Stagnation Confirmation
Janet Yellen has essentially confirmed QE’s demise; good riddance. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is the final end of QE in America, just as it hasn’t been the end time after time in Japan (and...
View ArticleThey Used to Deny Bubbles Even Existed
Shorter version on secular stagnation and Jackson Hole equivocation on QE’s end: “We had to blow bubbles because that’s the only way to get the economy to grow, and now we have to start thinking about...
View ArticleSecular Stagnation Or The Cusp Of A Boom?
I’ve mentioned several times recently that within Alhambra we often have vigorous debates about the economy and markets. I’m a big believer in the power of competition to improve outcomes whether we...
View ArticleSpending, Stagnation and the Revised Position of Instability
Personal intuition usually serves well in both economics and finance, which is why, despite all the billions of dollars and amazing efforts otherwise, this business is still an art and not a “science”...
View ArticleLow-Amplitude ‘Cycles’
If you limited yourself to only the official unemployment rate the picture you get of the economy is seemingly one that fits very much inside historical expectations. The rate rose and fell just like...
View ArticleThe Depressive Tale of Nominal Yields
It is easy to get carried away with modern finance, diving into the immense flourishing of finance that has taken place. Conceptions have become far more complex, sometimes unnecessarily so, leading to...
View ArticleWhat’s With Russell?
There are a great many difference between small cap companies (and their stocks) and large cap companies, especially mega cap (and their stocks). That in mind, investors predisposed toward the S&P...
View ArticleEurodollars Changing Minds?
The good news for global “markets” is that the eurodollar curve suggests some further relief from the persistent “tightening” that has gripped the “dollar” system since July. The bad news is that the...
View ArticleBig Changes In Central Bank Theory Pressing Changes in Operations
The important point about doctrinaire ideology is its utmost rigidity. For the longest time that was relevant to the operations of central banks, as they practiced what might have been the most modern...
View ArticleCBO: QE Failed As It Has Shown Nothing For The Economy
As I have said before, the handoff from Bernanke to Yellen was significant not just in terms of background but also in philosophy and viewpoint. Both were strictly academic statisticians (they call...
View ArticleInaccuracy or Misconduct?
With new figures on Japan’s GDP released, it is becoming increasingly clear the disparity between what is supposed to happen and what has actually taken place. The main operative theory by which...
View ArticleHawk, Dove Or Chicken?
Janet Yellen threaded the needle this week with a masterfully worded statement following the FOMC meeting. The word “patient”, the removal of which had produced so much angst in markets recently, was...
View ArticleThe True Expression of the Modern Yield Curve
The emphasis of QE in terms of “portfolio effects” and interest rate “stimulus” is to visit upon the entire curve what monetary policy has done in the past in only the shorter maturities. So the...
View ArticleStarting To Redefine Stimulus
Austerity has become a loaded concept, not the least of which has been tied to the very growing desire of issuers of past policies to delink them with our current situation. Primary among those is Ben...
View ArticleSome BLS Doesn’t Match The Other BLS
One more point for Payroll Friday: we have the productivity problem and the spending problem but there is also the wage problem. Despite what the raw, quantitative count of jobs is in the main surveys...
View ArticleDiscount Bubble Check
Yesterday was the quarterly release of the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z1), formerly titled as the Flow of Funds, which means we get updates on the asset bubbles through Q1. That starts...
View ArticleThe Unnatural Saturation of Counterproductive ‘Solutions’
The minimum wage is not what is commonly referred, as is being proven again as parts of the US experiment directly with this boundary. In New York, fast food workers have been given a $15 per hour...
View ArticleThe New Normal Gets A Downgrade
It was back in 2009 that Bill Gross coined the term New Normal to describe the post-crisis US economy. That economy is marked by a reduced willingness to take risk in the private sector for a variety...
View ArticleStill No Going Back; Eighth Anniversary
Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the end of the eurodollar standard as a functioning system. Though the attainment of such dizzying scale was completely artificial, finance unbacked by real...
View ArticleHow Can It Be Anything Else?
The oft-leveled charge against politicians in DC is that they are “out of touch.” Such desultory description is often deserved, however, so it isn’t really cliché so much as connecting republican...
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