Europeans are growing more downbeat again. While ostensibly many are more worried about a new set of restrictions due to (even more overreactions about) COVID, that’s only part of the problem. The bigger factor, economically speaking, is that Europe’s economy has barely moved, or at most not moved near enough, off the bottom. To interrupt now what has already proved [...]
Their experience with COVID has been different in each case. Their response to the outbreak and pandemic hardly uniform. Mexico, for example, has reported 855,000 cases of the coronavirus from which more than 86,000 have died (or were found to have the disease when they died). Japan, on the other hand, just 93,000 cases with only 1,600 fatalities. We all [...]
The dominating feature during the last months and days of globally synchronized growth (Reflation #3, to you and me) wasn’t inflation nor growth. It was instead CNY. Taken at face value, the marvelous resurrection of China’s currency after 2014-16’s debacle (Euro$ #3, to you and me) did seem consistent with a global dollar system (eurodollar, to you and me) rebound.And [...]
The molehills get even smaller simply because there’s never any mountains. The conventional view, no surprise, is looking at this situation exactly backward and trying to impose an idea that just doesn’t fit. Upside down, if you prefer.A smooth Presidential election in the US plus the smooth transition into Jay Powell’s monetary ecstasy of inflation is going to bring on [...]
Because it worked out so well for Jay Powell? No. They have no idea what to do now. Zero. And they are out of ideas. I’m writing about the ECB here, but it begins first with the Federal Reserve Flustered by years of a very low unemployment rate stuck several points below where “full employment” had been estimated as late [...]
Why do we care so much about inflation targeting in any form? Ask that question of a central banker and they will merely state the answer is self-evident before calling the police to have you arrested and thrown in jail for daring to query. Inflation targeting is central to this version of the central bank, so much so it has [...]
Crude oil futures continue to be more than a buck in contango in the most liquid part of the WTI curve out to three months. One of the more important anti-reflation indications, especially given the situation on energy’s supply side, hardly anyone cares about this glaring contradiction given this latest very minor sell-off in the bond market’s long end.That means [...]
It’s always something. There’s forever some mystery factor standing in the way. On the topic of inflation, for years it was one “transitory” issue after another. The media, on behalf of the central bankers it holds up as a technocratic ideal, would report these at face value. The more obvious explanation, the argument with all the evidence, just couldn’t be [...]
Mario Draghi was a very polarizing figure for him to be atop a central bank that has no natural constituency. Sure, there is a European Central Bank but there remain National Central Banks which had retained their own powers and influence following the monetary union. Draghi’s approach rubbed critics the wrong way, a growing legion of them, a lot of [...]
Milton Friedman wasn’t trying to be cagey. Quite the contrary, he was recognizing the complexity of the world we actually inhabit and then stating this in perfectly clear language. Things aren’t so simple as positive versus negative, especially when it comes to moving progress forward – or stopping in its tracks. What if progress merely slows; worse, what if it [...]
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