Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

Just In Time For The Circus

Just in time to follow closely upon yesterday’s European circus, IHS Markit piles on with more of the same forward-looking indications looking forward the wrong way. Mario Draghi says the ECB is ending QE, good for him. The central bank will do this despite balanced risks rebalancing in a different place. The more bad news and numbers stack up the more “they” say it’s nothing just transitory roughness.

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Das: “The Bubble Is Losing Air. Get Ready For A Crisis”

The shift to tighter monetary policies in the West is weakening credit markets. Over-indebted emerging markets face headwinds from rising borrowing costs and dollar shortages... Investors need to focus on their response to financial stresses in an era in which policymakers will be constrained.

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Xi Jinping’s Pretty Consistent Message

It seems many were disappointed by the speech delivered by Xi Jinping. China’s supreme leader spoke at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing today on the 40th anniversary of his country’s first embrace of economic reform. Commentators had been expecting Xi to use the occasion to recommit to liberalization, further opening China to free market forces.

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Powell: Still Strong; Markets: AYFKM

The official statement that accompanies each every FOMC policy action is by nature bland and sterile. Still, despite the sparseness of printed words those that are included can say a lot. Here’s its essence for what just wrapped up in December 2018: The Committee judges that some further gradual increases in the target range for the federal funds rate will be consistent with sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions,...

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Why Everything That Needs to Be Fixed Remains Permanently Broken

Just in case you missed what's going on in France: the status quo in Europe is doomed. The status quo has a simple fix for every crisis and systemic problem: 1. create currency out of thin air. 2. give it to super-wealthy banks, financiers and corporations to boost their wealth and income.

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Industrial Fading

It is time to start paying attention to PMI’s again, some of them. There are those like the ISM’s Manufacturing Index which remains off in a world of its own. The version of the goods economy suggested by this one index is very different than almost every other. It skyrocketed in late summer last year way out of line (highest in more than a decade) with any other economic account.

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The Relevant Word Is ‘Decline’

The English language headline for China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ press release on November 2018’s Big 3 was, National Economy Maintained Stable and Sound Momentum of Development in November. For those who, as noted yesterday, are wishing China’s economy bad news so as to lead to the supposed good news of a coordinated “stimulus” response this was itself a bad news/good news situation.

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“Yellow Vests” and the Downward Mobility of the Middle Class

Capital garners the gains, and labor's share continues eroding. That's the story of the 21st century. The middle class, virtually by definition, is not prepared for downward mobility. A systemic, semi-permanent decline in the standard of living isn't part of the implicit social contract that's been internalized by the middle class virtually everywhere:living standards are only supposed to rise.

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Sometimes Bad News Is Just Right

There is some hope among those viewing bad news as good news. In China, where alarms are currently sounding the loudest, next week begins the plenary session for the State Council and its working groups. For several days, Communist authorities will weigh all the relevant factors, as they see them, and will then come up with the broad strokes for economic policy in the coming year (2019).

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Emerging market currencies: idiosyncratic risks strike back

The environment will remain challenging for EM currencies next year.Despite a dovish shift by the Fed and the temporary truce in the US-Chinese trade dispute, the global environment remains challenging for emerging market (EM) currencies. In fact, our latestEM FX scorecard, which ranks 10 EM currencies according to key criteria such as growth and vulnerability to external shocks, is still unable to identify a single attractive EM currency among the...

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US Banks Haven’t Behaved Like This Since 2009

If there is one thing Ben Bernanke got right, it was this. In 2009 during the worst of the worst monetary crisis in four generations, the Federal Reserve’s Chairman was asked in front of Congress if we all should be worried about zombies. Senator Bob Corker wasn’t talking about the literal undead, rather a scenario much like Japan where the financial system entered a period of sustained agony – leading to the same in the real economy, one lost...

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China Going Back To 2011

The enormous setback hadn’t yet been fully appreciated in March 2012 when China’s Premiere Wen Jiabao spoke to and on behalf of the country’s Communist governing State Council. Despite it having been four years since Bear Stearns had grabbed the whole world’s attention (for reasons the whole world wouldn’t fully comprehend, specifically as to why the whole world would need to care about the shadow “dollar” business of one US investment “bank”) the...

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‘Paris’ Technocrats Face Another Drop

How quickly things change. Only a few days ago, a fuel tax in France was blamed for widespread rioting. Today, Emmanuel Macron’s government under siege threatens to break its fiscal budget. Having given up on gasoline and diesel, the French government now promises wage increases and tax cuts.

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Are We in a Recession Already?

The value of declaring the entire nation in or out of recession is limited. Recessions are typically only visible to statisticians long after the fact, but they are often visible in real time on the ground: business volume drops, people stop buying houses and vehicles, restaurants that were jammed are suddenly sepulchral and so on. There are well-known canaries in the coal mine in terms of indicators.

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Economics Is Easy When You Don’t Have To Try

The real question is why no one says anything. They can continue to make these grossly untrue, often contradictory statements without fear of having to explain themselves. Don’t even think about repercussions. Even in front of politicians ostensibly being there on behalf of the public, pedigree still matters more than results.

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Monthly Macro Monitor – December 2018 (VIDEO)

Economic thoughts and analysis from Alhambra Investments CEO Joe Calhoun.

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Converging Views Only Starts With Fed ‘Pause’

There’s no sign of inflation, markets are unsettled, and now new economic data keeps confirming that dark side. Forget each month, every day there is something else suggesting a slowdown. That much had been evident across much of the global economy, but this is now different. The US has apparently been infected, too, not that that is any surprise.

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Unexpected?

Now that the slowdown is being absorbed and even talked about openly, it will require a period of heavy CYA. This part is, or at least it has been at each of the past downturns, quite easy for its practitioners. It was all so “unexpected”, you see. Nobody could have seen it coming, therefore it just showed up out of nowhere unpredictably spoiling the heretofore unbreakable, incorruptible boom everyone was talking about just last week.

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House View, December 2018

We remain neutral on global equities overall, seeing relatively limited potential for developed market stocks in particular as earnings growth declines. We favour companies with pricing power as well as measurable growth drivers and low leverage.

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The View from the Trenches of the Alternative Media

What's scarce in a world awash in free content and nearly infinite entertainment content? After 3,701 posts (from May 2005 to the present), here are my observations of the Alternative Media from the muddy trenches. It's increasingly difficult to make a living creating content outside the corporate matrix.

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