To say that the “dollar” is a mess to begin the week is to state the obvious. The condition left at Friday’s close has persisted, with commodities and such being sold heavily from the outset. Japan’s renewed “recession” (I use quotes only in the conventional sense, given that the Japanese economy never truly left) hasn’t helped in that regard, but [...]
Copper prices closed yesterday at a new low just barely above the intraday low of August 24. In early trading today, the front maturity has blown past that point and traded as low as $2.164, and currently around $2.175 for another multi-year low. Crude prices are down sharply as well, though the trend in oil isn’t nearly as clear – [...]
By all count of orthodox economics, the harmonization of “inflation” rates across the US, Europe, and China should not happen. While the former two might be more forgiving given close economic ties, the assumed vast differences with the Chinese economic framework (particularly PBOC operations) should prevent what can only be observed as a highly contagious global environment. With China’s CPI [...]
You couldn’t really call it a calming effect, as rates never truly settled down rather simply becoming less obviously meddlesome. At the September FOMC, the “dovish” sentiment that was apparently received brought LIBOR rates off their devastatingly devilish perch that had been building from all the way back in early July. As if it needed to be restated, that surge [...]
For most of the world’s inhabitants, so long as they reside connected to some form of modern economy inflation is an unwelcome event even in the smallest doses. Central banks have made it their very business to control it, or at least its form in consumer prices, in order that their assessment of the Great Depression might not be ever [...]
The unrelenting economic decline in China is finally getting the attention of economists and the media as something more than a big problem “for them.” Imports declined by 18.8% in October after having contracted by 20.5% in August. On the export side, Chinese goods sent abroad fell 6.9% year-over-year in dollars which confirms that the contraction is not China’s alone [...]
For those inclined to see only the positive side, the current downdrift in at least manufacturing globally still holds no special distinction. Either it is to be dismissed as a trivial concern unconnected to the “real” economy or, more blatantly, it doesn’t matter because it only means more “stimulus.” Thus, the positive side can never lose as every negative account [...]
With the ECB openly admitting worries about its own QE trying to justify more of it and then China on Friday adding its own mix, the third consecutive “double shot” just since June 27, you can be forgiven for considering the idea that all this talk about a global economic downside is finally starting to be taken seriously. A little [...]
There is always some chicken and egg to any financial irregularity; as in does a crisis cause a panic or is it the panic that causes the crisis? Though the evidence of the past eight years is decidedly on the side of the irregularity, central banks continue to press as if that were not so. In no uncertain terms, central [...]
In Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III, Shakespeare warns, in his own poetic fashion and style, about what should happen when always or nearly so looking for only the easy way forward: I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep [...]
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