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Extending the Summer Slowdown

By |2020-11-17T16:15:23-05:00November 17th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer. If it [...]

Slowdown In The Rebound; Stop Listening To Central Bankers

By |2020-11-06T19:55:06-05:00November 6th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

The primary reason for that first rate hike in a decade in December 2015 was ferbus figuring that full employment had probably been reached, certainly close to where the unemployment rate had fallen at that time. The Fed’s main econometric model calculated this key economic level at between 4.8% and 5.0% unemployment; the actual rate for that month hit five [...]

Counting The Corroborated Stall, Not The Coming Lawfare Election Mess

By |2020-11-04T16:20:25-05:00November 4th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

While we wait for the electoral count to be sorted out by what we hope are competent and honest people (not holding our breath), there’s a greater muddle growing where it actually counts and where it’s never fully nor properly accounted. By a large and growing number of accounts, the US economy’s rebound seems to have stalled out back around [...]

What’s Going On, And Why Late August?

By |2020-10-28T19:06:31-04:00October 28th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?What you’ll hear or have already heard is something about Europe and more lockdowns, fears about a second wave of the [...]

It Shouldn’t Be Anything Like This

By |2020-10-27T19:59:05-04:00October 27th, 2020|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

You pick up a newspaper (metaphorically, hardly anyone does this literally anymore) and you’d be left with the impression the year is 1979 again. Forget 2017; that was child’s play, more like 1968 in the mainstream imagination. October 2020 is going to mark the beginning of the biggest one in decades. Any day now.Inflation, of course. The Fed, the media [...]

Yep, There’s A New ‘V’ In Town And The Locals…Don’t Seem To Much Care For It

By |2020-10-21T16:54:10-04:00October 21st, 2020|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

They should be drooling over the prospects of a clearing path toward normality. The pain and disaster of 2020’s economic hole receding into a more pleasant 2021 which would have been in position to conceivably pay it all back before any long run damage. Getting back to just even with February instead is becoming a distant probability, the kind of [...]

Inflation Karma

By |2020-09-11T19:16:28-04:00September 11th, 2020|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There is no oil in the CPI’s consumer basket, yet oil prices largely determine the rate by which overall consumer prices are increasing (or not). WTI sets the baseline which then becomes the price of motor fuel (gasoline) becoming the energy segment. As energy goes, so do headline CPI measurements. And that’s a huge problem…if you are Jay Powell. We’ve [...]

‘Remains Structurally Unsound’

By |2020-09-10T19:41:37-04:00September 10th, 2020|Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Does anyone remember “transitory?” I know I do. I spent years ridiculing the idea. But after 2019’s interest rate debacle, cuts rather than hikes, the Federal Reserve very quietly banished that particular word. This was, of course, during the course of the central bank’s “exhaustive” study surrounding its major inflation puzzle. “Transitory” had been the primary way in which Fed [...]

Even More Suggesting Something Did Happen In July

By |2020-09-09T17:26:39-04:00September 9th, 2020|Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

Confident consumers are risk takers. Not only do they spend freely, they freely borrow in order to spend. Jay Powell has done his absolute best (I know) to convince Americans they have nothing to fear insofar as any economic fallout from COVID might be concerned. The Federal Reserve working in combination with the federal government has got every conceivable angle [...]

Bottleneck In Japanese

By |2020-09-08T19:36:49-04:00September 8th, 2020|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Japan’s yen is backward, at least so far as its trading direction may be concerned. This is all the more confusing especially over the past few months when this rising yen has actually been aiding the dollar crash narrative while in reality moving the opposite way from how the dollar system would be behaving if it was really happening. A [...]

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