A couple of Economists have caused some noise by reviewing consumer confidence estimates in the United States, associating big declines in them with imminent recession, and then pointing out such substantial drops in both of the major consumer sentiment surveys just recently. If valid, their correlations would seem to suggest a US contraction.We’re meant to take these seriously for one [...]
We’ve got one central bank over here in America which appears as if its members can’t wait to “taper”, bringing up both the topic and using that particular word as much as possible. Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve obviously intends to buoy confidence by projecting as much when it does cut back on the pace of its (irrelevant) QE6. On the [...]
New orders, new orders, new orders. That’s the substance of the inventory cycle. A lot more of them, the upswing in it can remain intact keeping the global manufacturing economy humming along. Should they start to scale back and then, maybe at some point, decline, this unusual supply-constraint trend transitions toward a more historical inventory cycle on the downturn. As [...]
Barely more than two weeks. That’s all was needed for the headlines to scream “bloodbath”, “end of the bull market”, and the always popular BOND ROUT!!! The 10-year Treasury yield had bottomed out in August and by mid-September 2019 this key benchmark rate screamed upward by 43 bps in just seven sessions. Yes, seven. To think, the financial media has [...]
If you're fortunate to be able to do this long enough, you’re absolutely assured to get caught with your pants down and almost certainly more than once. In the short run, it’s all a crapshoot anyway. Markets fluctuate and never, ever go in a straight line. And just when you claim to be right on top, they yank the rug [...]
Eurodollar, not Evergrande. That wasn’t just the point of yesterday’s recall, it is the whole point of beyond fourteen years of going only the wrong way. The deflationary way. Defaults in China are nowadays a commonplace part of that trend, one which began early in 2014 with Shanghai Chaori Solar.What was significant about Chaori was this: “It was the moment [...]
Almost universally, the comeback is always QE. Whenever trying to discuss the bond market’s unmovable pessimism in 2021, especially now about six months after reflation ended, people just don’t want to hear about such low (and lower) growth and inflation expectations in nominal yields. No, that’s not deflationary potential, they’d say, it was and is the Fed buying bonds which [...]
In Massachusetts, the Federal Reserve’s First District, restaurateurs have struggled mightily to find workers. As part of the central bank’s Beige Book, one contact of the Boston leadership said the industry was “facing the worst labor shortage he has seen in 35 years of experience.” In response to such a major threat, these firms become truly creative to try to [...]
It was a highly curious change in the shape of the labor force. Beginning October 2015 and lasting until March 2016, for six months Americans came flooding back into the labor market. Or, so they said. When the BLS’s various surveyors working on the Current Population Survey (known as the Household Survey) came calling for answers each month, all of [...]
They were doing so well, or at least not quite as bad as throughout the prior several decades. Through this year’s 5% CPI’s, Federal Reserve policymakers stuck to their gut not their heart. Transitory factors. Right call (as we’ll see in a minute). That won’t be their mistake. On the contrary, these Economists (central bankers are all Economists nowadays, and [...]
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