sme

Behind The Inflation Curtain (Europe)

By |2021-07-26T18:18:58-04:00July 26th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

When the ECB’s leadership presented their first QE to the assembled media on March 5, 2015, there was a lot of the usual corporate-speak. It sure wasn’t fedspeak, the purposefully obfuscating wordsmithing of the kind made infamous by Alan Greenspan. No, on this occasion, to the contrary, Mario Draghi, the ECB’s President, wanted to be perfectly clear in what he [...]

The Wrong Time(s) For Inflation

By |2021-05-11T19:06:00-04:00May 11th, 2021|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Forget gazelles, the ongoing post-2008 threat to small and medium-sized businesses had amounted to an unnatural vise squeezing owners and operators in between their persistent inability to access credit and the lack of revenue growth (or even predictability). The biggest businesses thrived, borrowed freely, and then paid shareholders in the form of gross buybacks (a liquidity preference of their own). [...]

Ultra-Loose Terminology, Not Policy

By |2017-04-06T18:48:40-04:00April 6th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As world “leaders” gathered in Davos in January 2016, they did so among financial turmoil that was creating more economic havoc than at any time since the Great “Recession.” Having seen especially US QE as the equivalent of money printing, their focus was drawn elsewhere to at least attempt an explanation for the contradiction. They initially settled on the Fed’s [...]

Go to Top