Bill Dudley was a key guy at the Fed for a very long time. It is very important to point this out. Not only did he hold two of the central bank’s most crucial positions, he held them during the institution’s most critical moments. Dudley was Manager of the system’s Open Market Account in August 2007. On the seventh of [...]
It is absolutely amazing the lengths people will go to in order to deny the most straightforward and obvious explanation; to torture and twist plain evidence. That’s the thing about rationalizing, though. The narrative usually matters more than the facts. Take tax reform and interest rates. The problem with tax reform wasn’t actually tax reform. The Tax Cuts and Jobs [...]
Last December, something clearly broke. The global basis had swept far under zero again, an ominous sign that eurodollar banks were having trouble creating, finding, and redistributing global funding. A cross currency basis swap is one way to do it, the negative basis indicating a desperate shortage of dollars offshore (eurodollars). The negative basis wasn’t the only thing suggesting dramatic [...]
I suppose it’s easy to look at gold and see only fear. It is, after all, the ultimate currency hedge. Therefore, if the price is rising there is probably a good chance fear over monetary considerations is, too. The opposite interpretation, then, would appear to be just as straightforward, but it’s often complicated by the mechanics of wholesale global eurodollar [...]
One of Candidate Trump’s biggest priorities was to renegotiate NAFTA. Seen as an accelerator for harm not just inside of the nation’s rust belt, the incoming administration made it a top priority. Blaming the trade deal for the loss of 700k manufacturing jobs, Robert Lighthizer, the US’s top trade official for the renegotiation process, said in August as talks got [...]
We ended last week with a clear sign that global “dollars” are in (escalating) shortage. I would write “again” with that sentence but there is every indication that said shortage never really ended. It’s not like last year’s “reflation” was a switch from insufficient supply to sufficient, rather it was a relative change to a degree that isn’t easily established [...]
Back in early October, I noted that repo fails had jumped above $250 billion (combined “to receive” and “to deliver”) for three weeks straight. That wasn’t an auspicious result, as sustained collateral problems like that don’t correlate to happy things. It all began the week of September 5, in what seemed like a minor one-day nuisance over the 4-week bill [...]
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