From October 2000 to July 2001, the Treasury Department conducted a special survey of users of its Treasury International Capital (TIC) data. Nearly two decades ago, it had become apparent (to some) just how important international dollar flows were to the overall economic and financial landscape. And not just those of the United States. TIC [...]
You don’t always have to understand the minute details behind these things to gain a sense of what they mean. I’m talking about things like negative swap spreads and related. From the textbook view, a negative spread makes no sense at all. On the surface, it seems to suggest the market thinks financial counterparties are [...]
It is the shadows what really matter. A big enough problem in them would affect pretty much everything, including far off, out-of-the-way places like federal funds. Thus, if we observe weird things going on there we can infer more serious issues back where it does mean something. In 2013 and 2014, the Federal Reserve was [...]
It isn’t just US or European banks which are shrinking. The nature of this post-August 9, 2007, world is just that – global. Sure, there are regulations which have made investment banking more expensive. But there isn’t a rule or law that Wall Street (really Lombard Street) wouldn’t “discover” a way to circumvent it if [...]
TIC update for December 2018. Given what happened in that particular month, yeah, this seems about right: Here’s the same thing smoothed out on a 6-month basis. Plus an added reminder. Just to refresh: That’s a shame because TIC will tell you so much more about the global economy and the changes taking place within [...]
It was late on a Friday night in early September 1997. Because his speech was given at Stanford University out in the Pacific Time Zone just as the weekend was about to commence, market watchers were bated with an almost frenzied anticipation. Alan Greenspan had come to be seen as more than just a monetary [...]
In the continued absence of regular data, as the US federal government attempts to get back up to speed before the next lull, it is perhaps appropriate to continue on with this week’s parade of anecdotes. Here I’ll discuss three of them, each seemingly unrelated to the others. To begin, we start with Chinese robots. [...]
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