I suppose this was not really a surprise given how the Japanese people seem to have simply accepted their fate, economically speaking, so the resounding re-election of Abe’s party removes any further sympathy from a people dooming themselves to this sustained, toxic course. The election itself was not all about the economy in immediate consideration as there were several other [...]
As distasteful as it can be, there will be, I believe, a necessary condition whereby closer examination of Paul Krugman’s writings and rantings is fruitful. The rise of Keynesian doctrine, more specifically the re-rise, seems to be more and more prevalent especially as the global economy careens out and away from all the trillions in monetarisms that have been perpetrated [...]
Well, it's that time of year again, when all the pundits offer their crystal ball views of the coming new year. I don't usually participate in the prediction game and this year won't be any different. Like everyone else I wonder what the future holds but I know I have no special ability to predict how it might unfold. What [...]
WTI is trading below $64 this afternoon and the long end of the UST curve is being bid rather starkly, the 30-year has dropped below 2.90%, there is an important element to consider about such “price discovery.” As my colleague Doug Terry points out, a 40% drop in oil prices is no longer strictly a matter of finance. In other [...]
Like the initial or preliminary GDP report in Japan for Q3, the first revision caught almost every economist totally the wrong way. Expectations were for upward re-figuring which should have been taken as a contrarian signal. And sure enough, December’s revisions to Q3 GDP were in the opposite direction as expected, and for all the reasons that economists are “experts” [...]
Honestly, there really isn’t much to say now that hasn’t already been said. At what point can we expect convention and mainstream commentary to stop referring to monetarism as “stimulus”? If we are to have a unified and ubiquitous qualifying description of the idea, it is far closer to toxin or poison than anything that suggests positivity. Nominal is meaningless, which [...]
China’s figures last week were not “helpful” to the “global growth” narrative, and now Japan and Europe have contributed their share of turning sentiment. It seems as if credit markets might actually be on to something with all this bearishness standing in stark contrast to stock markets that just don’t care about much except self-feeding participation and corporate indulgence. There [...]
The word “unexpectedly” has made its appearance in Japan with the latest quarterly GDP release. Economists had forecast between +2.2% and +2.5%, so -1.6% counts for an “outlier” to commentary. This result, following a quarter where GDP already fell 7.3%, is nothing short of atrocious and leaves no doubt the disastrous shape to which Japan has befallen. As I said [...]
In what can only be an intentional trial balloon, the Abe government in Japan is making noise about delaying the next scheduled tax increase. Considered to be one of the important “arrows” in Abenomics, this is an especially stark admission that orthodox economics has not (yet again) delivered on its promise. When QQE was started in April 2013, there were [...]
The important point about doctrinaire ideology is its utmost rigidity. For the longest time that was relevant to the operations of central banks, as they practiced what might have been the most modern version of a new religion. From the end of the gold standard in the 1960’s (1971 was simply the last step in the process) until only recently [...]
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