Recognizing the danger of being understated, Swiss markets are a disaster. The overnight rate at -4% handily beats out the periodic specialness in US$ repo which settles at the penalty rate of “only” -3%. The 10-year bond rate is -.257%; the 15-year at -.083%. The Swiss stock index fell more than 14% in the two days after January 14, and [...]
Indonesia has been here before, playing a key role in fomenting the Asian “flu” in 1997 and 1998. As it turned out, the slide in the rupiah last year, caught up in the taper drama of US “dollar” tightening, was just the initial phase of what looks to be shaping up as a protracted “dollar” problem. It never gets treated [...]
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish philosopher, coined the phrase “dismal science” in economics to describe his inability to get the slaves in the West Indies to conform to any rational order of thought about the subjects. Supply and demand never held that men should be so subjugated when in fact Carlyle believed, as so many “experts” did, that certain men should. The [...]
It may have been something like two years, maybe closer to eighteen months, but it seems just like yesterday that Europe had left its deficient construct in the past. It was a daily ritual back then, exercising due diligence often through nothing more than checking just how negative bond rates would spring. There were German bunds and even indications of [...]
I don’t want to devolve into a Clintonian argument over the basic meanings of certain words, but that may be the best course in analyzing and discussing Europe’s circumstances in the very new age of negative interest rates. Reuters says there is “clear proof” that Draghi’s desperation and new bluff is “gaining traction.” An all-time low for euro zone money [...]
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