I’m just going to post some brief comments on other parts of the TIC data. The major takeaway from the May 2021 update is what I wrote earlier, how what these figures show is both entirely consistent with what will be to most people a surprisingly long history as well as completely misconstrued in mainstream conversations (what few may take [...]
Central bankers nearly everywhere have succumbed to recovery fever. This has been a common occurrence among their cohort ever since the earliest days of the crisis; the first one. Many of them, or their predecessors, since this standard of fantasyland has gone on for so long, had caught the malady as early as 2007 and 2008 when the world was [...]
Another day, another alarming piece of data delivered from China. Anyone looking for where the PBOC’s “surprise” RRR cut late last week is coming from, the Chinese car market provides yet another pretty stunning and consistent example. Together with other recent datapoints, as well as uniformly falling global bond yields, it’s more evidence for the growing very possibilities of a [...]
Yield curve control, remember that one? For a little while earlier this year, the modestly reflationary selloff in bonds around the world was prematurely oversold as some historically significant beginning to a massive, conclusive regime change. Inflation had finally been achieved across multiple geographies, it was widely repeated, and this would create problems, purportedly, as these various places would have [...]
Consumer prices in Japan fell again in May, according to that country’s Ministry of Finance. The headline CPI was 0.1% less last month than it had been in the same month during 2020. Though it was the eighth straight for outright deflation, there was some good news in the core rate, if you could call it that, which flipped to [...]
While capital “E” economics can never seem to get out of its own, infatuated with statistics and regressions instead, small “e” economics is proven time and again. Simple supply and demand curves aren’t a realistic simulation of potential conditions, yet they are far more helpful than DSGE models even if highly stylized representations. Take, for example, lumber prices. Anyone remotely [...]
We got another disappointing employment report last week. Well, that's what everyone said anyway, that the complete WAG by the BLS that the US economy added 559,000 jobs in May was below expectations and disappointing. I suppose it is a tad disappointing but I find it hard to lament the fact that a half-million Americans found jobs last month. There [...]
Global factors. Both for inflation as well as money, in fact money therefore inflation. Only recently, yesterday, in fact, has the Federal Reserve pulled back the official curtain of silence and illiteracy if only a little to admit there’s so much more than what you’ve ever been told. Bank reserves aren’t the end of the story, especially in light of [...]
Words have meaning for a reason, to convey precise ideas easily and readily understood by the reader or listener. If you use the term “stimulus”, as its root already suggests you’d expect something to be stimulated by whatever is being classified using this specific grouping of letters/sounds. Context rounds out the meaning.For the last twenty years, you’d have been wrong [...]
The Australians are doing quite well, at least according to more recent data. A few hiccups hear and there, the economy Down Under has been riding high(er) on the Chinese rebound and the potential end to the pandemic. Earlier today, National Australia Bank’s survey of the first quarter business environment was thoroughly positive. At an index value of +17, this [...]
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