I hate to do it, but I'm going to have to write about politics this week. Believe me, it isn't something I relish, but in light of the recent election, it would be dereliction of duty to ignore the elephant and donkey in the room. Let's get this out of the way right up front; Obama got shellacked last Tuesday. [...]
The other part of payrolls, the far more important piece actually, is of course wages and income. Here there is nothing to speak of an increase in the jobs market to anything like what the Establishment Survey suggests. To that end, disconnect is apparent when comparing wage rates with (adjusted) estimates for utilization: The average hourly wage has been stuck [...]
The chatter that continues over Japan’s spiral into (further) economic impoverishment is simply astounding since it is taken as “expert” by the media. A credentialed economist will look at some numbers and simply take them as meaningful, especially if they are the “right” sign in the “right” direction. This is either wholly obtuse or intentionally misleading. Stronger exports would support [...]
With a grim reality setting in for at least a temporary interruption to the euphoria, that background of a QE-less world takes hold. Without any real recovery to show for all the manipulations and intrusions, a global reality, there are none but stock prices (aside from a few confused PMI’s) to record on the “benefits” side of the ledger. The [...]
The reason I spend so much time on Japan is that it is the purest “laboratory” conditions available in which to determine, hopefully for all time, the (un)viability of monetarism. The orthodox monetary practitioners that unleashed the yen torrent were not last year equivocating in their predictions and forecasts. Abenomics and QQE would work without fail, they said; the only [...]
When QQE was first officially introduced, I produced what I thought would be a “template” for the trajectory of the Japanese economy. On a strictly reasoned basis, without any forward calculations or regressions, the Japanese, and Bank of Japan in particular, were making a choice with what I thought was very little chance of ultimate success. You can understand, somewhat, [...]
The good news in Japan for August trade figures is that imports fell 1.5% Y/Y, but that was balanced by an almost identical 1.3% Y/Y decline in exports. Confounding all orthodox expectations, the yen’s radical devaluation did nothing to press divergence between imports and exports as it was “supposed” to. Instead, imports matched exports, at best, and where it counted [...]
With Brazil in recession and much of the “resource” part of the supply chain nearing that or worrying about it, you can surely bet that there are “unexpected” problems in the Chinese economy. As much as the word “decoupling” is being used once again (though in 2008 it was reversed, with the world supposedly able to decouple from US weakness) [...]
With the yen precipitating levels not seen since the very week Lehman collapsed and finally confirmed just how global the crisis was (and would remain), “markets” in Japan and everywhere have begun to “anticipate” (beg?) even more. The yen briefly touched (devalued) 107 to the US$, a remarkable run that threatens to even further upend the now-very weakened state inside [...]
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that is not the only ingredient in the asphalt used to make the highway to Perdition. Typically, intent is augmented (or actually degraded) by a degree of incompetence that masquerades as complexity. The breadth of that observation is staggering in the current circumstances as Japanification has seemingly gained [...]
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