john maynard keynes

Weekly Market Pulse: Follow The Delphic Maxims

By |2022-12-05T07:55:28-05:00December 4th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Note: This will be my last full commentary for 2022. I will spend the month of December on research for next year, visiting with family, and taking some much-needed time off. I will still be watching markets, as will all the other members of the Alhambra team and if something happens which requires me to communicate, I'll certainly do that. [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Welcome Back To The Old Normal

By |2022-05-02T20:46:23-04:00May 2nd, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Stagflation. It's a word that strikes fear in the hearts of investors, one that evokes memories - for some of us - of bell bottoms, disco, and Jimmy Carter's American malaise. The combination of weak growth and high inflation is the worst of all worlds, one that required a transformational leader and a cigar-chomping central banker to defeat the last [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Is This A Bear Market?

By |2022-03-14T07:46:24-04:00March 13th, 2022|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

I don't know the answer to the question posed in the title. No one does because the future is not predictable. I don't know what will happen in Ukraine. I don't know how much what has already happened there - and what might - matters to the US and global economy. I don't know if the Fed is making a [...]

Previewing The Taper Theater

By |2021-09-21T17:47:10-04:00September 21st, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Eurodollar, not Evergrande. That wasn’t just the point of yesterday’s recall, it is the whole point of beyond fourteen years of going only the wrong way. The deflationary way. Defaults in China are nowadays a commonplace part of that trend, one which began early in 2014 with Shanghai Chaori Solar.What was significant about Chaori was this: “It was the moment [...]

Weekly Market Pulse: Happy Anniversary!

By |2021-08-16T07:35:56-04:00August 15th, 2021|Alhambra Portfolios, Alhambra Research, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Real Estate, Stocks|

Today is the 50th anniversary of the "Nixon shock", the day President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and ended the post-WWII Bretton Woods currency agreement. That agreement, largely a product of John Maynard Keynes, pegged the dollar to gold and most other currencies to the dollar. It wasn't a true gold standard as only other countries that were party [...]

Is Warren Buffett Beautiful?

By |2021-05-03T17:58:19-04:00May 3rd, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

He certainly is at least when compared to the usual beauty contest contenders like Bill Gross or Jeff Gundlach who typically flock to these occasions. Here we are in reflation again, so interest rates must have nowhere to go but up. Therefore, it follows, bonds are in for a world of hurt all because inflation is being let loose by [...]

Neither Keynes, Trump, Pumps Nor Priming

By |2021-04-19T17:24:34-04:00April 19th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Then-President Trump was eager to talk in May 2017. Having been elected in 2016 by giving voice to what he called the “fake” unemployment rate on the campaign trail, and therefore mobilizing millions of the disaffected uncounted by that official ratio’s official definitions, it was enough to put him just barely over the top. To continue with the agenda, to [...]

Inflation Binary

By |2020-12-21T17:11:46-05:00December 21st, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Blame Milton Friedman for this one, too. The economist made many significant contributions to the advancement of economic understanding, but perhaps an equal number of extreme errors. For one thing, that whole bout with bank reserves and “high powered money” (what became QE) recommended in the late nineties to cure Japan of its obvious monetary illness. This followed from the [...]

There Was Never Going To Be A ‘V’ Because The Bowl Was Always Empty

By |2020-06-11T19:33:47-04:00June 11th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

What was stupidest about the past few months was how it was these guys who everyone was depending upon to make it all go just perfectly moving forward. Worse, those geniuses being held up as competent economic stewards practically reran the 2008 playbook line by line. What that said, more than anything, was that they had come up with zero [...]

Being Forced To Be More Precise About The Most Serious Terms

By |2020-05-01T18:49:36-04:00May 1st, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

He called it “unfair competition.” That’s one way to describe it, surely not the proper way. But who could blame the guy? After all, these were not normal times though at the time hardly anyone had yet realized it.James J. Davis was the second person to hold the title Secretary of Labor. Appointed by Warren Harding, he began his tenure [...]

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