Global manufacturing is consolidating in slightly contractionary territory at 49.3 in November up from 48.8 last month and a 6th consecutive below 50. In addition to the composite, Output (49.9), New Orders (48.9), New Export Orders (48.1) and Employment (49.2) are all indicating slight contraction. But all ticked up from last month. Inflation is still present but edged lower. Input [...]
It isn’t just the vast difference between Chinese consumer prices and those in the US or Europe, China’s CPI has been categorically distinct from China’s PPI, too. That distance hints at the real problem which the whole is just now beginning to confront, having been lulled into an inflationary illusion made up from all these things.To start with, yesterday China’s [...]
At first glance, or first exposure to this, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why all these so many pieces could be related. Outwardly, from the mainstream perspective, anyway, you’d think them random, and even if somehow correlated they’re supposed to be in the opposite way from what’s happened. Too much money, they said. It began with the Fed’s [...]
The company isn’t bankrupt, it just doesn’t have the right currency in its reach to repay debts coming due. YPF is Argentina’s (former) gold mine, in this case the black gold of energy exploitation. State-owned, the business has obviously close ties to the ruling powers-that-be and a privileged place to go along with them. Its formal name, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, [...]
Last week, IHS Markit reported that sentiment in Mexico’s factory sector had slipped again during December 2020. The organization’s manufacturing PMI had declined for the second straight month, having peaked recently back in October. Even then, the index hadn’t yet come close to crossing the magic 50 dividing line. The best it had managed during this global rebound was a [...]
Trump or Biden? Will we even know tomorrow? Many purport that markets are leaning one way or the other, typically based on whichever market leaning puts whatever preferred candidate in the most favorable light. Everyone’s a winner in the run up. I don’t think there’s a lot of trading that goes with either candidate. As things stand right now, from [...]
Their experience with COVID has been different in each case. Their response to the outbreak and pandemic hardly uniform. Mexico, for example, has reported 855,000 cases of the coronavirus from which more than 86,000 have died (or were found to have the disease when they died). Japan, on the other hand, just 93,000 cases with only 1,600 fatalities. We all [...]
The original “V” narrative was simple and straightforward. The economy was turned off by governments prioritizing modeled simulations of something like the Black Death, but it would be easy enough to turn it right back on especially with the aid of so much “stimulus” being added in every possible way. Monetary, fiscal, you name it.Piece of cake. Legitimizing the choice [...]
Flash PMI’s for September 2020 around the world add more evidence to the possibility of a global slowdown during the economy’s all-important rebound quarter. Q2 was the big downturn, and so it always going to be Q3 where the bounce back would be sharpest. While that has definitely been the case, concerns are mounting for what might follow in Q4. [...]
The good news: the World Trade Organization (WTO) has crunched the numbers for 2020’s horrific second quarter and where global trade is concerned it may not have been as bad as first feared. Make no mistake, it was bad but not crashing down as far as the most pessimistic of the dreamed-up scenarios. Given where things stand now with only [...]
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