It has to be a combination of confirmation bias and rationalizations. Not even the official story finishes up with the fairy tale ending. The “V” people seem to be ignoring what the most optimistic group is actually saying. And these optimists absolutely want it to be that way.It bears repeating the “V” case; that once the non-economic shutdowns are lifted, [...]
It’s a pretty simple question, at least when asked by a member of the American citizenry not already compelled by one bias or another. Did the 2009 “stimulus” bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; or ARRA) work? The answer depends upon who you ask, including breaking down along partisan lines. To Democrat Economists, it absolutely did. For their Republican counterparts, [...]
The numbers just don’t add up. Even if you treat this stuff on the most charitable of terms, dollar for dollar, way too much of the hole almost certainly remains unfilled. That’s the thing about “stimulus” talk; for one thing, people seem to be viewing it as some kind of addition without thinking it all the way through first.You have [...]
Has the Keynesian intellectual been able to re-assert himself with China’s economy once again on the brink of breaking down? Li Keqiang is nominally the Communist number two but had seen his role especially in economic affairs curtailed after a 2015-16 struggle with Xi Jinping. The issue was debt versus growth.As a trained Economist, Li was responsible for the government’s [...]
Is it really that simple? The central bank hands out “free” money or “supports” markets with purchases, so that’s all there is to it. Once Jay Powell or Christine Lagarde moves in with the big bazookas, who’s not going to climb on board the money train as it rockets out of the inflation station?If only Weimar was that easy. Easy [...]
Following along the same top-down model, what unites central bankers and socialists is equality. Handing over significant authority to either results in everyone being equally impoverished. And, therefore, those very authorities fighting over minute scraps so as to display some sense of accomplishment.In October 2015, safely nested within the cozy confines of Brookings, being paid handsomely to opine on matters [...]
March 15 was when it all began to come down. Not the stock market; that had been in freefall already, beset by the rolling destruction of fire sale liquidations emanating out of the repo market (collateral side first). No matter what the Federal Reserve did or announced, there was no stopping the runaway devastation.It wasn’t until the middle of March [...]
As I’ve said, it is a threefold failure of statistical models. The first being those which showed the economy was in good to great shape at the start of this thing. Widely used and even more widely cited, thanks to Jay Powell and his 2019 rate cuts plus “repo” operations the calculations suggested the system was robust.Because of this set [...]
A crucial component of many commodity futures markets is a concept called roll yield. It relates to the shape of the curve and therefore how the market is discounting the three fundamental factors of supply, demand, and financing. Contango versus backwardation, there’s a lot to consider and even more at stake.Back in late October 2018, the WTI curve flipped to [...]
What set me off down the rabbit hole trying to chase modern money’s proliferation of products originally was the distinct lack of curiosity on the subject. This was the nineties, after all, where economic growth grew on trees. Reportedly. Why on Earth would anyone purposefully go looking for the tiniest cracks in the dam?My very first day on the job, [...]
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