Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

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Retail Sales Bounce (Way) Too Much

2017-12-21

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2017-12-21

US Retail Sales, Jun 2011 - Nov 2017
Retail sales had a good month of November, or at least what counts as decent over the last five and a half years. Total retail sales (unadjusted) rose 6.35% last month, up from 4.9% (revised higher) in October. It was the highest rate of growth since the 29-day month of February 2016. For retailers, what matters is that it comes at the start of the Christmas shopping season.

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Charles Hugh Smith Says Every Type Of Money Does Not Need to Perform All The Functions Of

2017-12-21

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Please click above to subscribe to my channel Thanks for ing! Financial News Silver News Gold Bix Weir RoadToRoota Road To Roota Kyle Bass Realist News Greg Mannarino Rob Kirby Reluctant. Like the sun coming up in the morning, Central State planning and expansion predictably leads to state spending exceeding the rate of the real …

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Fed’s enthusiasm on tax cut plans remains limited

2017-12-20

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2017-12-20

The 13 December Fed decision – and Chair Yellen’s last press conference – was much as expected. The Fed hiked rates 25bps, bringing the interest rate on excess reserves to 1.5%. Meanwhile, Fed officials maintained their rate-hiking forecasts for next year: three rate increases, according to the ‘dot plot’.

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Animal Spirits Haunt The Market

2017-12-20

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2017-12-20

The economic data over the last two weeks continued the better than expected trend. Some of the data was quite good and makes one wonder if maybe, just maybe, we are finally ready to break out of the economic doldrums. Is it possible that all that new normal, secular stagnation stuff was just a lack of animal spirits?

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RMR: Special Guest – Charles Hugh Smith – Of Two Minds (12/19/2017)

2017-12-19

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Charles Hugh Smith returns to share his wealth of knowledge in regards to fiat versus cryptocurrencies, crypto regulation and the potential for correction of Bitcoin. We are political scientists, editorial engineers, and radio show developers drawn together by a shared vision of bringing Alternative news through digital mediums that evangelize our civil liberties. Please subscribe …

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US Economic Growth Prospects Remain Poor (w/ Jeffrey Snider) | Expert View | Real Vision™

2017-12-19

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Watch this full interview with The Expert: Jeffrey Snider, exclusively on Real Vision. Learn how you can become a great investor: http://rvtv.io/2AZFpTE The flattening US yield curve is not what matters, according to monetary economics expert Jeff Snider, but the nominal level at which it flattens. He argues that if the current moves just take …

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Donald Trump’s tax reforms, cartooned | The Economist

2017-12-18

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The Republican tax bill might be hard to swallow. In his latest drawing, our cartoonist KAL gives his take on the upcoming reforms. Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.st/2BEKW5Y A controversial tax reform package is up for a vote in the US Congress. It will have important long-term effects for the …

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Emerging Market Preview: Week Ahead

2017-12-18

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2017-12-18

EM FX was mixed last week, with political optimism driving the big winners ZAR and CLP. We remain cautious, as the Fed has signaled its intent to continue tightening in 2018.

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GoldSeek Radio – Dec 15, 2017 [CHARLES HUGH SMITH & JOHN EMBRY] weekly

2017-12-17

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GoldSeek Radio’s Chris Waltzek talks to Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html and to John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist at Sprott Asset Management. http://sprott.com/ http://www.goldseek.com/ http://radio.goldseek.com/

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Slow wage growth to keep Fed on prudent normalisation track

2017-12-17

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2017-12-17

Wage Growth, 2001 - 2017
The November employment report showed another ‘Goldilocks’ set of conditions for investors: employment growth remained firm, especially in cyclical sectors like manufacturing and construction. At the same time, wage growth stayed soft – which means the Federal Reserve is unlikely to shift its current prudent communication on interest -rate hikes (although it is still very likely to hike 25bps on 13 December).

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Could Central Banks Dump Gold in Favor of Bitcoin?

