Well before Jerome Powell changed his dots a little, or the ECB chickened out, the Reserve Bank of India had already acted. For the first time since January 2014, on June 6 the RBI raised its benchmark repo rate. Rather than reverse the rupee’s slide it appears to have renewed it. The euro may have routed yesterday and hogged all the [...]
Last week, it was overseas central bankers who stole the show. Many of them particularly in EM locations have had a really rough go of late, and a few in particular wanted the world to pay attention to dollars. Not any dollars, of course, as that would be far too easy. Rather, offshore “dollar” markets have found a few voices. [...]
The sweeping tide of populist election victories has not been limited to just the US and Europe. There have been torrents in Asia, too. Though there is some disagreement whether he counts among them or not, India’s Narendra Modi swept to a historic electoral triumph in May 2014 sure sounding a lot like one, maybe even one of the first. [...]
On April 6, the Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions imposed upon certain Russian officials, persons, and businesses. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced their purported purpose in a letter: “The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites.” Russia’s currency, the ruble (RUB), fell sharply after the announcement as well as over the days [...]
If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, in economic terms the paving is done by zombies. We’ve all heard of the convention regarding Japanification. In desperation trying to avoid a worse fate, many of Japan’s tortured financial institutions were left open and operating so as to not force losses too much at a time. Rather than allow [...]
What do August 2008, August 2011, and January 2016 all have in common? In pop culture or mainstream news, I’m not sure you could find any consistent link between those precise periods. Even in economics, it’s not quite as uniform. Those were all forming or beckoning downturns, but all at somewhat different stages of them. More specifically along those lines, [...]
When Apple first came out with the iPhone in 2007, it was truly a revolutionary product. Even for those of us who hadn’t been impressed with Apple’s computers had to tip our caps to Steve Jobs (and team) for what they had pulled off. He knew it, of course, which is why earlier that year Apple Computer had dropped the [...]
What happened to the recovery? It’s a complex question with a surprisingly simple answer. The density of the topic, particularly entangled as it was in close proximity to the calamity of the Great “Recession”, clouded the diagnosis. If you ask ten different academic economists you might get ten different answers, though I suspect seven or eight of them would be [...]
The advent of open and transparent central banks is a relatively new one. For most of their history, these quasi-government institutions operated in secret and they liked it that way. As late as October 1993, for example, Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress intentionally trying to cloud the issue as to whether verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings actually existed. Representative [...]
On April 29, 2011, the US benchmark oil price (WTI) surged above $113 per barrel. It wasn’t just American oil prices, either, as other benchmarks around the world were on a huge run. It was the highest for crude oil in three years, going back to the weeks immediately following Lehman. At that price, more so the parabolic trajectory, it [...]
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