What set me off down the rabbit hole trying to chase modern money’s proliferation of products originally was the distinct lack of curiosity on the subject. This was the nineties, after all, where economic growth grew on trees. Reportedly. Why on Earth would anyone purposefully go looking for the tiniest cracks in the dam?My very first day on the job, [...]
When Mario Draghi sat down for his scheduled press conference on April 4, 2012, it was a key moment and he knew it. The ECB had finished up the second of its “massive” LTRO auctions only weeks before. Draghi was still relatively new to the job, having taken over for Jean-Claude Trichet the prior November amidst substantial turmoil. The non-standard [...]
According to Eurostat last week, Europe’s win streak reached 27 quarters in Q4 2019. If you count winning solely by the sign in front of quarterly GDP changes, then Mario Draghi handed off to Christine Lagarde an expansion just one quarter shy of seven years. It’s supposed to be impressive. Lagarde, however, begins her tenure in very much the same [...]
For anyone thinking the global economy is turning around, it’s not the kind of thing you want to hear. Germany has been Ground Zero for this globally synchronized downturn. That’s where it began, meaning first showed up, all the way back at the start of 2018. Ever since, the German economy has been pulling Europe down into the economic abyss [...]
What relaunched Europe’s QE four months ago was the word “protracted.” Central bankers love its opposite, the term “transitory”, which they use quite often at every sign of a weakening economy. To be fair, economies ebb and flow all the time and we don’t want policymakers to jump at every minor swing one way or another. The problem, it seems, [...]
While sentiment has been at best mixed about the direction of the US economy the past few months, the European economy cannot even manage that much. Its most vocal proponent couldn’t come up with much good to say about it – while he was on his way out the door. At his final press conference as ECB President on October [...]
Another local election in Germany, another stunning defeat for the ruling center. How many more of these does anyone need before they realize the electorate is going to keep in migrating toward the poles? And it all stems from the one reason; there is no and has been no economic growth. But because the so-called establishment has insisted the economy [...]
Europe’s QE, as noted this weekend, is off to a very rough start. In the bond market and in inflation expectations, the much-ballyhooed relaunch of “accommodation” is conspicuously absent. There was a minor back up in yields between when the ECB signaled its intentions back in August and the few weeks immediately following the actual announcement. Other than that, and [...]
Maybe it was a sign of things to come, a warning how it wasn’t going to go as planned. Then again, when it comes to something like quantitative easing there really is no plan. Other than to make it sound like there is one, that’s really the whole idea. Not what it really is and what it actually does, to [...]
Mario Draghi can thank Jay Powell at his retirement party. The latter being so inept as to allow federal funds, of all things, to take hold of global financial attention, everyone quickly shifted and forgot what a mess the ECB’s QE restart had been. But it’s not really one or the other, is it? Once it actually finishes, the takeaway [...]
Stay In Touch