The continued release of increasingly bad data serves to further isolate the payroll report as something residing only of its own accord. There are far more relevant pieces of evidence that are clearly free of overly-dependent assumptions about factors that are less and less relevant to the actual economy as it exists post-crisis – and really post-2012. While the Establishment [...]
With the ECB set to plan on doing some QE, without much by way of reassurance that it can actually be accomplished, the central bank updated its modeled projections for QE’s success. That part was easy for them as they always assume at the outset that QE will do what they say QE does, though it is interesting just by [...]
With liquidity running somewhat perilously noncommittal since June, you would think the riskiest parts of the credit market would be most affected. That is incorrect and once again stands out as to the bubbly nature of the current age. Aside from liquidity draining enthusiasm into and around October 15 and December 1, high yield debt has not only repriced itself [...]
The Federal Reserve is running another large-scale test on its Term Deposit Facility (TDF), the account by which it intends to establish a European-style floor to its also intended interest rate corridor. Judging by the fact that nobody has paid any attention to this test or the one that preceded it, except for those that were fooled into thinking the [...]
France was the latest Eurozone country to announce officially an entrance into negative “inflation.” The French were very cautious, overly it might be said, to assure that such an outcome was not at risk of pushing that economy into “deflation.” Apparently, rigidity in wages from socialism is a factor as an economic buffer, though left unanswered is where such an [...]
The pace of new home sales continues to be stuck right below that 500k SAAR, a flattening of activity that dates back really to January 2013. The data has at times peaked above 500k only to be revised subsequently lower, which does not provide a whole lot of confidence about recent months. January’s level was slightly below December, but volatility [...]
For almost a year now, even before 2014’s version of winter, the constant theme has been one of growing and robust jobs. It had become so ubiquitous as to infiltrate every economic data point, including the housing market. There was some correlation last year between the sentiment about payroll expansion and at least a tepid rebound in home sales, but [...]
With Greece relenting on its game of chicken with the Eurozone noose, you have to wonder how much the ELA and the threat of total financial meltdown pushed that direction. From the view of credit markets in Europe, there was an unusual almost confidence in such an outcome from the moment of the election last month. Small wonder when Europe [...]
With the latest release of the Treasury Department’s TIC statistics there is a lot about December now that makes sense. Much of what is contained within the figures matches the theories I put forward contemporarily, including the severity of the “dollar” problem that month (leading to any number of downstream effects, including seriously heightened bearishness in US credit markets) and [...]
In an effort to prove that the Federal Reserve and ECB are not that far apart in at least philosophical terms, the European Central Bank released minutes from its historic QE meeting in January. Whereas the Fed has been using circular logic to “justify” at least bluffing toward rate hikes, the ECB apparently has done the same to “justify” QE. [...]
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