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Macro: Money Supply

By |2023-11-30T01:51:34-05:00November 30th, 2023|Economy|

It's a mountainous monetary problem. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” -- Milton Friedman This is a real time case study. Color me skeptical about a "soft landing." At the very least , there's likely to be some bumps.   Disclaimer: This information is presented for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, or [...]

All About The Benjamins

By |2023-06-17T21:17:32-04:00June 16th, 2023|Alhambra Research, Bonds, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks, Taxes/Fiscal Policy|

No one could have possibly been surprised by the Fed's lack of action on Wednesday. They had signaled to anyone who would listen that they would pause (skip, take a hiatus, halt, or whatever you want to call it) at this meeting. And no one should have been surprised that Jerome Powell offered some tough talk about the future of [...]

Taper Discretion Means Not Loving Payrolls Anymore

By |2022-01-07T20:39:51-05:00January 7th, 2022|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

When Alan Greenspan went back to Stanford University in September 1997, his reputation was by then well-established. Even as he had shocked the world only nine months earlier with “irrational exuberance”, the theme of his earlier speech hadn’t actually been about stocks; it was all about money.The “maestro” would revisit that subject repeatedly especially in the late nineties, and it [...]

Is M2 The Money Behind Inflation? If Not, What Is (Or Isn’t)?

By |2021-11-15T18:46:42-05:00November 15th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Milton Friedman was touring India, and while there he shocked his audience by stating, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” This was 1963, and the audacity of that statement is today understated. Back then, Keynes didn’t just rule there was hardly any opposition to such accepted orthodox dogma.Arguing from firmly empirical rather than theoretical grounds, Friedman’s effort was [...]

What *Must* Lie Beyond the M’s

By |2021-03-11T17:19:49-05:00March 10th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

This particular part of the hysteria is understandable, if thoroughly unconvincing. Forget the Fed and its bank reserves for moment, whatever those are now and then. The banking system is where it’s at, monetarily speaking, and it is the banking system which seems to have lost its handle on the money printing lever. If we’re focused beyond bank reserves and [...]

Velocity Of Irrelevancy

By |2018-02-13T17:47:15-05:00February 13th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

One less mainstream piece of this inflation hysteria boom is the velocity of money. In case you haven’t yet heard, monetary velocity is rising. From that we are supposed to infer all the usual – wages, inflation, higher rates, and utter destruction in bonds if not the whole Western economic structure. The first part is technically true. Money velocity increased [...]

Z1 Update to Money, Credit, and Thus Economy

By |2017-09-22T13:18:43-04:00September 22nd, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The Federal Reserve updated the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z1) yesterday, meaning there is quite a lot of new data for the second quarter of 2017. It also means more than just that update, as each quarterly addition is often accompanied by revisions to past estimates. There were some substantial downward revisions to things like Corporate Net Worth, [...]

Policy From Behind

By |2017-07-31T16:39:37-04:00July 31st, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

When the Mario Draghi as head of the ECB first introduced negative rates in early June 2014, his reasoning was very clear. As he said in the opening of his statement imposing NIRP on Europe, “Today, we decided on a combination of measures to provide additional monetary policy accommodation and to support lending to the real economy.” The way in [...]

Missing Money Inverts

By |2017-07-24T15:44:12-04:00July 24th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There was a funny sort of Congressional exchange all the way back in November 2005 that in a weird way defines our world today. At the nomination proceedings on whether to confirm Ben Bernanke as Alan Greenspan’s successor, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky wanted the prospective Fed Chairman to first answer for M3. It had become something of a conspiracy [...]

Further Unanchoring Is Not Strictly About Inflation

By |2017-03-17T16:22:06-04:00March 17th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

According to Alan Greenspan in a speech delivered at Stanford University in September 1997, monetary policy in the United States had been shed of M1 by late 1982. The Fed has never been explicit about exactly when, or even why, monetary policy changed dramatically in the 1980’s to a regime of pure interest rate targeting of the federal funds rate. [...]

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