The risk budget is unchanged again this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between bonds and risk assets is evenly split. The only change to the portfolio is the one I wrote about last week, an exchange of TIP for SHY. Interest rates are on the rise again, the 10-year Treasury yield punching through 3% again this morning. [...]
I suppose it’s easy to look at gold and see only fear. It is, after all, the ultimate currency hedge. Therefore, if the price is rising there is probably a good chance fear over monetary considerations is, too. The opposite interpretation, then, would appear to be just as straightforward, but it’s often complicated by the mechanics of wholesale global eurodollar [...]
One of Candidate Trump’s biggest priorities was to renegotiate NAFTA. Seen as an accelerator for harm not just inside of the nation’s rust belt, the incoming administration made it a top priority. Blaming the trade deal for the loss of 700k manufacturing jobs, Robert Lighthizer, the US’s top trade official for the renegotiation process, said in August as talks got [...]
China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November 11, 2001. Its membership took a decade and a half to achieve, no small wonder given that when it started the process the country looked nothing like it did when it was complete. Even by 2001, the Chinese economy was growing fast, but that was nothing compared to what it was [...]
Ross Perot famously declared the “giant sucking sound” in the 1992 Presidential campaign. The debate over NAFTA did not end with George H. W. Bush’s defeat, as it simmered in one form or another for much of the 1990’s. Curiously, however, it seemed almost perfectly absent during the 2000’s, the very decade in which Perot’s prophecy came true. Americans didn’t [...]
There are a few parts of the payroll reports that do make sense without requiring alternative interpretation. Among these face value statistics is the estimate for manufacturing payrolls. The BLS figures that employment in the manufacturing sector peaked in July 2015 and has been declining ever so gently since then. Total job losses are just 61k over that year and [...]
There can be little doubt now outside of orthodox economics that the global economy is actually slowing, not accelerating as has been predicted. Economists themselves, however, continue to claim that things are getting better when the data strongly suggests otherwise. The latest depressing figures are from a pair of (orthodox) supranational organizations. First, the World Trade Organization (WTO) drastically reduced [...]
Very few people are against the concept of free trade, and those who are aren’t worth listening to. As a matter of economics (small “e”), free trade was established as a universal good that benefits all sides in one of the first scholarly debates that in the early 19th century helped turn political economics into a separate study meriting its [...]
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