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Buybacks Get All The Macro Hate, But What About Dividends?

By |2018-07-11T18:33:17-04:00July 11th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets, Stocks|

When it comes to the stock market and the corporate cash flow condition, our attention is usually drawn to stock repurchases. With good reason. These controversial uses of scarce internal funds are traditionally argued along the lines of management teams identifying and correcting undervalued shares. History shows, conclusively, that hasn’t really been true. Last year’s tax reform law was meant [...]

Someone Is On Drugs, Alright

By |2018-05-03T18:10:34-04:00May 3rd, 2018|Bonds, Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

For the second straight quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates US productivity growth was less than 1%. That’s not surprising given the weakening in output as measured by GDP, the data reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Productivity is the bridge between the BLS’s labor numbers and the more general economic assessments of the BEA (Private [...]

Really Looking For Inflation, Part 2

By |2018-03-07T12:45:14-05:00March 7th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Continued from Part 1 What these unusually weak productivity estimates lean toward is, quite simply, the possibility the BLS has been overstating jobs gains for years. In early 2018, there is already the hint of just that problem in a 4.1% unemployment that doesn’t lead to any acceleration in wages and labor income. What it does suggest is that something [...]

Really Looking For Inflation, Part 1

By |2018-03-07T12:45:48-05:00March 7th, 2018|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Most people have been looking at Jerome Powell’s Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve as continuity, a comprehensive extension of Janet Yellen’s (and therefore Bernanke’s). This would by nature include all the nasty habits Chairman Yellen had picked up during her one term. At the top of that list is the word “transitory”, particularly how it came to be used during [...]

Aligning Politics To economics

By |2017-11-06T17:29:03-05:00November 6th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

There is no argument that the New Deal of the 1930’s completely changed the political situation in America, including the fundamental relationship of the government to its people. The way it came about was entirely familiar, a sense from among a large (enough) portion of the general population that the paradigm of the time no longer worked. It was only [...]

Enough With The Labor Shortage Already, It Doesn’t/Can’t Exist

By |2017-09-07T18:39:00-04:00September 7th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Can we finally put to rest all notions that the US economy is at full employment and doing well, and therefore wage inflation is right around the corner? I suspect not. This dance has been ongoing for years now, continuing through what was nearly a recession, so there is little reason to believe that economists are so data dependent. The [...]

The Continuing Incompatible State

By |2017-05-04T19:01:15-04:00May 4th, 2017|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

As much as even the major labor market statistics have picked up on slowing, they wouldn’t have in the first quarter of this year presented enough of it to keep productivity positive. With a very low level of output, once again, calculated labor productivity was for the fourth time over the last six quarters negative. According to the BEA, total [...]

Huge Wage Bias

By |2016-08-10T12:22:34-04:00August 10th, 2016|Currencies, Economy, Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy, Markets|

Basic economics has proven that when the supply of something dwindles, absent an offsetting drop in demand the price should rise. When translating these fundamental terms to the labor market especially of the past few years, the supply means “slack” or the available pool of workers not yet working; demand has been, we are told repeatedly, very robust; therefore the [...]

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