It’s nothing more than pedigree, having little to do with actual performance. Central bankers are given a level of respect and even admiration suited only to their job title. As such, they travel the world as honored guests to fulfill the insatiable demand for their takes on essential matters no matter how far off the mark.Only rarely is there occasion [...]
As most people know, the Kansas City Fed has been holding its annual symposium in Jackson, WY, for a very long time. Supposedly a draw for Paul Volcker’s fly fishing hobby when he was Chairman, the conference came to include heavyweights on a regular basis. Most of them, especially those in the early years, however, were duds. It wasn’t until [...]
The whole thing really does unravel at the unemployment rate. If it indicates the correct view of the economy, even close to “full employment”, then what follows is fairly typical and orthodox stuff. In the context of what the Fed is doing, short-term rate hikes are leading the longer end of the yield curve toward a more hopeful future (though [...]
There seems to be an intense if at times acrimonious debate raging inside the Federal Reserve right now. The differences go down to its very core philosophies. Just over a week ago, Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer abruptly resigned from the Board of Governors even though many believed he was a possible candidate to replace Chairman Yellen at the end of [...]
When Apple introduced the first iPhone in January 2007, the 8 gig model retailed for $599. The company cut the price to $399 that September in an alliance with AT&T. The 8 gig iPhone 3G that debuted in July 2008, just eighteen months later, was set at $199, and less than a year after that was suggested to retail at [...]
In August 2014, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer admitted to an audience in Sweden the possibility in some unusually candid terms that maybe they (economists, not Sweden) didn’t know what they were doing. His speech was lost in the times, those being the middle of that year where the Fed having already started to taper QE3 and 4 were [...]
It is a long road to recovery, an actual one, if we are to be left to the pace of economists struggling to make sense of the analog world. They are truly digital creatures, who would look at information and make no judgment until the models tell them what to think. You or I would find troubling data and seek [...]
As I argued earlier, the 2-year change in the CPI (or PCE Deflator) is a useful assessment of not just inflation but money in general. It verifies in no uncertain terms what we suspect about “stimulus.” It is not just rare but practically unheard of where the inflation rate drops and then stays there. Yet, inflation has done so now [...]
The headline CPI accelerated to 1.46% year-over-year in September, the highest calculated inflation rate for this index since October 2014. That was up from 1.06% in August and seemingly quite different than the -0.04% last September. To many, that looks like and is believed to be progress, an end to the drag of the dollar and oil. In many ways [...]
Woe to the unemployment rate. Without it so much confusion and angst might have been avoided, though admittedly that more realistic view would have been itself darker but at least clear. In August 2014, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer unleashed a brief but powerful storm of realism upon the bubble of monetary policy. Perhaps it was because his target [...]
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