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party already in a precarious position, one might wonder, [...]
According to analysts and economists who watch these things, Germany’s IFO Business Climate Index was expected to continue its rise. Having purportedly bottomed out back in September, like other sentiment indicators this one had been on the rebound, too, if, though, much less than those others (especially the “stimulus” loving ZEW). While maybe not suggesting the turnaround we had been [...]
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