Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

Reading Jeff Snider: US Bank Loans Shrinking in 2021 [Ep. 128, Macropiece Theater]

Bank balance sheets are expanding in 2021, which is great news if you believe credit is modern money. But a closer look reveals banks are PILING into the SAFEST assets while beating a RETREAT from loans (real economy money).

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Weekly Market Pulse: Perception vs Reality

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Some see the cup as half empty. Some see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large.

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Jeffrey Snider, Head of Global Research at Alhambra Investments demystifies global monetary system.

Special guest Jeffrey Snider is Head of Global Research at Alhambra Investments. He is not an economist, which is probably why he's been able to develop a working model of the global monetary system.

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Everything Solid Melts into Air

That the neofeudal lords and their lackeys offer the debt-serfs "choices" of forced labor would be comic if the results weren't so tragic. We know we're close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the "news" quickly reverts to gossip.

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Who should fix climate change? | The Economist

This is an excerpt from a longer event, exclusive to Economist subscribers. To watch this event in full or join a live discussion, go to the subscriber-events hub—you'll just have to subscribe to The Economist if you haven't already. 00:00 - Who should fix climate change? 00:55 - Hard problems are why we elect governments 01:29 - Which countries are leading? 03:00 - What is the role of companies? 03:57 - Companies innovate better than countries...

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Inflating Chinese Trade

There was never really any answer given by the Chinese Communists for why their own export data diverged so much from other import estimates gathered by its largest trading partners. Ostensibly different sides of the same thing, it’s not like anyone asked Xi Jinping to weigh in; they report what numbers they have and consider them authoritative.

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America’s Bottom 50 percent Have Nowhere To Go But Down

One might anticipate that the bottom 50%'s meager share of the nation's exploding wealth would have increased as smartly as the wealth of the billionaires, but alas, no.

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Perfect Time To Review What Is, And What Is Not, Inflation (and why it matters so much)

It is costing more to live and be, so naturally people are looking for who it is they need to blame. Maybe figure out some way to stop it. You know and feel for the basics since everyone’s perceptions begin with costs of just living. This is what makes the subject of inflation so difficult, even more so in the era of QE.

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The Great Eurodollar Famine: The Pendulum of Money Creation Combined With Intermediation

It was one of those signals which mattered more than the seemingly trivial details surrounding the affair. The name MF Global doesn’t mean very much these days, but for a time in late 2011 it came to represent outright fear. Some were even declaring it the next “Lehman.”

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For The Love Of Unemployment Rates

Here we are again. The labor force. The numbers from the BLS are simply staggering. During September 2021, the government believes it shrank for another month, down by 183,000 when compared to August. This means that the Labor Force Participation rate declined slightly to 61.6%, practically the same level in this key metric going back to June.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Inflation Scare?

Bonds sold off again last week with the yield on the 10 year Treasury closing over 1.6% for the first time since early June. The yield is now down just 16 basis points from the high of 1.76% set on March 30. But this rise in rates is at least a little different than the fall that preceded it.

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The challenges facing Germany’s new leader | The Economist

Germany’s election marks the end of an era of stability and stagnation. What international challenges will Angela Merkel's successor face? 00:00 The coalition negotiations 01:00 Who are the kingmakers? 02:09: Who is Olaf Scholz? 03:09 Germany’s future global role 04:57 Germany’s relationship with Russia & China Like our video content? Take our survey to tell us why: https://econ.st/3oYeC61 Find The Economist’s most recent coverage on the...

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Is higher inflation cause for concern? | The Economist

Inflation rates have been rising all over the world, surprising many economists. While the rich world is paying higher prices for durable goods such as cars, in emerging markets soaring food prices are a greater worry. What is causing this unexpected bout of inflation, and will it last? 00:00 - What’s happening with inflation? 00:53 - What is inflation? 01:42 - Inflation rates are rising 02:47 - How much is too much inflation? 03:13 - Inflation in...

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Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense

The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization. Global corporations didn't go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience--they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity.

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Tapering Or Calibrating, The Lady’s Not Inflating

We’ve got one central bank over here in America which appears as if its members can’t wait to “taper”, bringing up both the topic and using that particular word as much as possible. Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve obviously intends to buoy confidence by projecting as much when it does cut back on the pace of its (irrelevant) QE6.

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What’s The Real Downside To Some of These Key Commodities?

Last night, Autodata reported its first estimates for September auto sales in the US. According to its own as well as those compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (the same government outfit which keeps track of GDP), vehicle sales have been sliding overall ever since April.

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Risk Was Never Low, It Was Only Hidden

The vast majority of market participants are about as ready for a semi-random "volatility event" as the dinosaurs were for the meteor strike that doomed them to oblivion.

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Surprise: It Isn’t Consumers Keeping American Factories Busy

US factories are humming along, constrained only by supply issues which might occasionally limit production. That’s the story, anyway. There’s too much business because of them, manufacturers taking in only more orders by the day leaving them struggling to catch up.But what kind of stuff is it that is being ordered from our nation’s factories?

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Weekly Market Pulse: Zooming Out

How often do you check your brokerage account? There is a famous economics paper from 1997, written by some of the giants in behavioral finance (Thaler, Kahnemann, Tversky & Schwartz), that tested what is known as myopic loss aversion.

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Jeff Snider: The Global Currency System that Really Matters

Tom welcomes an extremely thought provoking guest Jeff Snider to the show. Jeff flips the lid on the global shadow money system and shows us all the mechanisms and leavers that lie in the shadows.

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