This is a holiday-shortened week in the US but there is some important data on tap. Retail sales are expected to show a month-to-month rise for the first time since September. Year-over-year numbers remain pretty subdued and likely will until life returns to something resembling normal. Producer prices will likely rise but inflation continues its benign ways. It is likely [...]
For Jay Powell’s inflation case, the University of Michigan provided it with some badly needed support. Telling the world he “flooded” it with “digital money printing” three-quarters of a year ago, actual inflation rates have instead fallen down to or near historic lows. No biggie, those in Powell’s corner say, just a matter of time before this changes (commodities!), possibly [...]
Nevada is, by all accounts and accountants, in rough shape. Very rough shape. An economy overly dependent upon a single industry, tourism, in this case, is a disaster waiting to happen should anything happen to that industry. Pandemic restrictions, for instance.Nevadans cannot afford the government spending they “have” without a gaming industry attracting visitors at full throttle. Desperate, the state’s [...]
Japan is just the name of a group of large islands on the far side of the Pacific from the United States. For most people, there’s not much else more to say beyond the charm of weird, ofttimes masochistic tendencies embedded within the inscrutably fascinating Japanese gameshows. Maybe something about suicidal demographics. The financial media has done such a poor [...]
Everyone in Europe has long forgotten about what was going on there before COVID. First, an economy that had been stuck two years within a deflationary downturn central bankers like Italy’s new recycled top guy Mario Draghi clumsily mistook for an inflationary takeoff. Both the inflation puzzle and ultimately a pre-pandemic recession have taken a back seat to everything corona.Whereas [...]
Tomorrow represents the 6-month mark for the Treasury market. On August 4, 2020, nominal benchmark 10-year yields declined to their absolute closing lows. Over the half-year since, rates have generally been on the rise which should be a long enough period by which to categorize our interpretations of what it all means.Most mainstream commentary places any upward trend (of any [...]
There are those people who will remain convinced forever forward that the Federal Reserve is run by capable technocrats absolutely skilled at maintaining for the free peoples of the United States their financial freedom. At a general level, they are thought to do so by signaling to market and economic participants just how these should respond to monetary policy inputs. [...]
Is there a charmed fiscal number that unlocks the inflationary promised-land? Central bank Economists have spent more than a decade in the West, two in Japan, desperately seeking the magic number QE. Though their own research is substantial and conclusive that LSAP’s like QE don’t work, and never have, officials conclude instead that it always comes up short because it [...]
The company isn’t bankrupt, it just doesn’t have the right currency in its reach to repay debts coming due. YPF is Argentina’s (former) gold mine, in this case the black gold of energy exploitation. State-owned, the business has obviously close ties to the ruling powers-that-be and a privileged place to go along with them. Its formal name, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, [...]
Sticking with Europe, central bankers want and expect higher inflation because that would confirm an economy strong enough – and monetarily sufficed – to sustain success. It’s the sustainability which has been lacking; the global economy since the first global (euro)dollar shortage never able to do more than lurch between downturns and the absence of downturns (reflation).Without enough monetary oxygen [...]
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