For the last five years Larry Summers has called it secular stagnation. It’s the right general idea as far as the result, if totally wrong as to its cause. Alvin Hansen, who first coined the term and thought up the thesis in the thirties, was thoroughly disproved by the fifties. Some, perhaps many Economists today [...]
Talk of trade deals is everywhere. Markets can’t get enough of it, even the here-to-fore pessimistic bond complex. Rates have backed up as a few whispers of BOND ROUT!!! reappear from their one-year slumber. If Trump broke the global economy, then his trade deal fixes it. There’s another way of looking at it, though. Why [...]
Germany’s vast industrial sector continued in the tank in September. According to new estimates from deStatis, that country’s government agency responsible for maintaining economic data, Industrial Production dropped by another 4% year-over-year during the month of September 2019. It was the fifth consecutive monthly decline at around that alarming rate. Four percent doesn’t sound like [...]
The Federal Reserve wasn’t the only major central bank conducting open market operations (OMO’s) this week. On the other side of the Pacific, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) had been, too. Big ones. And in both places, nobody really seems to know what to make of them even though they are actually connected to [...]
When we talk about money dealers (not just primary dealers) and liquidity, we aren’t just zeroing in on the repo market. Money market conditions such as what we can observe in the part of the global repo market that ends up hitting the tape can be helpful in assessing overall liquidity. It isn’t, however, the [...]
After having gotten one bailout terribly wrong, when she takes over at the European central bank Christine Lagarde is set follow in the traditional path of her predecessors like Mario Draghi who keep moving up no matter what level of disaster they leave in their wake. Crafting the biggest national “rescue” in history while leading [...]
Because the prevailing theory behind the global slowdown is “trade wars”, most if not all attention is focused on China. While the correct target, everyone is coming it at from the wrong direction. The world awaits a crash in Chinese exports engineered by US tariffs. It’s not happening, at least according to China’s official statistics. [...]
The key has always been the first part of the word rather than the more common focus on the second. A eurodollar is more about the “euro” than the more obvious monetary denomination. Since it began decades before Europe created its common currency, the eurodollar has nothing whatsoever to do with the euro. But those [...]
There is no doubt that US tariffs on Chinese goods have negatively impacted US imports of Chinese goods. According to this week’s updated estimates from the Census Bureau, imports from China were down 13.9% in August 2019 compared to August 2018. That was the fourth straight month of double-digit year-over-year declines, and six of the [...]
One year ago, last October, the IMF published the update to its World Economic Outlook (WEO) for 2018. Like many, the organization began to talk more about trade wars and protectionism. It had become a topic of conversation more than concern. Couched as only downside risks, the IMF still didn’t think the fuss would amount [...]
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