A fascinating and useful bit of economic research was put forward just last month by Britain’s House of Lords (and thanks to Greg for digging it up). That body’s Economic Affairs Committee heard detailed testimony on the subject of Quantitative Easing, commonly known as QE. From the title of the report prepared in advance of the witnesses presenting their opinions [...]
Copper, like lumber, had been the star of the space. Each had rocketed upward beginning last fall representing, for many, the leading edge of the inflationary wave sure to follow. The two garnered that much attention as well as given this much importance because the rest of the commodity class hadn’t really come close to matching their meteoric scale.It was [...]
It has taken nearly two years for Germany’s ZEW to finally close its gap. The index for sentiment had popped all the way back in September 2019 buoyed by the ECB restarting QE; these peculiar German businesspersons who make up this particular survey panel do love their “stimulus” announcements no matter how many times the actual policy fails to stimulate [...]
Germany’s flash July 2021 inflation estimate came in hot yesterday, boosted mostly by comparisons to July 2020’s VAT-free situation. That country’s CPI is a robust sounding 3.8% year-over-year this month, though only 3.1% in its flash HICP terms. Despite Deutschland’s oversized contribution and influence, Eurostat reports today how for Europe as a whole there was a whole lot of little [...]
Another day, another alarming piece of data delivered from China. Anyone looking for where the PBOC’s “surprise” RRR cut late last week is coming from, the Chinese car market provides yet another pretty stunning and consistent example. Together with other recent datapoints, as well as uniformly falling global bond yields, it’s more evidence for the growing very possibilities of a [...]
Yield curve control, remember that one? For a little while earlier this year, the modestly reflationary selloff in bonds around the world was prematurely oversold as some historically significant beginning to a massive, conclusive regime change. Inflation had finally been achieved across multiple geographies, it was widely repeated, and this would create problems, purportedly, as these various places would have [...]
Back at the end of May, Germany’s statistical accounting agency (deStatis) added another one to the inflationary inferno raging across the mainstream media. According to its flash calculations, German consumer prices last month had increased by the fastest rate in 13 years. Even using the European “harmonized” methodology (Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, or HICP), inflation had reached 2.4% year-over-year [...]
While capital “E” economics can never seem to get out of its own, infatuated with statistics and regressions instead, small “e” economics is proven time and again. Simple supply and demand curves aren’t a realistic simulation of potential conditions, yet they are far more helpful than DSGE models even if highly stylized representations. Take, for example, lumber prices. Anyone remotely [...]
The Australians are doing quite well, at least according to more recent data. A few hiccups hear and there, the economy Down Under has been riding high(er) on the Chinese rebound and the potential end to the pandemic. Earlier today, National Australia Bank’s survey of the first quarter business environment was thoroughly positive. At an index value of +17, this [...]
When their paper came out in January 2010, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff put a number on bond vigilantism as it had been known in prior history. The idea behind investor fickleness was simple and intuitive: profligate governments who finance their ill spending ways by borrowing will literally end up paying the price once the exceed common sense. And when [...]
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