China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported last week that the official manufacturing PMI for that country rose from 51.6 in October to 51.8 in November. Since “analysts” were expecting 51.4 (Reuters poll of Economists) it was taken as a positive sign. The same was largely true for the official non-manufacturing PMI, rising like its counterpart here from 54.3 the month [...]
I could understand it if its track record was spotty, or partially mixed. But the level of denial runs deep and wide with the yield curve. There is a growing chorus of nonsense, really, which is attempting to spin the flattening as some kind of benign technical rotation that through illogical convolution equals the opposite of what is obvious. Let’s [...]
The FOMC is holding its next regular policy meeting next week. It is widely expected that on December 13 the Federal Reserve’s policy body will vote and publicize the next “rate hike” in its exit strategy. Starting in December 2015, this next one, if it happens, will be the fifth in the series. It would bring the IOER “ceiling” (or [...]
First Bernanke, now Yellen. As I wrote earlier today, there is a growing tendency to revise economic history at least as it applies to official actions. Ben Bernanke defends QE from the perspective of 2009 forward, as if 2008 was all just someone else’s problem irrelevant to the world that came after. In effectively resigning from the Fed Chair position [...]
The UK government tried very hard to hold on. They had been able to raise $200 million from JP Morgan, a significant sum at that time under those circumstances. The British had also secured an almost equal amount from banks in France. The new National Government had produced a budget slashing spending by £70 million, while also raising taxes by [...]
The year 1995 wasn’t exact a good year to remember. There was the Oklahoma City bombing, the San Diego tank rampage, the New Jersey Devils winning the Stanley Cup in a lockout shortened NHL season, and some former Buffalo Bills running back named OJ getting into trouble out in LA. Steve Forbes would announce his candidacy to challenge President Clinton [...]
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 [...]
Back in September, the FOMC announced that it was in October going to start normalizing its balance sheet. The policy statement issued that day included all the usual qualifications of “solid”, “strengthen”, and “picked up.” The near-term risks to the economy, it was written, “appear roughly balanced.” Not all was well with the economic situation, however, as the central bank’s [...]
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 [...]
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