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 [...]
When Ben Bernanke stood up in front of Milton Friedman (it was his 90th birthday) back in November 2002, what he told the co-author of A Monetary History was that the monetary account contained within its pages had become settled, the officially-accepted version of events. What had made the Great Depression truly prolonged and horrific had been the long-ago Federal [...]
Back on February 25, Treasury auctioned 7-year notes and it did not go (as) well. Maybe you remember us saying something about it, and then again and again and… The prevailing view then – and now – was reflation hadn’t just accelerated, the true inflation long-promised by so much “money printing” (or at least by those who equate bank reserves [...]
One idea for why the labor market hasn’t come back in nearly the same way as the goods economy or “aggregate demand” has, each spurred on by Uncle Sam’s repeated use of his TGA-fueled helicopter, is that yet another of the federal government’s rescue efforts has hindered the employment rebound – from the worker side. Businesses, many say, really, desperately [...]
I am very much prone to bludgeoning several long-deceased equines, and given what’s really going on with the Fed's reverse repo (and nearly all commentary unhelpful surrounding it) this gives me yet another chance to really reuse my cudgel on at least two of them. This another opportunity to fixate more upon bank reserves, a forever topic until everyone learns [...]
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 [...]
Global factors. Both for inflation as well as money, in fact money therefore inflation. Only recently, yesterday, in fact, has the Federal Reserve pulled back the official curtain of silence and illiteracy if only a little to admit there’s so much more than what you’ve ever been told. Bank reserves aren’t the end of the story, especially in light of [...]
Long-term Refinancing Operations (LTRO) became a standard non-standard monetary policy tool in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) toolkit late in 2011. A second confounding (global) banking crisis had struck yet again catching global policymakers with their pants down, this one seemingly centered directly upon Europe. On December 8, 2011, amidst constant rumors (probably real) that two of the major European [...]
It was all over the news last week. Inflation has arrived. The CPI was hotter than expected. The PPI was even hotter. Import prices were up and export prices were up more. It was impossible to miss the inflation story last week. Stocks got the message and sold off on the hot CPI and finished the week lower for a [...]
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