There was an extremely odd dynamic for monetary policy during the 1990’s and especially in the United States. The less Alan Greenspan said, the more markets were convinced he knew what he was doing. He purposefully said nothing, being attributed years later with developing this “fedspeak.” So long as he continued to say nothing, the more he would have to [...]
I feel almost obligated at this point to present UST volatility whenever referring to funding markets. Hopefully that “duty” will subside in the near term, but as I suggested yesterday this week is setting up to be much like last week. When I wrote that, however, I didn’t mean to propose a literal copy from week to week, but that [...]
I have to thank my colleague Joe Calhoun for passing alone a very topical article written by Nassim Taleb and Gregory Treverton in Foreign Affairs. Taleb is, of course, well-known for his “black swan”, but it is really far more than that as it gets to the failure of modern economics as nothing more than a study of statistics. Conventional [...]
Henry Hazlitt once wrote that, “it is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths.” I have come to wonder how far that might have penetrated, disabling so many of the tools in which any “good” economists, or even investors, may use to act. Without the free [...]
The appearance and intensity of uncertainty is in direct proportion to the counter efforts intended to sow content and maintain the idea of control. It amounts to the financial equivalent of a “show of force.” Yet, how often do such forceful demonstrations actually provide comfort? More often than not, participants in that uncertainty interpret the need to show force as [...]
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