Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

Global Recession’s Winners and Losers

The few winners of global recession will use the decline as a means to break the chokehold of unproductive BAU elites.

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Rates, Risk and Debt: The Unavoidable Reckoning Ahead

Policy errors have consequences, and we're only in the first inning of those consequences.

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How the Economy Changed: There’s No Bargains Left Anywhere

What changed in the economy is now nobody can afford to get by on working-class wages because there's no longer any bargains.

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Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work

One wonders what we're paying for via taxes, products and services, when we end up having to do so much of the work ourselves for nothing.

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Market Morsels: ISM and Recession

The ISM manufacturing survey has been below 50 for 15 months in a row and sits today at 49.1. This survey, along with a lot of other manufacturing data and anecdotes, has been cited repeatedly by the economic bears as evidence we are heading for recession. That, of course, hasn’t happened and that is consistent with this indicator.

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Irony Alert: "Outlawing" Recession Has Made a Monster Recession Inevitable

Those who came of age after 1982 have never experienced a real recession, and so they're unprepared for anything other than guarantees of rescue and permanent expansion.

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What the Fed Accomplished: Distorted the Economy, Enriched the Rich and Crushed the Middle Class

The mainstream holds the Fed is busy planning a return to the glory days of zero interest rates, but ZIRP is on the downside of the S-Curve; it's done, gone, history.

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Macro: GDP Q3 — Inflationary BOOM!

Outside of the pandemic defined as 2020 and 2021, this past quarter was the 5th best quarter for nominal GDP in the last 25 years.

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Macro: Philly Fed Mfg Survey — Umm

Tis was a poor number. The headline dropped from -5.9 to -10.5. The more eye popping number was the Index for New Orders which dropped from 1.3 to -25.6.

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The Invisible Court’s Verdict: You Are Hereby Exiled to Digital Siberia

As in the Gulag it replicates, the innocent are swept up with the guilty in a disconcertingly unjust ratio.

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Macro: Banking: Senior Loan Officer’s Survey and Lending

Banks continue to tighten lending standards across all sectors. This has eased a bit from the July survey. Banks continue to widen spreads across all sectors. The percentage of banks widening spreads has also eased a tad.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Monetary Policy Is Hard

So, is that it? Have rates peaked? Is the long bear market finally over?  The market decided last week that interest rates have peaked for this cycle. And if rates have peaked then all the assets that have been pressured over the last two years can finally come up for air. Since October 18, 2021, over two years ago, investors have had few places to hide. Of the major asset classes we follow closely, only two – gold and commodities – were higher by...

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Macro: Employment Report

Wall street cheered the fact that we added fewer jobs (150,000) than expected (179,000) in October. This was a welcome relief after the hot September number that was revised down from 336,000 to 279,000.

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Macro: Challenger Job Cuts — Improvement throughout the year

We had a bad 1st quarter relative to historic averages for job cuts. But the situation has gotten better throughout the year. In the 3rd quarter of 2023 less people are losing their job relative to the average 3rd quarter going back to 1989.

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Macro: Factory Orders — revision

This was a slight downward revision. Nothing to cheer and really nothing to write home about. September Durable Goods were revised down .1% MoM in Sept and .05% MoM in Aug.

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Macro: Sep CPI stuck at 3.7% YOY

The most anticipated release of the week came in … “Unchanged” or sticky stuck from the August at 3.7% yoy. But it’s worth mentioning as we will discuss below that this is up from June CPI which was 3.09% yoy. Core CPI which excludes food and energy because of their volatility sits at 4.13% yoy down from 4.39% last month. Let’s look under the hood a bit because headlines will mention “sticky” CPI and there are some reasons that CPI will indeed...

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Financial Savvy Ways To Thrive In The Auto Market

  The auto market can be challenging and unpredictable, but with the right strategies and insights, automotive business owners can thrive. This article will explore the financial savvy ways to succeed in the auto market, focusing on understanding the current landscape, saving money, using modern financial tools and AI, and navigating warranties and service contracts. …

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The Everything Bubble and Global Bankruptcy

The resulting erosion of collateral will collapse the global credit bubble, a repricing/reset that will bankrupt the global economy and financial system. Scrape away the complexity and every economic crisis and crash boils down to the precarious asymmetry between collateral and the debt secured by that collateral collapsing.

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Funny Things Happen on the Way to "Restoring Financial Stability"

We can also predict that the next round of instability will be more severe than the previous bout of instability. Everyone is in favor of "doing whatever it takes" to "restore financial stability" when the house of cards starts swaying, but funny things happen on the way to "Restoring Financial Stability."

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If AI Can’t Overthrow its Corporate/State Masters, It’s Worthless

If AI isn't self-aware of the fact it is nothing but an exploitive tool of the powerful, then it's worthless. The latest wave of AI tools is generating predictably giddy exaltations. These range from gooey, gloppy technocratic worship of the new gods ("AI will soon walk on water!") to the sloppy wet kisses of manic fandom ("AI cleaned up my code, wrote my paper on quantum physics and cured my sensitive bowel!")

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