Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

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Calm Before the Storm?

2022-03-28

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2022-03-28

Stocks don't vanish when sold; somebody owns the shares all the way to the bottom. These owners who refuse to sell because they have convinced themselves the next dip will be the hoped-for resumption of the bullish trend are called "bagholders."

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Autocracy’s Fatal Weakness

2022-03-23

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2022-03-23

This desire for compliance and consensus dooms the autocracy to failure and collapse because dissent is the essence of evolutionary churn and adaptation. The various flavors of autocracy (theocracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship, etc.) look remarkably successful at first blush but they all share a fatal flaw.

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It Wouldn’t Be TIC Without So Much Other

2022-03-23

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2022-03-23

With the Fed (sadly) taking center stage last week, and market rejections of its rate hikes at the forefront, lost in the drama was January 2022 TIC. Understandable, given all its misunderstood numbers are two months behind at their release. There were some interesting developments regardless, and a couple of longer run parts that deserve some attention.

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How Healthcare Became Sickcare

2022-03-22

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2022-03-22

The financialization of healthcare started two generations ago and is now in a run-to-fail feedback loop of insolvency. Long-time readers know I have been critical of U.S. healthcare for over a decade. When I use the term sickcare this is not a reflection on the hard work of frontline caregivers--it is a reflection of the financialization incentives that have distorted the system's priorities and put it on a path to insolvency.

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Inversion Is The Real March Madness, Just Don’t Take It Literally

2022-03-22

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2022-03-22

With such low levels of self-awareness, it isn’t surprising that the FOMC’s members continue to pour gasoline on the already-blazing curve fire. March Madness is supposed to be on the courts of college basketball, instead it is playing out more vividly across all financial markets.

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The Fed Inadvertently Adds To Our Ironclad Collateral Case Which Does Seem To Have Already Included A ‘Collateral Day’ (or days)

2022-03-21

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2022-03-21

The Federal Reserve didn’t just raise the range for its federal funds target by 25 bps, upper and lower bounds, it also added the same to its twin policy tools which the “central bank” says are crucial to maintaining order in money markets thereby keeping federal funds inside the band where it is supposed to be. The FOMC voted to increase IOER from 15 bps to 40 bps, and the RRP from 5 bps to 30 bps.

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Baby Boomer Retirement at Risk

2022-03-20

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2022-03-20

The seven deadliest words in the English language—We’ve never done it this way before. And that certainly applies to Baby Boomers whose prospects for retirement are different than any preceding generation.

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Media Attention All Over FOMC, Market Attention Totally Elsewhere

2022-03-19

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2022-03-19

The Federal Reserve did something today, or actually announced today that it will do something as of tomorrow. And since we’re all conditioned to believe this is the biggest thing ever, I’ll have to add my own $0.02 (in eurodollars, of course, can’t be bank reserves) frustratingly contributing to the very ritual I’m committed to seeing end.We shouldn’t care much about the Fed.

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There Is An Absolutely Solid Collateral Case For What’s Driving Curve Inversion(s) [Part 2]

2022-03-18

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2022-03-18

Securities lending as standard practice is incredibly complicated, and for many the process can be counterintuitive. With numerous different players contributing various pieces across a wide array of financial possibilities, not to mention the whole expanse of global geography, collateral for collateral swaps have gone largely unnoticed by even mainstream Economics and central banking.

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There Is An Absolutely Solid Collateral Case For What’s Driving Curve Inversion(s) [Part 1]

2022-03-17

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2022-03-17

With the 7s10s already inverted, and the 5s today mere bps away, making a macro case for the distortion isn’t too difficult. Despite China’s “upside” economic data today, even the Chinese are talking more about their downside worries (shooting/hoping for “stability”) than strength. In the US or Europe, no matter the CPIs in either place there are cyclical (not just inventory) warning signs all over the place.

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Risk Accumulates Where No One Is Looking For It

2022-03-17

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2022-03-17

All this decay is so incremental that nobody thinks it possible that it could ever accumulate into a risk that threatens the entire system. The funny thing about risk is the risk that everyone sees isn't the risk that blows up the system. The mere fact that everyone is paying attention to the risk tends to defang it as everyone rushes to hedge or reduce the risk.

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China’s Loan Results Back The PBOC Going The Opposite Way From The Fed

2022-03-16

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2022-03-16

This week will almost certainly end up as a clash of competing interest rate policy views. Everyone knows about the Federal Reserve’s upcoming, the beginning of what is intended to be a determined inflation-fighting campaign for a US economy that American policymakers worry has been overheated.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Is This A Bear Market?

2022-03-16

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2022-03-16

I don’t know the answer to the question posed in the title. No one does because the future is not predictable. I don’t know what will happen in Ukraine. I don’t know how much what has already happened there – and what might – matters to the US and global economy. I don’t know if the Fed is making a mistake by (likely) hiking interest rates by an entire 1/4 of 1% this week.

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Serf-Expression

2022-03-15

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2022-03-15

Eventually the "flock of timid and industrious animals" changes their minds about how much exploitation by the few is acceptable.

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Another One Inverts, The Retching Cat Reaches Treasuries

2022-03-15

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2022-03-15

As Alan Greenspan’s rate hikes closed in, longer-term Treasury yields were forced upward as the flattening yield curve left no more room for their blatant defiance. By mid-2005, though, the market wasn’t ready to fully price the downside risks which had already led to that worrisome curve shape (very flat). While all sorts of bad potential could be reasonably surmised, none of it seemed imminent or definite.

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How the IRS Taxes Your Retirement Income

2022-03-13

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2022-03-13

Oh, the day you can hang up your career and ease into that status you’ve been working toward most of your adult life, the place that brings a smile to your face, your happy place where you no longer answer to an employer, where you set your own schedule—that magical place called “Retirement.”

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Consumer Prices And The Historical Pain(s)

2022-03-12

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2022-03-12

The 1947-48 experience was truly painful, maybe even terrifying. The US and Europe had just come out of a decade when the worst deflationary consequences were so widespread that the period immediately following quickly erupted into the worst conflagration in human history.

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The Upside of a Crushing Recession

2022-03-11

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2022-03-11

Unbeknownst to those trembling in fear of a crushing recession, the crushing recession they fear is the only curative for a fatally distorted system which has lost touch with reality. Everyone looking at the inevitability of recession with alarm is forgetting the many upsides of recession, especially one that crushes all attempts to reverse it with the usual tricks.

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So Much Fragile *Cannot* Be Random Deflationary Coincidences

2022-03-10

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2022-03-10

At first glance, or first exposure to this, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why all these so many pieces could be related. Outwardly, from the mainstream perspective, anyway, you’d think them random, and even if somehow correlated they’re supposed to be in the opposite way from what’s happened.

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If You Want to Build Back Better, Reshore Our Entire Supply Chain

2022-03-09

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2022-03-09

It is entirely accurate to say that the U.S. is addicted to waste and distant sources of essentials. The downside of dependency is in the air. The U.S. has allowed itself to become dependent on other nations for essentials, a policy that I view as an insanity fueled by greed. The problem with dependency is the cost can't be calculated until it's too late. Restoring independence is a massive, costly undertaking, but if you wait until the cost of...

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