I said a couple of years ago that I thought that once all the distortions were past, we'd be back to where we started prior to COVID, but with more debt. The decade from 2010 to 2020 was the slowest decade of nominal GDP growth since WWII and the prospect of another decade of that wasn't all that appealing but [...]
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 [...]
Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other [...]
Maybe last Friday’s pretty awful payroll report shouldn’t have been surprising; though, to be fair, just calling it awful will be surprising to most people. Confusion surrounds the figures for good reason, though there truly is no reason for the misunderstanding itself. Apart from Economists and “central bankers” who’d rather everyone look elsewhere for the real problem. The Establishment Survey [...]
What was it that old Iowa cornfield movie said? If you build it, he will come. Well, this isn’t quite that, rather something more along the lines of: if you reopen it, some will come back to work. Not nearly as snappy, far less likely to sell anyone movie tickets, yet this other tagline might contribute much to our understanding [...]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Some see the cup as half empty. Some see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large. George Carlin The quote from Dickens above is one that just about everyone knows even if they don't [...]
One of the most common complaints I hear about the markets is that they are "divorced from reality", that they aren't acting as the current economic data would seem to dictate. I've been in this business for 30 years and I think I first heard that in year one. Or maybe even before I decided to lose my mind and [...]
Nevada is, by all accounts and accountants, in rough shape. Very rough shape. An economy overly dependent upon a single industry, tourism, in this case, is a disaster waiting to happen should anything happen to that industry. Pandemic restrictions, for instance.Nevadans cannot afford the government spending they “have” without a gaming industry attracting visitors at full throttle. Desperate, the state’s [...]
If the payroll numbers are old news because they aren’t supposed to matter anymore, what with TGA drawdowns and vaccines, then JOLTS figures one month further behind them must count for even less. Gradation does factor here, though, and that’s why it’s important to keep the current and slightly-in-arrears data in mind.What I mean is that the stimulus-frenzy narrative does [...]
An “unexpectedly” cool summer that will certainly turn up the heat as the global economy’s winter stubbornly refuses to thaw. We keep getting more and more indications that the economy’s rebound from the depths of April/May slowed way down in and around June/July. That lowered trajectory, while still upward, isn’t nearly enough and it appears to continue all the way [...]
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