It was one of those little things that really shouldn’t have made any difference whatsoever, an interesting if trivial little nugget left behind for only obsessive scholars to care any about. Late in the morning of February 24, 2021, Fedwire shutdown. The fact a couple hours inactive snowballed into something bigger, we wondered if this would end up being indicative [...]
The recovery, or reflation, was sort of sailing along until suddenly it wasn’t. At least that was the impression anyone would’ve gotten from pretty much every mainstream source. The reality of the (global) economy’s rebound from last year’s recession was a touch more nuanced, having actually struggled quite a lot between Uncle Sam’s Helicopter #1 and #2; the hadn’t begun [...]
Slowdown, yes, but by how much? The inflation argument has been forced to change yet again after having been put together by expectations for a “red hot” economy to stay red hot for a prolonged period. That’s no longer in the data, as even the most robust of indications – such as sentiment – have clearly cooled off. What’s left, [...]
Being able to compare European inflation rates with their American counterparts helps expose what’s driving the latter and it’s not inflationary currency. Comparing both of those inflation regimes with the Japanese simply exposes the Bank of Japan and QE. This was perfectly obvious before the Base 2020 CPI estimates came about.Central banks, we’re always told, possess the printing press of [...]
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 [...]
The Treasury Department’s TIC update for the month of June 2021 was, well, interesting. Not in a good way, either (post-2014, is it ever actually good?) There are just too many nuggets to digest in one sitting, so here I’ll merely go over three major developments: an update to the May 2021 big dollar warning; a big, nasty wince given [...]
Europe’s statistical agency Eurostat reported today that its preliminary inflation estimates released earlier for the month of July 2021 had come out correct. Those first guesses had put the year-over-year change in the overall HICP at 2.2%, and its core rate one of the lowest at 0.7%. With more completed survey data and more time to recheck the statistics, confirming [...]
Inflation is monetary, meaning that “real” inflation – a broad-based and sustained accelerating trend in consumer prices – is a part of the not-real financial realm. If reckless authorities print too much money, then the solution, for anyone rationally seeking protection, is to rotate out of the financial and into the real. The logic is unassailable: too much money, high [...]
A tale of two retail industries. In the one, the well-known chip problem holding back what is already a monstrously robust (if artificial) sales environment. Automobile dealer lots are nearing empty and carmakers are unable (perhaps unwilling, too?) to produce near sufficient volumes to keep up let alone restock.This view of the situation, though, has clouded perspectives particularly as they [...]
Whomever actually coined the term “taper”, using it in the context of Federal Reserve QE for the first time, it wasn’t actually Ben Bernanke. On May 22, 2013, the central bank’s Chairman sat in front of Congressman Kevin Brady and used the phrase “step down in our pace of purchases.” No good, at least from the perspective of a media-driven [...]
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