You wouldn’t know it from stock trading or commodities, but when China reopened after its latest Golden Week holiday there was an obvious effect. Stocks have continued to surge while commodities overall have had a good week (copper up another $0.07 today, with WTI at about $50). Inside the money markets, however, China’s open was met with far less enthusiasm, [...]
Asset markets on Friday reversed course after fully digesting a payroll report that has been universally assailed. The thinking is, apparently, that the Fed will have no choice but to stay on the sidelines now. That view is certainly bolstered by the FOMC’s inaction already in September, so worsening economic fortunes in the US apparently removes any flexibility anytime soon. [...]
On this side of the “dollar” world, credit markets have all but written Janet Yellen into irrelevance. Despite her pleas (because of?) last week, there isn’t any part of money dealing or fixed income that is taking her “certainty” about recovery and “inflation” as even a partial setting. So lost is the FOMC, that everywhere you turn these markets are [...]
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared last week that Japan is no longer suffering from deflation the day after his own government statistics showed that Japanese prices declined for the first time since QQE began. That is actually great news for the Japanese people, though Abe and Kuroda at the Bank of Japan continually pledge to end the relief. Abe’s [...]
While outward asset markets have clearly been upended by the implications (at long last) of the Fed not doing anything, the internals of the money/”dollar” markets are actually worse. I don’t know if it could be classified as another forming “dollar” wave, but it doesn’t look good from this vantage point heading into an uncertain weekend. In many ways, the [...]
When something deviates so far from expectations, the last thing you would do is dismiss it as unimportant. Yet, that is exactly what has happened in 2015 among the cabal of economists that claim to be able to control monetary levers of economic interjection. It’s not just that the FOMC will not act as it was so sure it would, [...]
When the difference between your rhetoric and your actions is wide, inconsistency is pretty much axiomatic. However, Janet Yellen’s press conference was much more than that. I understand it’s a lot to charge blatant dishonesty, but almost everything she said is cow manure. And I make that assertion not on my own reading of the situation, but on hers. The [...]
If we are being honest and using words as they exactly mean, the recovery actually ended in 2012. My sense of dating would mark that as March 2012 since so many various data series held that month for what has been a durable inflection. It was true not just here in the US, but across the globe as 2012 was [...]
When I wrote on Friday that I was encouraged for the first time in years over the combined rise of Trump and Sanders I meant nothing by way of suggesting either as an actual candidate or what they might do should they pull it out. If anything, I implied that the political situation might have to follow the economy; that [...]
I have no idea what the Fed will do except to say it is likely to make matters worse regardless. That is the nature of monetarism in 2015 in no small part because that is where a financialized economy can only lead. Having been unable to do so this year so far, however, does seem to suggest at least a [...]
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