Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

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What Lies Ahead: Destabilizing Social Stratification

2020-06-08

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2020-06-08

Wealth Inequality
The bill for extreme wealth/income inequality is now overdue, and the penalties for ignoring the bill will be as extreme as the inequality. Our socio-economic-political system--let's call it the status quo--has been hollowed out by extremes of wealth/power inequality driven by financialization and globalization, which have enriched the top 5% and left everyone else behind.

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ECB Doubles Its QE; Or, The More Central Banks Do The Worse You Know It Will Be

2020-06-07

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2020-06-07

ECB/Eurostaff Inflation Projections, 2017-2020
A perpetual motion machine is impossible, but what about a perpetual inflation machine? This is supposed to be the printing press and central banks are, they like to say, putting it to good and heavy use. But never the inflation by which to confirm it. So round and round we go. The printing press necessary to bring about consumer price acceleration, only the lack of consumer price acceleration dictates the need for more of the printing press.

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What Did Everyone Think Was Going To Happen?

2020-06-06

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2020-06-06

Unemployment Insurance, Continued Claims, 2017-2020
Honestly, what did everyone think was going to happen? I know, I’ve seen the analyst estimates. They were talking like another six or seven perhaps eight million job losses on top of the twenty-plus already gone. Instead, the payroll report (Establishment Survey) blew everything away, coming in both at two and a half million but also sporting a plus sign.The Household Survey was even better, +3.8mm during May 2020. But, again, why wasn’t this...

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When Institutions Fail, Fragmentation and Decentralization Become Solutions

2020-06-06

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2020-06-06

Fruit of Financialization: Soaring Income Inequality
That which has failed is unsustainable, no matter how many trillions the Federal Reserve tosses against the tides of history.

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Dollar Firm as Risk-On Sentiment Ebbs Ahead of ECB Decision

2020-06-05

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2020-06-05

ECB Assets
Risk sentiment is taking a breather today after a strong run; the dollar is getting some modest traction. Fed tweaked its municipal bond program; weekly jobless claims are expected to rise 1.843 mln; Brazil and Mexico are seeing record high daily death counts.

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From QE to Eternity: The Backdoor Yield Caps

2020-06-04

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2020-06-04

Japan - JGB, 1986-2019
So, you’re convinced that low rates are powerful stimulus. You believe, like any good standing Economist, that reduced interest costs can only lead to more credit across-the-board. That with more credit will emerge more economic activity and, better, activity of the inflationary variety. A recovery, in other words. Ceteris paribus. What happens, however, if you also believe you’ve been responsible for bringing rates down all across the curve…and...

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The Post-Covid Economy Will Be Very Different From the Pre-Pandemic Bubble Economy

2020-06-03

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2020-06-03

As the old models break down, opportunities for new models will arise. Unstable, unsustainable systems can lull observers into a comfy complacency as instability increases beneath a thin veneer of apparent stability. That's the systemic story of the past 20 years: all the extremes that were needed to maintain the veneer of stability have increased the instability building beneath the complacent confidence.

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Dollar Broadly Weaker After Reports of Possible Brexit Compromise

2020-06-03

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2020-06-03

Balance sheets, USD Trin, 2007-2019
The dollar remains under pressure; there is a debate as to the root causes of recent dollar weakness. May auto sales will be the only US data release today; protests in the US are further denting Trump’s re-elections prospects, at least according to betting odds. The G7 meeting planned at Camp David this month was postponed after German Chancellor Merkel declined his invitation.

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We’re Living the Founding Fathers’ Nightmare: America Is Corrupt to the Core

2020-06-02

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2020-06-02

How Systems Collapse
Our ruling elites, devoid of leadership, are little more than the scum of self-interested, greedy grifters who rose to the top of America's foul-smelling stew of corruption. The Founding Fathers were wary of institutional threats to liberty and the citizenry's sovereignty, which included centralized concentrations of power (monarchy, central banks, federal agencies, etc.) and the tyranny of corruption unleashed by small-minded, self-interested,...

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Personal Income and Spending: The Other Side

2020-06-01

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2020-06-01

Personal Income & Spending, 2017-2020
The missing piece so far is consumers. We’ve gotten a glimpse at how businesses are taking in the shock, both shocks, actually, in that corporations are battening down the liquidity hatches at all possible speed and excess. Not a good sign, especially as it provides some insight into why jobless claims (as the only employment data we have for beyond March) have kept up at a 2mm pace.These are second order effects.

