mbs – Alhambra Investments

Jamie Dimon (Still) Hates Bonds Because Inflation; Other Banks Apparently Love Bonds Because There’s No Credit To Inflation

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2021-06-18T16:45:41-04:00June 18th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon hasn’t produced an enviable track record opining on inflationary potential. He’s forever deeply entrenched in the inflation camp, and because he sits atop the corporate structure of one of the world’s biggest and most well-known banks, it does seem reasonable at first how his opinion on monetary matters is taken very seriously – despite repeatedly missing [...]

What Might Be In Another Market-based Yield Curve Twist?

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2021-02-22T18:55:51-05:00February 22nd, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

With the UST yield curve currently undergoing its own market-based twist, it’s worth investigating a couple potential reasons for it. On the one hand, the long end, clear cut reflation: markets are not, as is commonly told right now, pricing 1979 Great Inflation #2, rather how the next few years may not be as bad (deflationary) as once thought a [...]

Tantrums and Tapers, TBA’s and Mortgage Rates

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2019-01-22T16:14:51-05:00January 22nd, 2019|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

To be an interested observer of things in the summer of 2013 was to be awash in the awareness of so many contradictions packed into one little piece of history. Forward guidance, for one, recognized the effects of markets. If QE was really effective, interest rates would rise not fall in anticipation of those positive effects. This was, actually, the [...]

TIC in June 2018: The Questionable Collateral Aftermath of May 29

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2018-08-17T17:34:53-04:00August 17th, 2018|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There isn’t really any doubt what happened on May 29. It was a global collateral call. Bonds all over Earth were hugely bid, especially paper in Germany and America – the pristine of the pristine. This is pure liquidity risk, meaning that no matter your feelings on the long-term solvency of the US government (or Germany’s ability to maintain the [...]

Harvey and Irma Passed, Back To Same Procyclical Housing

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2018-03-23T12:19:49-04:00March 23rd, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Why does monetary policy pay so much attention to housing? The easy answer over the last twelve years is the bubble. It was hard not to, though for a very long time policymakers did attempt a systemic disavowal. But beyond the middle 2000’s housing mania, central banks have had a very keen interest in real estate from the beginning. The [...]

BOND ROUT!!!! (Now With Additional Exclamations)

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2018-03-12T17:50:13-04:00March 12th, 2018|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Ten years ago today, one of Carlyle Group’s mortgage funds, Carlyle Capital Corp (CCC), was seized by creditors. Precipitated by dwindling liquidity, the fund’s effective insolvency would amplify those global “dollar” pressures and lead to Bear Stearns’ untimely demise mere days later. The fund’s corporate parent issued a statement on March 6, 2008, that read: The last few days have [...]

Rough End of a Collateral Century

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2017-07-28T13:24:35-04:00July 28th, 2017|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The entry of the United States into World War I placed a heavy financial burden on the government. The scale of such encumbrance was at the time almost unthinkable, and today is incomprehensible. Federal government expenditures in 1916 were all of $734 million, with $125 million financed by the new income tax authorized a few years prior by the 16th [...]

Describing ‘Reflation’

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2017-01-11T17:43:14-05:00January 11th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before Congress on May 22, 2013, that taper was for officials a strong consideration. Though QE4, the UST portion of the restored balance sheet expansion, wasn’t yet six months old and he had promised, sort of, at the start of QE3 that both would be open-ended, sort of, his message to the legislature was [...]

Repo On The African Plain

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2016-11-22T17:48:37-05:00November 22nd, 2016|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

That the repo market, as noted yesterday, has been beset by a persistent collateral shortage is relatively uncontroversial. Where once large blocks of MBS tranches were central to interbank flow and funding, their absence is still a fact of operation though that repudiation was a very long time ago. Even with that backdrop, however, it doesn’t explain a whole lot [...]

The Official Face of the ‘Rising Dollar’, Written Officially As Farce

By Jeffrey P. Snider|2016-07-26T18:13:22-04:00July 26th, 2016|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Last July, the US Treasury Department finally issued its official report detailing its account of what happened on October 15, 2014. The statement was co-authored by staff at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, FRBNY, the SEC, and CFTC, as if the government were going overboard trying to prove its word the end of the matter. As [...]

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