Tag Archive: CPI

Systemic Depression Is A Clear Choice

2017-04-05

Looking back on late 2015, it is perfectly clear that policymakers had no idea what was going on. It’s always easy, of course, to reflect on such things with the benefit of hindsight, but even contemporarily it was somewhat shocking how complacent they had become as a global group.

Read More »

The Power of Oil

2017-04-02

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-04-02

For the first time in 57 months, a span of nearly five years, the Fed’s preferred metric for US consumer price inflation reached the central bank’s explicit 2% target level. The PCE Deflator index was 2.12% higher in February 2017 than February 2016. Though rhetoric surrounding this result is often heated, the actual indicated inflation is decidedly not despite breaking above for once.

Read More »

The Market Has Its Head Buried Deep In The Sand

2017-03-30

by Sprott Money

2017-03-30

Several “black swans” are looming which could inflict a financial nuclear accident on the U.S. markets and financial system. I say “black swans” in quotes because a limited audience is aware of these issues – potentially catastrophic problems that are curiously ignored by the mainstream financial media and financial markets.

Read More »

Same Country, Different Worlds

2017-03-10

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-10

To my mind, “reflation” has always proceeded under false pretenses. This goes for more than just the latest version, as we witnessed the same incongruity in each of the prior three. The trend is grounded in mere hope more than rational analysis, largely because I think human nature demands it. We are conditioned to believe especially in the 21st century that the worst kinds of things are either unrealistic or apply to some far off location nowhere...

Read More »

Economic Dissonance, Too

2017-03-04

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-04

Germany Industrial Production, SA 1997-2016

Germany is notoriously fickle when it comes to money, speaking as much of discipline in economy or industry as central banking. If ever there is disagreement about monetary arrangements, surely the Germans are behind it. Since ECB policy only ever attains the one direction, so-called accommodation, there never seems to be harmony.

Read More »

True Cognitive Dissonance

2017-03-04

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-04

There is gold in Asia, at least gold of the intellectual variety for anyone who wishes to see it. The Chinese offer us perhaps the purest view of monetary conditions globally, where RMB money markets are by design tied directly to “dollar” behavior. It is, in my view, enormously helpful to obsess over China’s monetary system so as to be able to infer a great deal about the global monetary system deep down beyond the “event horizon.”

Read More »

Real Disposable Income: Headwinds of the Negative

2017-03-03

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-03

The PCE Deflator for January 2017 rose just 1.89% year-over-year. It was the 57th consecutive month less than the 2% mandate (given by the Fed itself when in early 2012 it made the 2% target for this metric its official definition of price stability).

Read More »

U.S. CPI after the energy push

2017-02-17

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-02-17

U.S. Consumer Prices Changes on Energy January 1995 - 2017

The Consumer Price Index for January 2017 rose 2.5%, pulled upward by its energy component which thanks to oil prices now being comparing to the absolutely lows last year saw that part of the index rise 11.1% year-over-year. Given that oil prices bottomed out on February 11, 2016, this is the last month where oil prices and thus energy inflation will be at its most extreme (except, of course, should WTI actually rise between now and the end of...

Read More »

Here Are The Best Hedges Against A Le Pen Victory

2017-02-13

by Tyler Durden

2017-02-13

On Friday, after it emerged that as part of Marine Le Pen's strategic vision for France, should she win, is a return to the French franc as well as redenomination of some €1.7 billion in French (non-international law) bonds, both rating agencies and economists sounded the alarm, warning it would "amount to the largest sovereign default on record, nearly 10 times larger than the €200bn Greek debt restructuring in 2012, threatening chaos to the world...

Read More »

A Biased 2017 Forecast, Part 1

2017-01-05

by Jim Quinn

2017-01-05

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after reading Liar’s Poker, Boomerang, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Moneyball, I was interested to hear about his new project.

Read More »

Attack The Fed’s War On Savers, Workers And The Unborn (Taxpayers)

2016-09-13

by David Stockman

2016-09-13

The central banks have gone so far off the deep-end with financial price manipulation that it is only a matter of time before some astute politician comes after them with all barrels blasting. As a matter of fact, that appears to be exactly what Donald Trump unloaded on bubble vision this morning:

Read More »