2017-12-17

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2017-12-17

Bank of Japan Balance Sheet, 2000 - 2017
All of which brings us to the "crazy" idea of backing fiat currencies with cryptocurrencies, an idea I first floated back in 2013, long before the current crypto-craze emerged. Exhibit One: here's your typical central bank, creating trillions of units of currency every year, backed by nothing but trust in the authority of the government, created at the whim of a handful of people in a room and distributed to their cronies, or at the behest of their...

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The Rug Yank Phase of Fed Policy

2017-12-17

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2017-12-17

H. L. Mencken
The political differences of today’s two leading parties are not over ultimate questions of principle. Rather, they are over opposing answers to the question of how a goal can be achieved with the least sacrifice. For lawmakers, the goal is to promise the populace something for nothing, while pretending to make good on it.

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Fed rate unlikely to move much above 2 percent next year

2017-12-16

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2017-12-16

The Fed's "dot plot", 2017 - 2019
The Federal Reserve is probably looking back at 2017 with satisfaction. After on the rate rise expected on 13 December, it will have pushed through the three rate hikes it signalled earlier in the year. For once, it has not under-delivered. Meanwhile, the gradual, ‘passive’ decline in the Fed’s balance sheet has been mostly ignored by markets. In fact, broader financial conditions have eased this year despite the Fed’s monetary tightening....

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Bitcoin vs Fiat Currency: Which Fails First?

2017-12-16

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2017-12-16

What if bitcoin is a reflection of trust in the future value of fiat currencies? I am struck by the mainstream confidence that bitcoin is a fraud/fad that will soon collapse, while central bank fiat currencies are presumed to be rock-solid and without risk. Those with supreme confidence in fiat currencies might want to look at a chart of Venezuela's fiat currency, which has declined from 10 to the US dollar in 2012 to 5,000 to the USD earlier this...

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Chart of the Week: Collateral

2017-12-16

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2017-12-16

US Treasuries, Jan 2017 - Dec 2017
It’s been a week of quite righteous focus on collateral. The 4-week bill equivalent yield closes it at just 114 bps, with only three days left before the RRP “floor” is moved up by the FOMC to 125 bps. That’s too much premium in price, though we know why given what FRBNY reported for repo fails last week.

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China Exports and Industrial Production: Revisiting Once More The True Worst Case

2017-12-16

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2017-12-16

Labor Market Growth, 1968 - 2017
As weird as it may seem at first, the primary economic problem right now is that the global economy looks like it is growing again. There is no doubt that it continues on an upturn, but the mere fact that whatever economic statistic has a positive sign in front of it ends up being classified as some variant of strong. That’s how this works in mainstream analysis, this absence of any sort of gradation where if it’s negative it’s bad (though in 2015...

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The Stock Market and the FOMC

2017-12-16

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2017-12-16

Dow Price in Dollars and Gold, 1800 - 2017
As the final FOMC announcement of the year approaches, we want to briefly return to the topic of how the meeting tends to affect the stock market from a statistical perspective. As long time readers may recall, the typical performance of the stock market in the trading days immediately ahead of FOMC announcements was quite remarkable in recent decades. We are referring to the Seaonax event study of the average (or seasonal) performance across a...

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GSR interviews CHARLES HUGH SMITH – Dec 13, 2017 Nugget

2017-12-15

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GoldSeek Radio’s Chris Waltzek talks to Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html http://www.goldseek.com/ http://radio.goldseek.com/

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A crucial step towards US tax cuts

2017-12-15

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2017-12-15

Impact of Tax Cuts, 2018 - 2027
With the approval of the Senate tax bill in the early hours of Saturday 2 December, a key step has been taken toward tax cuts. The next chapter in the process is to reconcile this version with the House of Representatives’ tax bill, most likely in a ‘conference committee ’ from which a final version will emerge.

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Defining The Economy Through Payrolls

2017-12-15

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2017-12-15

Labor Market Growth, 1968 - 2017
The year 2000 was a transition year in a lot of ways. Though Y2K amounted to mild mass hysteria, people did have to get used to writing the date with 20 in front of the year rather than 19. It was a new millennium (depending on your view of Year 0) that seemed to have started off under the best possible terms. Not only were stocks on fire at the outset, the economy was, too.

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