This sour/soar stuff goes back many years. The last time we went through the same hysteria (if for different reasons), everyone said the global economy was going to accelerate, take off, and sail onward forever after. The world was, they all claimed, set to soar.Globally synchronized growth. The bond market didn’t just disagree, it did so vehemently, a pessimism when [...]
The FOMC held a meeting and that can only mean dots. These are the individual policymaker’s views on where the federal funds target range might end up down the road. The latest update for the June 2021 central bank conclave shows several more voting members projecting the first rate hikes to begin toward the end of next year, a supposedly [...]
Before there could be “globally synchronized growth”, it had been plain old “global growth.” The former from 2017 appended the term “synchronized” to its latter 2014 forerunner in order to jazz it up. And it needed the additional rhetorical flourish due to the simple fact that in 2015 for all the stated promise of “global growth” it ended up meaning [...]
“At least we aren’t Europe” wasn’t quite the standard for excellence Ben Bernanke was originally shooting for. Certainly not when he began QE in the United States, nor at the inauguration of its repeat not even two years later. The former Fed Chairman had promised recovery and delivered instead a highly disputed number of “jobs saved.”Framing it this way, the [...]
You have to laugh at the absurdity of the puppet show theater. A few months ago when bond yields backed up a little bit, as they do from time to time, everyone from Bond Kings to Dollar Crash-ists to Economists to just about every writer at the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg became fixated on yield caps (or yield curve [...]
The lack of issuance and supply over the last almost year or so, that’s what makes the TIC data so fascinating. And relevant, if for other reasons, too. CLO issuance, according to a bunch of sources, peaked back last June. Remember that whole “recession scare” with the yield curve last summer? It wasn’t just a scare, at least not in [...]
Has the Keynesian intellectual been able to re-assert himself with China’s economy once again on the brink of breaking down? Li Keqiang is nominally the Communist number two but had seen his role especially in economic affairs curtailed after a 2015-16 struggle with Xi Jinping. The issue was debt versus growth.As a trained Economist, Li was responsible for the government’s [...]
It has been perhaps the most astonishing divergence in the first two decades of 21st century history. In late 2017, Western economic officials (mostly central bankers) were taking their victory laps. They took great pains to tell the world it was due to their profound wisdom, deep courage, and, most of all, determined patience, that they had been able to [...]
Eurostat confirmed earlier today that Europe has so far avoided recession. At least, it hasn’t experienced what Economists call a cyclical peak. During the third quarter of 2019, Real GDP expanded by a thoroughly unimpressive +0.235% (Q/Q). This was a slight acceleration from a revised +0.185% the quarter before. The real question, though, is whether the business cycle approach means [...]
One year ago, last October, the IMF published the update to its World Economic Outlook (WEO) for 2018. Like many, the organization began to talk more about trade wars and protectionism. It had become a topic of conversation more than concern. Couched as only downside risks, the IMF still didn’t think the fuss would amount to all that much. Especially [...]
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