January 2021 was, it may have seemed, only the start of something big. Huge. Colossal. Coronavirus vaccines had been discovered, publicized, and rolled out, meaning for the first time a real shot at ending the pandemic. The world could quickly get back to normal, the economy recovering its footing, and between January and that bright future Uncle Sam was going [...]
They were doing so well, or at least not quite as bad as throughout the prior several decades. Through this year’s 5% CPI’s, Federal Reserve policymakers stuck to their gut not their heart. Transitory factors. Right call (as we’ll see in a minute). That won’t be their mistake. On the contrary, these Economists (central bankers are all Economists nowadays, and [...]
And just like that, snap of the fingers, it’s gone. Without a “bad” Treasury auction, there was no stopping the bond market today from retracing all of yesterday’s (modest) selloff and then some. This despite the huge CPI estimates released before the prior session’s trading, and now PPI figures that are equally if not more obscene. The BLS reports today [...]
I told you last week that there were strange things going on in the labor market but I had no idea how much of an understatement that really was. Much of last week's economic focus was on the inflation report but I think the JOLTS report may turn out to be more significant. Inflation was indeed pretty hot year over [...]
For the month of May 2021, China’s General Administration of Customs believes the total US$ value of exports exiting that country was an impressive-sounding $263.9 billion. Compared to the US$ value of exports sent abroad in May 2020, this was a 27.9% increase. But base effects; exports in May 2020 had been a little more than 3% below those in [...]
February’s cold winter blast throughout the Southern United States was supposed to have been the extent of the weakness. The unusual and unusually severe freeze caused a great deal of havoc, making its way very quickly into economic data. The recovery was said to have been on a winning streak (vaccines, gov’t payments, etc.) so it seemed the easiest correlation [...]
The US economy is still stuck in the stall it's been in since early spring. Sometime in mid-March everything just seems to have gone into suspended animation. Interest rates and the copper/gold ratio stopped rising. Real interest rates (TIPS) stopped rising. The US dollar started falling. But nothing has fallen so far as to warrant concern about a double-dip recession. [...]
A dead rat would’ve easily explained the foul odor, though it wouldn’t have ended the matter. The smell was real, the cause still yet to be identified in the mainstream view. For the bond market, anyway, it was a process of discovery which began with an unexpected stench of something much bigger and more profound than any single or simple [...]
Reopening 2 is definitely happening. The labor market, in particular, is sending off the same kind of signals if not to the same huge extent as it had during Reopening 1 in May and June of last year. The March 2021 payroll report was better than 900,000, and the one for April (last month) to be released tomorrow is expected [...]
Deconstructing long-term interests may seem like a purely academic exercise. This is certainly how Economists treat it, coming at them using their statistical models. The goal is always to properly interpret these most basic of economic, financial, and monetary fundamentals so as to understand where everything that matters stands. Getting this wrong is the difference between night and day; between [...]
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