After the results from this summer, it was clear that if there was ever going to be a reduction in the pace of QE it would “have” to be accompanied by something more amenable to fickle “markets.” I leaned more toward the camp that saw taper coupled to a decrease in the IOER, particularly now that the reverse repo program [...]
While everyone gears up for the holiday season, particularly the Christmas break, economists and retailers are on the edge of their computer screens trying to determine and gauge the health of the economy. Is QE finally working? The latest retail sales figures seemed to have provided some optimism toward that conclusion. But this is also the time of the year [...]
What is most disheartening about the current political formulation on economics is the bipartisan acceptance of “inflation.” It comes from both the left and the right. That is in full part due to the orthodoxy of the economic “profession.” Despite being drastically wrong about pretty much everything for most of the past few decades (never saw a bubble they didn’t [...]
With a view on credit and dollar markets, there is already the unsettling prospect of markets moving beyond unshakable belief in the efficacy of monetary intrusions. I cannot help but wonder if that is beginning to extend into the real economy as well. There can be little but retribution over the growing disaster that is the holiday sales season. Stock [...]
Most of the nation's major retailers are now open on Thanksgiving, providing a convenient excuse for millions to get away from that irritating relative or family friend that you see only on holidays. You still have to put up with their bad jokes, their insistence on starting family debates about politics or religion and stories you've heard a million times [...]
In a conversation with a client last week, I was asked if it was possible that the conditions we see today in the economy and the markets are somehow unique or new. The implication being that the techniques that have worked for investors - contra speculators - for decades might no longer work in this brave new world. We take [...]
Commodity prices have been pressured lower in recent months, further suggesting that demand in the global economy is moving in the opposite direction of most mainstream commentary. The lack of price action, while ultimately good for consumers, is a big problem when such “deflation” is not driven by productivity. There is a world of difference between a lack of demand [...]
Holiday sales estimates are already being trimmed, with the current year set to be the weakest since the Great Recession. Of course, it matters whether or not you have access to asset inflation, as retailers for the more affluent are expecting better results. Reuters spells it out succinctly, “As result, low-income Americans will again have a less-merry season than affluent [...]
Japanese exports continue to rise, but as we have seen in actual results elsewhere, both anecdotal and empirical, it’s a mirage driven by changes in the unit of measure (yen). Total exports from Japan rose 18.6% in yen terms, the highest growth rate since the middle of 2010. The problem was that imports also rose, by 26.1% as energy importation [...]
In Virgil’s Aeneid, Laocoon advises caution over accepting a large, wooden horse from the Greeks who had been besieging his Troy. His remark, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis, has been roughly translated as, “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, becoming a timeless and universal parable for the benefits of skepticism. The sudden abandonment of Greek military volition seemed "too good to [...]
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