Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

Politics Is Dead, Here’s What Killed It

Here's "politics" in America now: come with mega-millions or don't even bother to show up. Representational democracy--a.k.a. politics as a solution to social and economic problems--has passed away. It did not die a natural death. Politics developed a cancer very early in life (circa the early 1800s), caused by wealth outweighing public opinion.

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US CPI Reaches Seven On US Goods Prices, With Disinflation Setting In Everywhere Else (incl. US Services)

How is that US Treasury rates out in the independent longer end of the yield curve have now “suffered” a seven percent CPI to go along with double taper and triple maybe quadruple (if the whispers are to be believed) rate hikes this year, yet have weathered all of that allegedly bond-busting brutality with barely a market fluctuation?

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The Real Revolution Is Underway But Nobody Recognizes It

Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they're unpredictable. The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government.

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China’s Petroyuan, Uncle Sam’s Checkbook, The Fed’s Bank Reserves: Who Really Sits On King Dollar’s Throne? (trick question)

A full part of the inflation hysteria, the first one, was the dollar’s looming crash. The currency was, too many claimed, on the verge of collapse by late 2017, heading downward and besieged on multiple fronts by economics and politics alike.

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How to make black lives matter more | The Economist

The shocking murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020 sparked a wave of protests around the world and prompted promises to address structural racism. What actions could actually make black lives better? Film supported by @Mishcon de Reya LLP 00:00 - The legacy of George Floyd 01:20 - How can police reform help? 06:30 - Reallocating police resources 09:10 - The school-to-prison pipeline 12:33 - Reducing school exclusions 16:15 - Moving...

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Sentiment v. Substance: Checking In On Collateral Via, Yes, The Fed

The Federal Reserve, like other central banks around the world, it does lend out the securities it owns and holds. Sophisticated modern wholesale money markets are highly collateralized, so much so that collateral itself takes on the properties of currency.

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Conflict Of Interest (rates): 10-year Treasury Yield Highest in Almost Two Years

The dollar was high and going higher. Emerging markets had been seriously complaining. In one, the top central banker for India outright warned, “dollar funding has evaporated.” The TIC data supported his view, with full-blown negative months, net selling from afar that’s historically akin to what was coming out of India and the rest of the world.

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The Real Threat to Democracy is Corrupting Wealth Inequality

Try to find a developing-world kleptocracy in which the top few collect more than 97% of the income from capital. There aren't any that top the USA, the world's most extreme kleptocracy. We're Number 1. Imagine a town of 1,000 adults and their dependents in which one person holds the vast majority of wealth and political influence. Would that qualify as a democracy?

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Taper Discretion Means Not Loving Payrolls Anymore

When Alan Greenspan went back to Stanford University in September 1997, his reputation was by then well-established. Even as he had shocked the world only nine months earlier with “irrational exuberance”, the theme of his earlier speech hadn’t actually been about stocks; it was all about money.The “maestro” would revisit that subject repeatedly especially in the late nineties, and it was again his topic in California early Autumn ’97.

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Why Don’t We Cut Out the Middleman and Just Elect Pfizer and Merck?

If we no longer have the capacity to distinguish between moral legitimacy and self-serving corruption, then we might as well eliminate the Middleman and vote directly for Pfizer or Merck. There's a fancy word for cutting out the Middleman: disintermediation. Removing intermediaries who take a cut but neither produce nor add value makes perfect sense, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

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Previewing Payrolls By PMIs

With the monthly Friday Payroll Ritual lurking tomorrow morning, and having been focused on PMI estimates before it, a quick look at the ISM’s Non-manufacturing PMI especially its employment index to bridge the latter to the former. The update today for the month of December put the headline estimate at 62.0, down from 69.1 the month prior.Omicron?While a rather sharp and unexpected 7-point drop, other than the size of the decline at 62.0 there’s...

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As The Fed Seeks To Justify Raising Rates, Global Growth Rates Have Been Falling Off Uniformly Around The World

Sentiment indicators like PMI’s are nice and all, but they’re hardly top-tier data. It’s certainly not their fault, these things are made for very times than these (piggy-backing on the ISM Manufacturing’s long history without having the long history). Most of them have come out since 2008, if only because of the heightened professional interest in macroeconomics generated by a global macro economy that can never get itself going.

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Jeff Snider joins The Financial Quarterback™ Josh Jalinski on Bitcoin Clubhouse (YouTube version)

The Financial Quarterback™ Josh Jalinski with guest Jeffrey Snider simulcast on Clubhouse Bitcoin, Deflation vs Inflation plus 2022 Outlook, Joe Carlasare, Ben Prentice and others

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How Many More Americans Might Have Quit Their Jobs Than The Huge Number Already Estimated, And What Might This Mean For FOMC Taper

There were a few surprises included in the BLS JOLTS data just released today for the month of November (note: the government has changed its release schedule so that JOLTS, already one month further in arrears than the payroll report, CES & CPS, will now come out earlier so that its numbers are publicly available for the same monthly payrolls before the next CES & CPS get released).

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Dead zones: how chemical pollution is suffocating the sea | The Economist

Parts of the ocean are being starved of oxygen by chemical pollution from land. These so-called “dead zones” not only decimate marine life, but are contributing to climate change. Film supported by Back to Blue https://backtoblueinitiative.com/ 00:00 - How “dead zones” threaten the ocean 00:52 - Why was there “sea snot” in Turkey? 03:20 - What causes low oxygen in the ocean? 05:50 - How nutrients pollute the ocean 06:37 - Why farming is one of the...

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The Economy / Market Look “Healthy” Until They Have a Seizure and Collapse

So one index or asset or another hits a new high, wow, more proof everything is so robust and healthy, we never had it so good--right up to the seizure and collapse.

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As The Fed Tapers: What If More Rapid (published) Wage Increases Are Actually Evidence of *Deflationary* Conditions?

Since the Federal Reserve is not in the money business, their recent hawkish shift toward an increasingly anti-inflationary stance is a twisted and convoluted case of subjective interpretation.

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What Will Surprise Us in 2022

What seemed so permanent for 13 long years will be revealed as shifting sand and what seemed so real for 13 long years will be revealed as illusion. Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but let's look at what we already know about 2022.

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What will China do in 2022?

China’s Xi Jinping seems likely to have his third term in office ratified by the Communist Party Congress in 2022. What could that mean for China, and for the rest of the world? 00:00 What will China do in 2022? 02:38 Chinese nationalism is at an all time high 03:39 The death of private enterprise in China? 04:15 China’s relationship with the United States 05:50 Will China invade Taiwan? 07:12 Understanding China is our most important job. Read...

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Taper Rejection: Mao Back On China’s Front Page

Chinese run media, the Global Times, blatantly tweeted an homage to China’s late leader Mao Zedong commemorating his 128th birthday. Fully understanding the storm of controversy this would create, with the Communist government’s full approval, such a provocation has been taken in the West as if just one more chess piece played in its geopolitical game against the United States in particular.No. The Communists really mean it. Mao’s their guy again....

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