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As The Fed Seeks To Justify Raising Rates, Global Growth Rates Have Been Falling Off Uniformly Around The World

By |2022-01-05T20:00:52-05:00January 5th, 2022|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Sentiment indicators like PMI’s are nice and all, but they’re hardly top-tier data. It’s certainly not their fault, these things are made for very times than these (piggy-backing on the ISM Manufacturing’s long history without having the long history). Most of them have come out since 2008, if only because of the heightened professional interest in macroeconomics generated by a [...]

As the Data Comes In, 2019 Really Did End Badly

By |2020-02-11T19:33:47-05:00February 11th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The coronavirus began during December, but in its early stages no one knew a thing about it. It wasn’t until January 1 that health authorities in China closed the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after initially determining some wild animals sold there might have been the source of a pneumonia-like outbreak. On January 5, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a [...]

Shampoo Policy

By |2016-03-31T17:09:04-04:00March 31st, 2016|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Calculated “inflation” in Europe disappointed again in March, as for the second month in a row the HICP rate was below zero. There had been some hope after the German version turned just slightly positive that it would herald a different sign for the rest of Europe. Instead, inflation rates in other places were mostly the same; Spain stuck at [...]

Things Everybody Knows…

By |2015-11-28T19:45:17-05:00November 28th, 2015|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so.   Mark Twain Mark Twain probably wasn't thinking of investors when he wrote those words, but truer ones have rarely been written. Investors routinely become overconfident in their assessment of economic and market conditions. They assume that [...]

More QE Non-neutrality

By |2015-07-29T16:35:24-04:00July 29th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The simple narrative about QE is drawn from what is believed a simple process. The central bank buys bonds and by doing so it is simply assumed to be an “extra” bid on bond prices; therefore interest rates fall in whatever issue is being targeted by QE. Even in the US, QE has had trouble with that simple relationship. Instead [...]

Still The Same Greece, Still The Same Math

By |2015-07-08T12:58:06-04:00July 8th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

In April 2008, Nassim Taleb was becoming a household name criticizing the quant dominance in finance. Bear Stearns had just failed and the entire edifice of mathematical order was still breaking down, as the last bastions of credit default swap “supply”, the monoline insurers, were still rumored to be heading for insolvency (while the nightly news focused on whether that [...]

The German Bund Question In Greek

By |2015-05-11T14:26:54-04:00May 11th, 2015|Bonds, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

With Germany’s bond market spooking fixed income all over the world, every rate system has fallen under increasing suspicion. US rates seemed to have bowed to the same ghosts, as the benchmark 10-year treasury rose in yield to an intraday high of around 2.30% last week. That was a sharp increase in only a few days, a trading week, that [...]

Monetary Death by Proxy

By |2015-01-07T17:18:43-05:00January 7th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The European mess is coming more into view, and in almost every case that is a negative outcome. There really isn’t much going right in Europe right now, belying everything that was said, done or proclaimed only a year ago. Italian unemployment unexpectedly rose to a record high that’s more than double the German rate, keeping alive concerns about the [...]

The ECB Is Nothing More Now Than A Headless Chicken

By |2015-01-05T17:29:15-05:00January 5th, 2015|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The “inflation” results out of Europe this morning highlight and emphasize the disingenuousness at the heart of monetary economics. While some of the “peripheral” nations (as if they are less European) are deeply into “negative inflation”, Germany (as if it is more European) has been an almost singular source of what the ECB views as a standard. However, even Germany [...]

Eonia Not Looking Like Lending

By |2014-07-08T15:55:30-04:00July 8th, 2014|Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The ECB continues to sell the recovery in Europe despite any actual pickup in activity, Germany excepted. In financial terms, which are all that matter these days for policymakers, lending continues to contract. Despite the outward appearance of asset prices and certain economic accounts, there is no intent to extend further credit across the European zone. The latest figures through [...]

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