Engaged in one of those protectionist trade spats people have been talking about, the flow of goods between South Korea and Japan has been choked off. The specific national reasons for the dispute are immaterial. As trade falls off everywhere, countries are increasingly looking to protect their own. Nothing new, this is a feature of when prolonged stagnation turns to [...]
Trade between Asia and Europe has dimmed considerably. We know that from the fact Germany and China are the two countries out of the majors struggling the most right now. As a consequence of the slowing, shipping companies have had to make adjustments to their fleet schedules over and above normal seasonal variances. It was reported last week that Maersk [...]
Give stimulus a chance, that’s the theme being set up for this week. After relentless buying across global bond markets distorting curves, upsetting politicians and the public alike, central bankers have responded en masse. There were more rate cuts around the world in August than there had been at any point since 2009. And there’s more to come. As Bloomberg [...]
Copper prices behave more deliberately than perhaps prices in other commodity markets. Like gold, it is still set by a mix of economic (meaning physical) and financial (meaning collateral and financing). Unlike gold, there doesn’t seem to be any rush to get to wherever the commodity market is going. Over the last several years, it has been more long periods [...]
On the one hand, it’s a small silver lining in how many even in the mainstream are beginning to realize that there really is something wrong. Then again, they are using “trade wars” to make sense of how that could be. For the one, at least they’ve stopped saying China’s economy is strong and always looks resilient no matter what [...]
The popular image of the German industrial machine politics is one which has Germany’s massive factories efficiently churning out goods for trade with the South of Europe (Club Med). Because of the common currency, numerous disparities starting with productivity differences had left the South highly indebted to the North just as the Global Financial Crisis would strike. The aftermath of [...]
According to IMF, “global growth remains subdued.” Since it was supposed to be roaring by now, this qualifies as a substantial downgrade. Financial positions were staked out on the premise there wouldn’t be one, certainly not a disappointment coming this soon long before the breakout could actually happen. That’s why there are downside risks in the financial system. Risk-taking wasn’t [...]
Numbers really don’t tell us much all by themselves. Context always matters. That’s why 19th century British statesman Benjamin Disraeli claimed there are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics. Numbers employed in isolation are either misleading or useless. In the 20th century, Darrell Huff wrote in his classic How To Lie With Statistics: Averages and relationships and [...]
The US manufacturing sector may not be in as bad a shape as its German or Japanese counterparts, though it appears to be catching up on the downside. The Census Bureau reports today that new orders for all types of goods in all industries fell 1.6% year-over-year (unadjusted) in May 2019. This was the first minus sign for the broad [...]
Commodity prices continued to fall last month. According to the World Bank’s Pink Sheet catalog, non-energy commodity prices accelerated to the downside. Falling 9.4% on average in May 2019 when compared to average prices in May 2018, it was the largest decline since the depths of Euro$ #3 in February 2016. Base metal prices (excluding iron) also continue to register [...]
Stay In Touch