Before the word “taper” ever left the lips of anyone occupying an official position at the Federal Reserve in the late spring of 2013, there was already something very much amiss. Not that you would have known it, of course. In the financial media, everything was moving along swimmingly, Bernanke the thrice-crowned hero. QE4 had been dutifully buried by its [...]
I missed it: did anyone ask Chairman Jay Powell how in the world he’s going to be able to create this “hot” inflation he already needs to balance out a decade without it (meaning: recovery and growth) in order to satisfy this newfangled average inflation target? And though he makes it sound like it’s a new thing, especially adding the [...]
There is no oil in the CPI’s consumer basket, yet oil prices largely determine the rate by which overall consumer prices are increasing (or not). WTI sets the baseline which then becomes the price of motor fuel (gasoline) becoming the energy segment. As energy goes, so do headline CPI measurements. And that’s a huge problem…if you are Jay Powell. We’ve [...]
If you have to work overtime just to catch up to where you were supposed to be, you haven’t done a good job. It’s really that simple. And in the context of inflation, therefore legitimate economic growth as distinguished from fake booms, that’s really all bond yields are.The lower rates go, and the longer they stay lower, the more they [...]
Why the big deal about the Fed’s new grand strategy? For one thing, as noted yesterday, there’s that whole lost decade which policymakers finally have acknowledged. They’ve quite a lot of catching up to do, but have waited for the most inopportune moment to…basically do more of the same things that hadn’t accomplished anything other than lose an entire decade.Already [...]
You have to laugh at the absurdity of the puppet show theater. A few months ago when bond yields backed up a little bit, as they do from time to time, everyone from Bond Kings to Dollar Crash-ists to Economists to just about every writer at the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg became fixated on yield caps (or yield curve [...]
Is three weeks a new record? That’s about how long Jay Powell’s performance bought him across most major markets. It was May 17, a Sunday night, when he appeared on 60 Minutes and, pardon me again, lied his ass off. One right after another, starting with the most obvious falsehood that his gang at the Federal Reserve “saw it coming.” [...]
Entering 2020, before overreactions to COVID and the shutdown they brought, private income derived from all sources had slowed to the lowest rate since 2010 (not counting 2013, that year skewed by tax changes which were implemented finishing up 2012). According to the latest annual revisions for it, last year, 2019, was a bit more recessionary than previously thought especially [...]
When people accuse the Federal Reserve of anything when it comes to inflation, they say the central bank is cooking the books to hide it. Back in 2000, for example, monetary observers were aflutter as policymakers shifted away from the CPI and to the PCE Deflator as their ultimate standard for broad consumer price behavior. The bastards, the latter widely [...]
Not this again. When you really have run out of ideas, just set something aside for a time and then when it comes time again simply dust it off and pretend it is new and inspired. You can make it sound great, so long as no one remembers and realizes just how tired and ridiculous it actually is.It’s almost as [...]
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