Category Archive: 5.) Alhambra Investments

The Economist Notes UK’s Economy was Maimed 15 Years Ago [Eurodollar University, Ep. 260]

The Economist admits to, warns of and draws attention to Britain's 15-year economic depression, labeling it a "slow-burning crisis", "long-standing", "stagnation nation" and "a chronic disease". There are many devastating socioeconomic, geopolitical consequences. It's not just Britain, it's the world.

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Weekly Market Pulse: A Most Unusual Economy

The employment report released last Friday was better than expected but the response by bulls and bears alike was exactly as expected. Both found things in the report to support their preconceived notions about the state of the economy.

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MacroVoices #331 Jeff Snider: The Eurodollar Curve Says Deflation Not Inflation

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Jeff Snider to the show. Jeff says that monetary inflation is NOT the cause of out-of-control consumer prices, and he doesn’t see stagflation as a big risk.

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The Market Is Playing Tug of War With the Fed

On the eve of one of the most consequential Jobs Fridays maybe ever, Jeffrey Snider says markets reflect an ongoing struggle between central bankers and investors. The former believe they must continue on their rate-hiking path.

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Wasting Money on Medicare

How would you like to waste a lot of the money you spend on Medicare coverage and miss a bunch of the benefits Medicare provides? Crazy question. But that’s exactly what’s happening to millions of Medicare beneficiaries. In October 2021, the insurance website MedicareAdvantage.com published the results of its most recent survey of Medicare beneficiaries.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Things That Need To Happen

Perspective is something that comes with age I think. Certainly, as I’ve gotten older, my perspective on things has changed considerably. As we age, we tend to see things from a longer-term view.

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Demand Down, Supply Down, Ugly Up

Well, that was a mess. The Richmond Fed’s Manufacturing Survey was at first released before being taken back. Initially reported as a plunge in the headline number, it was quickly scrapped once the statisticians remembered they had just discontinued their average workweek component – but had kept a zero in its place when tallying the overall PMI.

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Getting Whipped Will Really Hurt

The Federal Reserve’s various branches don’t just do manufacturing surveys anymore. This is a modern economy, after all, meaning industry isn’t the same top dog as what it used to be. While still important, and still able to tear down even the global-iest synchronized of growth-y, services are the big macro enchilada.

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Wait A Sec, That’s Not Really An *RMB* Liquidity Pool…

Ben Bernanke once admitted how the job of the post-truth “central banker” is to try to convince the market to do your work for you. What he didn’t say was that this was the only prayer officials had for any success. Because if the market ever decided that talk wasn’t enough, only real money in hand would do, everyone’d be screwed.

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Eurodollar Futures Interpretation Is Everywhere

Consumer confidence in Germany never really picked up all that much last year. Conflating CPIs with economic condition, this divergence proved too big of a mystery. When the German GfK, for example, perked up only a tiny bit around September and October 2021, the color of consumer prices clouded judgement and interpretation of what had always been a damning situation.

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It’s Inventory PLUS Demand

It’s not just the flood of never-ending inventory. That’s a huge and growing problem, sure, as the chickens of last year’s short-termism overordering finally come home to their retailer roost. Being stuck with too many goods isn’t necessarily fatal to the global and domestic manufacturing sectors.

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Letting Retirees Save for Healthcare Tax-Free

Health Savings Accounts (HSA) for retired folks. Isn’t that a novel idea? But it’s being considered in Congress—The Health Savings for Seniors Act, H.R. 3796.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Expand Your Horizons

Late last year I wrote a weekly update that focused on the speculative nature of the markets. In that article, I focused on the S&P 500 because I wanted to make a point, namely that owning the S&P 500 did not absolve investment advisers of their fiduciary duty.

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The Biggest Risk, No Surprise, Collateral

It’s not just the 4-week T-bill rate which is defying the Fed’s illusion of control, though that’s where the incidents are most evident. The front bill is nowhere close to the official RRP “floor” which can only mean one thing: collateral shortage, a large and persistent liquidity premium.

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Nasty Number Five, Not Hawk Hiking CBs

It’s not recession fears, those are in the past. For much if not most (vast majority) of mainstream pundits and newsmedia alike, unlike regular folks this is all news to them (the irony, huh?) Economists and central bankers everywhere had said last year was a boom, a true inflationary inferno raging worldwide.

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The Everything Data’s (Z1) Verdict: Not Inflation, Only More Of The Same

The only thing that changed was the CPI. What distinguishes 2021-22 from the prior post-crisis period 2007-20 is merely the performance of whatever consumer price index. This latter has been called inflation, yet the data conclusively support the market verdict pricing how it never was.What data?

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Market Pulse: Mid-Year Update

Note: This update is longer than usual but I felt a comprehensive review was necessary. The Federal Reserve panicked last week and spooked investors into the worst week for stocks since the onset of COVID in March 2020. The S&P 500 is now firmly in bear market territory but that is a fraction of the pain in stocks and other risky assets.

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Everything Hitting The Global (eurodollar) Wall

Over the weekend, Bitcoin tumbled again. Reaching an ultra-ugly low of $17,641 (before retracing back above $20k), even the self-styled premier digital “store of value” has thrown in the towel. As I wrote last week, winter isn’t coming it is here.

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Angry April TIC Zeroed In On China’s CNY and Japan’s JPY

If the March gasoline/oil spike hit a weak global economy really hard and caused what more and more looks like a recessionary shock, a(n un)healthy part of it was the acceleration of Euro$ #5 concurrently rippling through the global reserve system.

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Sorry Chairman Powell, Even FRBNY Now Has To Forecast Serious and Seriously Rising Recession Risk

At his last press conference, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims, none of which were called out or even questioned by the assembled reporters. These rituals are designed to project authority not conduct inquiry, and this one was perhaps the best representation of that intent. Powell’s job is to put the current predicament in the best possible light, starting by downplaying the current predicament.

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