Back at the end of April, the FOMC and its dozens of staff members gathered around to talk policy as those people always do every six weeks or so. The agenda was quite full, with Jay Powell having had to switch from rate hikes to a Fed “pause” the few months before and none of them really sure why. Economic [...]
Whereas China is embroiled in pig wars, its neighbor India is waging one against onions. African swine fever has decimated the former’s stock of hogs, leading to rapidly rising food prices at maybe the worst possible time. On the Indian subcontinent, same result as far as prices only in this case late monsoons have swamped the onion harvest. The shortage [...]
The evidence continues to pile up for increasing slack in the US economy. While that doesn’t necessarily mean there is a recession looming, it sure doesn’t help in that regard. Besides, more slack after ten years of it is the real story. The Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation measure in October 2019 stood at 1.31%, matching February for the lowest in [...]
With some PMI’s in the US on somewhat of an upswing, it already raises the issue of a midpoint in their trend. Given how the US data is pretty isolated in that way, could there also be midpoint decoupling? That’s what we would have to believe if the “bottom is in” folks have it right, those like Jay Powell who [...]
Because the prevailing theory behind the global slowdown is “trade wars”, most if not all attention is focused on China. While the correct target, everyone is coming it at from the wrong direction. The world awaits a crash in Chinese exports engineered by US tariffs. It’s not happening, at least according to China’s official statistics. The reported numbers aren’t good [...]
After constantly running through what the FOMC gets (very) wrong, let’s give them some credit for what they got right. Though this will end up as a backhanded compliment, still. After having spent all of 2018 forecasting accelerating inflation indices, from around New Year’s Day forward policymakers notably changed their tune. Inflation pressures that were in December 2018 building underneath [...]
When I first got in this business oh-so-many years ago, my mentor told me that I shouldn't waste my time worrying about the things everyone else was worrying about. As I've related in these missives before, he called those things "well-worried". His point was that once everyone was aware of something it was priced into the market and not worth [...]
It wasn’t just you, me, and common sense which were puzzled by the labor shortage of 2018. In his first few months on the job, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell would reference the unemployment rate quite often in setting his view of the economy’s trajectory. As it fell lower and lower, it spiked his expectations for inflationary pressures. The level [...]
Maybe it was a sign of things to come, a warning how it wasn’t going to go as planned. Then again, when it comes to something like quantitative easing there really is no plan. Other than to make it sound like there is one, that’s really the whole idea. Not what it really is and what it actually does, to [...]
While the world’s attention was fixated on US$ repo for once, the Bank of Japan held a policy meeting and turned in an even more “dovish” performance. Likely the global central bank plan had been to combine the Fed’s second rate cut with what amounted to a simultaneous Japanese pledge for more “stimulus” in October. Both of those followed closely [...]
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