There is a lot of evidence which shows some basis for expectations-based monetary policy. Much of what becomes a recession or worse is due to the psychological impacts upon businesses (who invest and hire) as well as workers being consumers (who earn and then spend). Once the snowball of macro contraction begins rolling downhill, rational prudence dictates some degree of [...]
Mario Draghi’s sunset retirement festivities weren’t supposed to have gone off this way. Celebrated for his July 2012 “promise” to save the euro, he instead spent the entirety of his eight years as President of the ECB chasing inflation and recovery, the very things meant to accomplish the euro’s saving, without success. By the end, his final act in September [...]
Japan Finance Minister Taro Aso, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, caused a global stir of sorts back in early June when he appeared to express something like Japanese racial superiority at least with respect to how that country was handling the COVID pandemic. For a country with a population of more than 126 million, the case counts and mortality [...]
If it shows up at the Federal Reserve, you can pretty much bet everything you own that it was tried out at the Bank of Japan first. And if it was the brilliant brainchild of someone at the BoJ, then you’re guaranteed it failed spectacularly. Which means, obviously, the “ideal” technocrats at the Fed intentionally copied something they knew had [...]
It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.” In 2014, the clock was [...]
At some point, the thing actually has to happen. You can only keep talking about the thing for so long before people start to get wise. And most people, especially those in the public who understandably don’t following the thing closely, or the things related to it, are incredibly patient. Time and time again, they prove willing to give experts, [...]
Where is it, Chairman Powell? After spending months deliberately hyping a “flood” of digital money printing, and then unleashing average inflation targeting making Americans believe the central bank will be wickedly irresponsible when it comes to consumer prices, the evidence portrays a very different set of circumstance. Inflationary pressures were supposed to have been visible by now, seven months and [...]
Europe’s problems are more immediate. Encouraging news about Pfizer’s vaccine won’t change the European circumstances in near enough time to avoid what’s more and more looking like a real possibility for a retrenchment. In this case, COVID cases are a primary culprit, meaning how authorities over there are responding to their rise. As such, it has taken the shine off [...]
COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]
The payroll report for the month of October 2020 was a very good one. This shouldn’t be surprising, perfect BLS publications appear with regularity even during the most challenging of circumstances. Headlines and underneath, everything looked fine last month. It wasn’t perfect, however, and it’s the same things that leave it short of perfection which are entirely too familiar for [...]
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