The initial print for October was good in the US. Europe continues to struggle. Japan weakens slightly. The UK flat-lines below 50. Australia drops. Numbers above 50 should indicate an economy is growing. FWIW, this data has been very choppy and even enigmatic. Composite Output Index US -- 51, up from 50.2 (a 3 month high) Eurozone -- 46.5, down [...]
It isn’t just the vast difference between Chinese consumer prices and those in the US or Europe, China’s CPI has been categorically distinct from China’s PPI, too. That distance hints at the real problem which the whole is just now beginning to confront, having been lulled into an inflationary illusion made up from all these things.To start with, yesterday China’s [...]
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 [...]
Crude oil prices rose over 25% last week and as I sit down to write this evening, the overnight futures are up another 8% to around $125. Almost every other commodity on the planet rose in prices last week too, as did the dollar. Those two factors - rising dollar and rising commodity prices - mean the likelihood of recession [...]
Sentiment indicators like PMI’s are nice and all, but they’re hardly top-tier data. It’s certainly not their fault, these things are made for very times than these (piggy-backing on the ISM Manufacturing’s long history without having the long history). Most of them have come out since 2008, if only because of the heightened professional interest in macroeconomics generated by a [...]
Valentine’s Day, and no one would love the US dollar. There was, instead, quite a lot of disdain for it fueling the usual loud voices who continue to hate it and predict its imminent demise year after year. This particularly lovely day in February 2018 seemed to have added more to the downside cheerleading; the US PPI came in red [...]
We are going to start here with Europe before heading to Australia and then getting to China – and then currency. Why the ECB? It is going through the same pangs of dissatisfaction as its cousin the Federal Reserve had last summer. Like the Fed in 2020, Europe’s central bank in 2021 has climbed to the end of its grand [...]
Copper, like lumber, had been the star of the space. Each had rocketed upward beginning last fall representing, for many, the leading edge of the inflationary wave sure to follow. The two garnered that much attention as well as given this much importance because the rest of the commodity class hadn’t really come close to matching their meteoric scale.It was [...]
Global factors. Both for inflation as well as money, in fact money therefore inflation. Only recently, yesterday, in fact, has the Federal Reserve pulled back the official curtain of silence and illiteracy if only a little to admit there’s so much more than what you’ve ever been told. Bank reserves aren’t the end of the story, especially in light of [...]
The Australians are doing quite well, at least according to more recent data. A few hiccups hear and there, the economy Down Under has been riding high(er) on the Chinese rebound and the potential end to the pandemic. Earlier today, National Australia Bank’s survey of the first quarter business environment was thoroughly positive. At an index value of +17, this [...]
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