How does QE work? That’s actually a trick question given how all the evidence produced in examination of the various programs undertaken across the world under that label uniformly indicates that it doesn’t. On the contrary, the most studied and tested government efforts in history have yielded consistent results up and down the board.It's just that the public has never [...]
It was one of those signals which mattered more than the seemingly trivial details surrounding the affair. The name MF Global doesn’t mean very much these days, but for a time in late 2011 it came to represent outright fear. Some were even declaring it the next “Lehman.” While the “bank” did eventually fail, and the implications of it came [...]
The first half of 2021 was inundated with government helicopters, more QE’s, and then CPI’s put up with guarantees the “inflation” was going to continue for a long time. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s often hapless CEO, proudly declared US Treasuries beyond the touch of any 10-foot pole. With the economy on fire, he “reasoned”, who would ever want safe and [...]
JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon hasn’t produced an enviable track record opining on inflationary potential. He’s forever deeply entrenched in the inflation camp, and because he sits atop the corporate structure of one of the world’s biggest and most well-known banks, it does seem reasonable at first how his opinion on monetary matters is taken very seriously – despite repeatedly missing [...]
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In our specific case here, never attribute to deviousness what is plainly incompetent Economists. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, though he works atop one of the world’s biggest banking money dealers he got there by being a trained Economist. To bring this home, in March 2008, just [...]
The term “balance sheet recession” is one that had come up more often a little more than half a decade ago. At the same time everyone at the Fed, especially Bill Dudley, was wondering why QE had kept coming up (way) short of every one of its goals, some of them began to speculate about this other thing. If the [...]
Milton Friedman wasn’t trying to be cagey. Quite the contrary, he was recognizing the complexity of the world we actually inhabit and then stating this in perfectly clear language. Things aren’t so simple as positive versus negative, especially when it comes to moving progress forward – or stopping in its tracks. What if progress merely slows; worse, what if it [...]
Just in time for more discussions about repo, the Federal Reserve delivers. Not in terms of the repo market, mind you, despite what you hear bandied about in the financial media the Fed doesn’t actually go there. Its repo operations are more RINO’s – repo in name only. No, what the US central bank actually contributes is more helpful data. [...]
Jay Powell has had his mind changed for him. Why? Not even a year ago he was downplaying things like federal funds. The rise in that one anachronistic rate was inconsistent with a healthy financial system poised for the good times that come with serious economic acceleration. Quite the opposite, actually. To dismiss the obvious contrary signal, in very place [...]
During the first quarter of 2008, as Bear Stearns teetered on the edge of illiquidity, foreign holders of US$ financial assets contributed $9.3 trillion to US credit markets. According to the Fed’s Z1, the Financial Accounts of the United States, it tells us that’s the amount they held in possession from outside the American geographical boundary. Considering at the same [...]
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