Of the few economists honest about the economy, there has been a struggle to come up with an explanation for persisting economic struggles. That has led to a plethora of labels applied to the last decade. Brad Delong, for example, once called it the Lesser Depression. Larry Summers has revived Alan Hansen’s Secular Stagnation. I prefer Eurodollar Stagnation to that [...]
As part of its effort to stress its own self-importance, the Federal Reserve conducts a survey of the Primary Dealer members through its New York branch. A written questionnaire is sent out to each bank in advance of every monetary policy meeting. The purpose is for monetary policymakers to make sure that there aren’t any big surprises, that the market, [...]
The former Federal Reserve Chairman doth protest too much, methinks. The answer to why Ben Bernanke is still defending QE is obvious. Had it worked, I mean really worked, he would be today universally hailed as the greatest monetary steward since Bagehot. Though he wrote a book trying to cast himself in that way, the rest of the world just [...]
On the vital matter of missing symmetry, consumer price indices across the world keep suggesting there remains none. Recoveries were called “V” shaped for a reason. Any economy knocked down would be as intense in getting back up, normal cyclical forces creating momentum for that to (only) happen. In the context of the past three years, symmetry is still nowhere [...]
As a natural progression from the analysis of one historical bond “bubble” to the latest, it’s statements like the one below that ironically help it continue. One primary manifestation of low Treasury rates is the deepening mistrust constantly fomented in markets by the media equivalent of the boy who cries recovery. That narrative “has ruffled a few feathers,” BMO Capital [...]
If it is a day ending in “y” you can be sure there is somewhere in the financial press a story or “news report” of the looming bond selloff – even if it is due to some future event or made up phenomenon. Today’s is another in the series this time using a dramatized setup for technical analysis. A three [...]
While I commend the mainstream media for refraining the past few months from their orthodox tendencies to shout BOND ROUT!!! every time long Treasury yields rise for more than a few days at a time, that doesn’t mean the total absence of the ridiculous. With the long end once again trending lower in nominal yields, the curve has utterly collapsed [...]
The whole thing really does unravel at the unemployment rate. If it indicates the correct view of the economy, even close to “full employment”, then what follows is fairly typical and orthodox stuff. In the context of what the Fed is doing, short-term rate hikes are leading the longer end of the yield curve toward a more hopeful future (though [...]
Why don’t economists understand bonds? The long answer involves several detours into parts of Economics that have nothing to do with interest rates or even money. More so these places are dominated by discussions of stochastic calculus and partial differential equations. Thus, the short answer is: Affine models of the term structure of interest rates are a popular tool for [...]
The problem with the Federal Reserve is that it is corrupt. I don’t mean that its staff is busy filling their days thinking up ways to cheat the American taxpayer, rather it is a philosophical sort of debasement. Many people think the Fed is evil and nefarious, others that its policymakers are plain stupid. Neither of those is true. Ben [...]
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