Confirming that they inhabit the same planet but live in a very different world, Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, who is front and center for global monetary politics this week spoke in Germany ahead of his Jackson Hole main event. What he said was astounding in the same sort of way a drunken man spouts nonsense [...]
In 1871, W. Stanley Jevons in the preface to his book The Theory of Political Economy writes of a fundamental human issue with Economics. He makes a distinction between it and other sciences which do not suffer, as he said a century and a half ago, “the weight of authority.” Finding such words from so long ago from when Economics [...]
Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (DeStatis) reported today disappointing figures for Industrial Production. The seasonally-adjusted series fell in June 2017 month-over-month for the first time this year, last declining in December 2016. The index had been on a tear, rising nearly 5% in the first five months of this year. The move was considered by many if not most in the [...]
It is like a great many things forgotten now, but five years ago today the head of the ECB compared Europe to a bumblebee. That’s not quite right, however, as Mario Draghi really said the euro was like a bumblebee, but you’d be forgiven for mixing the two up. The purpose of his folksy analogy was so that Europe and [...]
Well, that clears that up. In case you missed it, back on June 27 Mario Draghi triggered the latest declared BOND ROUT!!! with what was characterized as a very upbeat economic assessment for Europe. And if things are moving forward there, they just have to be everywhere else. It came off as “hawkish” in the sense that if real acceleration [...]
It is hypocritical, I suppose, to claim that Janet Yellen is irrelevant while at the same time constantly writing about the oblivious things she says. The Fed doesn’t matter but we need to obsessively focus on monetary policy anyway. Often the reasoning is upside down. By that I mean, we hope that by highlighting how little authorities know that someone [...]
The IMF like so many others appears to have been caught up in “reflation.” Its models had in its April 2017 WEO outlook upgraded US growth prospects for the first time in a long time. In their final 2016 WEO, the institute projected US real GDP growth of 2.20% for calendar year 2017, and then just 2.10% for calendar year [...]
Europe is as we all are. Ben Bernanke wrote a few years ago that his tenure at the Fed must have been a success in his view because the US economy didn’t perform as badly as Europe’s. As usual, this technically true comparison is for any meaningful purpose irrelevant. For one, the European economy underperformed before 2008, too. Second, after [...]
At the end of March, the European Central Bank (ECB) offered a second round of bank financing. Dubbed TLTRO’s, T for “targeted”, the program offered banks a chance to obtain direct funding for up to four years at an incredibly low rate. European banks in TLTRO2 were allowed up to as much as 30% of their outstanding eligible loan books [...]
Writing earlier this year on the topic of the Fed’s future balance sheet reductions, Ben Bernanke had occasion to recount his experience from 2013. It was a stressful time for the Fed after they panicked into QE3 (and then QE4) and then almost panicked right out of it. The then-Fed Chairman stressed from his experience the importance of communications as [...]
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