For once, I find myself in agreement with a mainstream article published over at Bloomberg. Notable Fed supporters without fail, this one maybe represents a change in tone. Perhaps the cheerleaders are feeling the heat and are seeking Jay Powell’s exit for him? Whatever the case, there’s truth to what’s written if only because interest rates haven’t been rising based [...]
The US$ continues on its rampage, particularly zeroed in on China for simple if misunderstood reasons (that have nothing to do with “devaluation”). What about the rest of the marketplace, the other stuff which identifies the eurodollar’s various cycles? You know about T-bills, which, yet again today, are more like what the dollar is suggesting. Other than those, what’s the [...]
This is the difference, though in the end it only amounts to a matter of timing. When pressed (very modestly) on the slow pace of the ECB’s “inflation” “fighting” (theater) campaign, its President, Christine Lagarde, once again demonstrated her willingness to be patient if not cautious. Why?For one thing, she noted how Europe produces a lot of stuff that, at [...]
Stagflation. It's a word that strikes fear in the hearts of investors, one that evokes memories - for some of us - of bell bottoms, disco, and Jimmy Carter's American malaise. The combination of weak growth and high inflation is the worst of all worlds, one that required a transformational leader and a cigar-chomping central banker to defeat the last [...]
Well, that was an ugly week. Of the six major assets we track, only one was up last week - REITs. Large and small-cap stocks - down. General commodity indexes - down. Gold - down. Bonds - down. The early part of the week was actually pretty calm but Thursday and Friday - especially that close on the low Friday [...]
This must be what the NBER feels like. That group of academic Economists simply took up the job of “declaring” each end of the business cycle. No one seems to have asked them to, nor was there any mandate official or otherwise. Sensing the opportunity, believing the job in keeping with the organization’s competence, or self-assessment of it, the NBER [...]
For the third month in a row, China’s PBOC refrained from guiding its quasi-credit benchmark lower. This seemed out of line with what Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, had stated last week before authorities did drop the RRR rate on Friday. Saying that China would “step up” support for its faltering economy, however the RRR cut was half of what [...]
If there was a compelling collateral case for bending the Treasury yield curve toward inversion beginning last October, what follows is the update for the twist itself. As collateral scarcity became shortage then a pretty substantial run, that was the very moment yield curve flattening became inverted.Just like October, you can actually see it all unfold.According to the latest FRBNY [...]
In any year when gasoline prices rise 18%, that’s not going to be good for anyone except maybe oil companies who extract its key ingredient from out of the ground (or don’t, as the case can be). Yet, annual rates of increase that size do happen. After August 2017 up to and including August 2018, the BLS’s CPI registered a [...]
February 2005, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan goes before Congress to tell the simple-minded politicians there about his “conundrum.” They and the media eat it up because somehow the guy was declared the “maestro.” Even so, he had a major problem and it was nothing more than LT Treasury yields doing what they do; that is, pricing less growth and [...]
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