Great Recession

How Can Anyone In Their Right Mind Say This Much Inflation Is Transitory?

By |2021-05-12T17:33:03-04:00May 12th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Friday, July 14, 2000, was a bad day to be in Treasuries. The 10-year UST yield spiked 9 bps after the Census Bureau reported June 2000 retail sales growth had been nearly 10% year-over-year. That plus a similarly pleasant reading from the Federal Reserve for Industrial Production left bond traders rethinking their trades, a sudden burst of inflationary confidence which [...]

The *Optimists* Have Some Terrible News For the ‘V’

By |2020-05-27T19:18:33-04:00May 27th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

It has to be a combination of confirmation bias and rationalizations. Not even the official story finishes up with the fairy tale ending. The “V” people seem to be ignoring what the most optimistic group is actually saying. And these optimists absolutely want it to be that way.It bears repeating the “V” case; that once the non-economic shutdowns are lifted, [...]

The Big Picture’s Going To Need More Than Magic Words

By |2020-05-14T19:20:26-04:00May 14th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

What connects March 2020 with February 2008 as well as the Crash of ’87 all then with the Great Contraction which initiated the Great Depression? If you said economic and financial chaos, you’d be partly right. There wasn’t really much or any of that in 1987, though there was with the other three. People including politicians and central bankers don’t [...]

GDP + GFC = Fragile

By |2020-04-29T17:04:00-04:00April 29th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

March 15 was when it all began to come down. Not the stock market; that had been in freefall already, beset by the rolling destruction of fire sale liquidations emanating out of the repo market (collateral side first). No matter what the Federal Reserve did or announced, there was no stopping the runaway devastation.It wasn’t until the middle of March [...]

Gold: Big Difference Which Kind of Hedge It Truly Is

By |2019-08-30T16:33:17-04:00August 30th, 2019|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

It isn’t inflation which is driving gold higher, at least not the current levels of inflation. According to the latest update from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation calculation, the PCE Deflator, continues to significantly undershoot. Monetary policy explicitly calls for that rate to be consistent around 2%, an outcome policymakers keep saying they expect but [...]

Why Go After Hong Kong?

By |2019-08-14T15:12:37-04:00August 14th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There may yet be bitter irony in the fact that China’s nascent embrace of capitalism in the late eighties allowed it to survive the wave of failed socialist states which fell all throughout the world at the time. While the Berlin Wall came down, the Eastern bloc nearly disappeared, and even the Soviet Union dissolved, the Chinese would stand almost [...]

IMF Cancels Globally Synchronized Growth, Confirms The Worst Case

By |2019-04-09T13:04:30-04:00April 9th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The IMF becomes the latest mainstream organization to abandon the recovery. It wasn’t really much of one to begin with, mostly just the hope that an uptick in growth would lead to the long sought, and necessary, completion. Globally synchronized growth in 2017 was supposed to mean a plausible pathway toward it. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) said in [...]

The Best Year In Over A Decade Confirms The Economy Still Near The Worst

By |2019-02-28T16:35:02-05:00February 28th, 2019|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

A month behind schedule, Q4 GDP sure did disappoint. I don’t mean that it was disastrously weak, rather it came in right down the middle benefiting neither camp. The BEA’s not preliminary but not quite second revised GDP estimate for Q4 2018 was 2.55617% (seasonally adjusted compounded annual rate) above Q3. Not strong enough to dispel every growing worry, at [...]

Hitting the Low Ceiling

By |2018-10-26T15:42:41-04:00October 26th, 2018|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

We will hear all day and for the next month (at least) about the two best quarters of GDP growth in four years. Somehow this will be used to justify calling this an economic boom, even though those two quarters in 2014 supposedly didn’t qualify. And they were better quarters, at least so far as real GDP goes. Knee-jerk reactions [...]

Oh Yes, It Started Out As A Mental Health Bill

By |2018-10-03T16:43:10-04:00October 3rd, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

On March 9, 2007, Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy introduced HR 1424. At the time it was to be known as the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. The bill contained five small sections intending to ensure equal coverage and treatment for mental health issues under insurance claims. It passed the House but then gained an [...]

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