Europe is not the only location seeking out more “inflation”, as almost any central bank around the world except Banco do Brasil would do anything to find it. The ECB provided more emphasis in their panicked escalation today. In China, by contrast, consumer prices moved to +2.3% in February, which was the highest rate since July 2014. Unfortunately, that rise [...]
January and February economic accounts for China are notoriously difficult to judge because of the non-uniform occurrence of the Lunar New Year. That is why, for example, China’s National Bureau of Statistics doesn’t even bother with industrial production, retail sales or fixed asset investment in those individual months, preferring to combine them together in one release encompassing both January and [...]
As I often write, in Japan it is far more difficult to hide the failure of “stimulus.” There are varying degrees of visibility in that regard around the QE world, but they all share negative redistribution as the base alloy. That’s why Janet Yellen may be merely uncomfortable and Mario Draghi increasingly brooding, but Haruhiko Kuroda was just pushed to [...]
The last time I had occasion to notice Jack Lew was last January when he was in Davos assuring the world there was nothing wrong with either its economy or markets. He even went so far as to reiterate the “official” Treasury position about the dollar. He didn’t say it explicitly, but his meaning, much to do with the timing, [...]
Maybe after a couple generations the Japanese have finally had enough. Perhaps QQE was large enough so as to leave no doubt that not only did it fail, but that it was the same result registered time and again before. The Bank of Japan has promulgated eleven QE’s dating back to 2001, but this last one might have done so [...]
One follow up point to this morning’s missive about why the economy seems to be converging in recession rather than full and blossoming recovery: There must be something said about the manner of redistribution in this “cycle” as different from all others. In other words, the Fed has been attempting greater and greater redistribution efforts via monetary interference ever since [...]
For something that central bankers and economists were so sure wasn’t ever going to be troubling, oil seems to have become something of a communicable financial disease at the outset of 2016. If 2015 was somewhat sour and disappointing, 2016 was supposed to leave no doubt; it is, just not in the manner predicted. This morning’s headlines tell you all [...]
China’s economic update for December and Q4 were uniformly ugly. GDP fell to 6.8% and 6.9% for the full year. Industrial production was back below 6%, estimated at just 5.9% and once more denying all those that claimed November’s slight uptick was the start of renewal. Retail sales disappointed at 11.1%, down from 11.2% in November (no difference) while Fixed [...]
Industrial production in China accelerated in November to 6.2% from an abysmal 5.6% in October. As per usual, any similar change is met with assurances that this time, unlike all prior, everything is working. It has become a regular game of ill-considered contention, as every single move in IP or some other factor that stops declining is immediately and confidently [...]
Japan fell back into recession again in Q3, expected this time, which is actually being charitable to Abenomics and especially QQE. To even believe that this monetary insanity has produced even marginal benefits, it has to be given “credit” of at least mini-recoveries in between these “technical recessions.” It is a problem far worse than that, as even a technical [...]
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