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fiscal stimulus

Some Specifics of ‘Transitory’

By |2021-04-28T17:11:05-04:00April 28th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Silver linings have been hard to come by lately, especially last year. Twenty-twenty was a total washout in almost every way imaginable; and that’s an understatement. Still, there were some small signs of genuine progress such as Jay Powell’s thorough contribution to QE debunking. Bank reserves went sky high while practically nothing else did (other than equities), certainly not inflation. [...]

Perhaps Just One Word Absent From The Historic Consumer Splurge

By |2021-04-15T20:00:07-04:00April 15th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Enormous. Terrific. Unbelievable. Biggest ever. The superlatives for US consumer spending during the month of March 2021 are appropriate, and for once they aren’t caused by some artifact of arithmetic or some other trick. While there are absolutely some base effects within the numbers, these levels of retail sales are far and away more than those. It's so ridiculous that [...]

OK NYMEX, Beginning To Notice The Fine Print?

By |2021-03-23T17:37:08-04:00March 23rd, 2021|Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Is it a building case of/for selling the news? Another substantial down day in the oil market brings the total slide to just more than 13% (since March 5). Hardly anything earth-shaking on its own, not with the WTI front month futures contract gaining an impressive 85% since the end of October. During those four and a half months, the [...]

Spending Here, Production There, and What Autos Have To Do With It

By |2021-03-16T16:26:11-04:00March 16th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While the global inflation picture remains fixed at firmly normal (as in, disinflationary), US retail sales by contrast have been highly abnormal. You’d think given that, the consumer price part of the economic equation would, well, equate eventually price-wise. Consumers are spending, prices should be heading upward at a noticeable rate. To begin with, consumer spending – as pictured by [...]

Hot Oil, Cold Weather, Uncle Sam’s Green

By |2021-02-24T19:24:35-05:00February 24th, 2021|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

For a couple of weeks, the $600 payments from Uncle Sam seemed to have found their way into the tanks of Americans driving their automobiles a little bit more than they had. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the total amount of gasoline “supplied” by the domestic marketplace reached 8.4 mbpd the second week of February. Like retail [...]

Xi’s Not Alone: From Mexico With Distrust

By |2021-01-27T20:00:03-05:00January 27th, 2021|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

China isn’t the only country actively resisting the “stimulus” certainties which go for inarguable wisdom around most of the rest of the world. Xi Jinping has stated his case very plainly, only no one wants to listen to the dictator; or at least take him literally. People would rather believe there’s only the one way to respond to big economic [...]

No Time For Pfizer, Europe Heads Back

By |2020-11-11T18:09:46-05:00November 11th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Europe’s problems are more immediate. Encouraging news about Pfizer’s vaccine won’t change the European circumstances in near enough time to avoid what’s more and more looking like a real possibility for a retrenchment. In this case, COVID cases are a primary culprit, meaning how authorities over there are responding to their rise. As such, it has taken the shine off [...]

QE Didn’t JOLT (again)

By |2020-11-10T17:13:19-05:00November 10th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]

Anesthesia

By |2020-10-22T19:33:00-04:00October 22nd, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Europeans are growing more downbeat again. While ostensibly many are more worried about a new set of restrictions due to (even more overreactions about) COVID, that’s only part of the problem. The bigger factor, economically speaking, is that Europe’s economy has barely moved, or at most not moved near enough, off the bottom. To interrupt now what has already proved [...]

Science of Sentiment: Zooming Expectations Wonder

By |2020-08-11T15:26:12-04:00August 11th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It had been an unusually heated gathering, one marked by temper tantrums and often publicly expressed rancor. Slamming tables, undiplomatic rudeness. Europe’s leaders had been brought together by the uncomfortable even dangerous fact that the economic dislocation they’ve put their countries through is going to sustain enormously negative pressures all throughout them. What would a “united” European system do to [...]

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