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This Is How Systems Collapse

2020-06-01

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2020-06-01

How Systems Collapse
Flooding the financial system with "free money" only restores the illusion of stability. I updated my How Systems Collapse graphic from 2018 with a "we are here" line to indicate our current precarious position just before the waterfall: For those who would argue we're nowhere near collapse, consider that over 20% of the Federal Reserve's $2 trillion spew of free money went directly into the pockets of America's billionaires.

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Dollar Firm as US-China Tensions Continue to Rise

2020-05-31

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2020-05-31

Chinese Fix Yuan, 2019-2020
Tensions between the US and China continue to rise; the dollar is finding some traction. Fed Beige Book contained no surprises; NY Fed President Williams said the Fed is “thinking very hard” about targeting yields; weekly jobless claims are expected at 2.1 mln vs. 2.438 mln last week .

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Asia Lockdowns vs. Re-Openings

2020-05-30

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2020-05-30

We apply the five-factor model used to analyse lockdowns and openings in developed markets and in Latin America to Asian Markets. It evaluates the restrictions imposed by different countries in the region, how they compare in terms of severity of lockdown, and where they are heading in the spectrum of reopening. The scale we use measures grade restrictions from 1 (open) to 4 (closed) across the following five factors: (a) schools/universities, (b)...

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Getting A Sense of the Economy’s Current Hole and How the Government’s Measures To Fill It (Don’t) Add Up

2020-05-29

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2020-05-29

GDP Pro Forma, 2010-2020
The numbers just don’t add up. Even if you treat this stuff on the most charitable of terms, dollar for dollar, way too much of the hole almost certainly remains unfilled. That’s the thing about “stimulus” talk; for one thing, people seem to be viewing it as some kind of addition without thinking it all the way through first.You have to begin by sizing up the gross economic deficit it is being haphazardly poured into – with an additional emphasis...

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Hong Kong Turbulence Likely to Rise as US-China Relations Worsen

2020-05-28

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2020-05-28

Recent moves by China call into direct question the “one country, two systems” approach.  Hong Kong assets have held up surprisingly well but we see turbulence ahead as US-China relations are set to deteriorate further.

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An Economy That Cannot Allow Stocks to Decline Is Too Fragile To Survive

2020-05-28

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2020-05-28

Nasdaq 100 Index, 2020
The fragile ice shelf of speculative bets and debt clinging to the mountainside is making strange creaking sounds-- will you listen or will you ignore it because 'the Fed has our back'? Feast your eyes on the chart below of the Nasdaq 100 stock market Index, which is dominated by the six FAAMNG (rhymes with "famine") stocks: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Google which now account for over 20% of the entire U.S. stock market's...

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Restricted Market Trading Comments

2020-05-28

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2020-05-28

By Dara O’Sullivan, Derrick Leonard, and Ilan Solot, Covid-19 related measures for restricted markets remain largely unchanged this week. Philippines, Bangladesh and Kuwait have extended their lockdown periods, while Kenya and Nigeria continue to face limited liquidity.

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Re-Opening the Economy Won’t Fix What’s Broken

2020-05-27

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2020-05-27

Student Loans Owned and Securitized, 2008-2020
Re-opening a fragile, brittle, bankrupt, hopelessly perverse and corrupt "normal" won't fix what's broken. The stock market is in a frenzy of euphoria at the re-opening of the economy. Too bad the re-opening won't fix what's broken. As I've been noting recently, the real problem is the systemic fragility of the U.S. economy, which has lurched from one new extreme to the next to maintain a thin, brittle veneer of normalcy.

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So Much Dollar Bull

2020-05-27

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2020-05-27

TIC - US Banking Data, 2006-2020
According to the Federal Reserve’s calculations, the US dollar in Q1 pulled off its best quarter in more than twenty years – though it really didn’t need the full quarter to do it. The last time the Fed’s trade-weighed dollar index managed to appreciate farther than the 7.1% it had in the first three months of 2020, the year was 1997 during its final quarter when almost the whole of Asia was just about to get clobbered.In second place (now third)...

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The Pandemic Gives Us Permission To Get What We Always Wanted

2020-05-24

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2020-05-24

Dear Corporate America: maybe you remember the old Johnny Paycheck tune? Let me refresh your memory: take this job and shove it. Put yourself in the shoes of a single parent waiting tables in a working-class cafe with lousy tips, a worker stuck with high rent and a soul-deadening commute--one of the tens of millions of America's working poor who have seen their wages stagnate and their income becoming increasingly precarious / uncertain while the...

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