The sound of economic sizzle finally within earshot, though perhaps nearly a year too late. PMI’s for the month of March 2021 were of the sort which should have come about in May and June 2020. The “V”-shaped recovery was much talked about at that earlier time, though in PMI terms (as well as regular “hard” data) the numbers fell [...]
One other fascinating, corroborating angle to the short run picture comes at us from Europe, specifically Germany. As illustrated yesterday, there’s a whole bunch of market prices/indications from around the world which have keyed in on February 24-25 as a possible turning point. The most obvious candidate which may have triggered it would be February 25th’s major US Treasury selloff. [...]
It was very cold across much of the United States in February in parts of it that usually don’t freeze up – literally and figuratively. While electricity in Texas garnered most of the attention, the weather was just as bad in many other states across the typically mild wintering South. Undoubtedly, last month was an exception to the seasons’ status [...]
The idea behind post-Georgia reflation is that globally fiscal-led “stimulus” will be enough to fix what’s still wrong. The economy broke down, by choice, last year but with sufficient zeroes behind governments spending around the world, from DC to Brussels and a bunch in between, whatever costs and consequences remaining due from 2020 aren’t going to be unmanageable for 2021. [...]
Sticking with Europe, central bankers want and expect higher inflation because that would confirm an economy strong enough – and monetarily sufficed – to sustain success. It’s the sustainability which has been lacking; the global economy since the first global (euro)dollar shortage never able to do more than lurch between downturns and the absence of downturns (reflation).Without enough monetary oxygen [...]
The ECB wants everyone to know that it is in control, and therefore has everything under control. Through an almost certainly carefully placed leak, European central bank officials have let it be known current monetary policy is practicing a kind of yield curve control. Not just the usual QE in terms of bond buying, but tailoring specific parameters within the [...]
In mid-December 2019, before the world had heard of COVID, China’s Central Economic Work Conference had released a rather startling statement for the world to consume. In the West, everything was said to be on the up. Central banks had responded, forcefully, many claimed, more than enough to deal with that year’s “unexpected” globally synchronized downturn.This view had been punctuated [...]
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 [...]
With all eyes on Washington DC, today, everyone should instead be focused on Europe. As we’ve written for nearly three years now, for nearly three years Europe has been at the unfortunate forefront of Euro$ #4. We could argue about whether coming out of GFC2 back in March pushed everything into a Reflation #4 – possible - or if this [...]
Their experience with COVID has been different in each case. Their response to the outbreak and pandemic hardly uniform. Mexico, for example, has reported 855,000 cases of the coronavirus from which more than 86,000 have died (or were found to have the disease when they died). Japan, on the other hand, just 93,000 cases with only 1,600 fatalities. We all [...]
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