Tag Archive: dollar

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

2022-01-13

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2022-01-13

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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White-Hot Cycles of Silence

2021-12-28

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2021-12-28

We’re only ever given the two options: the economy is either in recession, or it isn’t. And if “not”, then we’re led to believe it must be in recovery if not outright booming already. These are what Economics says is the business cycle. A full absence of unit roots. No gray areas to explore the sudden arrival of only deeply unsatisfactory “booms.”

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The Historical Monetary Chinese Checklist You Didn’t Know You Needed For Christmas (or the Chinese New Year)

2021-12-25

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2021-12-25

If there is a better, more fitting way to head into the Christmas holiday in the United States than by digging into the finances and monetary flows of the People’s Bank of China, then I just don’t want to know what it is. Contrary to maybe anyone’s rational first impression that this is somehow insane, there’s much we can tell about the state of the world, the whole world and its “dollars”, right from this one key data source.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Growth Scare?

2021-11-01

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2021-11-01

A couple of weeks ago the 10 year Treasury note yield rose 16 basis points in the course of 5 trading days. That move was driven by near term inflation fears as I discussed last week. Long term inflation expectations were and are well behaved.

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Weekly Market Pulse: Inflation Scare!

2021-10-25

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2021-10-25

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial stock averages made new all time highs last week as bonds sold off, the 10 year Treasury note yield briefly breaking above 1.7% before a pretty good sized rally Friday brought the yield back to 1.65%. And thus we’re right back where we were at the end of March when the 10 year yield hit its high for the year.

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Taper *Without* Tantrum

2021-08-17

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2021-08-17

Whomever actually coined the term “taper”, using it in the context of Federal Reserve QE for the first time, it wasn’t actually Ben Bernanke. On May 22, 2013, the central bank’s Chairman sat in front of Congressman Kevin Brady and used the phrase “step down in our pace of purchases.” No good, at least from the perspective of a media-driven need for a snappy one-word summary.

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Weekly Market Pulse: What Is Today’s New Normal?

2021-08-09

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2021-08-09

Remember “The New Normal”? Back in 2009, Bill Gross, the old bond king before Gundlach came along, penned a market commentary called “On the Course to a New Normal” which he said would be: “a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; in which the government plays a significant role in terms of deficits and reregulation and control of the...

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Real Dollar ‘Privilege’ On Display (again)

2021-04-08

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2021-04-08

Personal Income, 2014-2021
Twenty-fifteen was an important yet completely misunderstood year. The Fed was going to have to become hawkish, according to its models, yet oil prices crashed and the dollar continued to rise. Both of those things were described as “transitory” by Janet Yellen, and that they were helpful or positive (rising dollar means cleanest dirty shirt!), but domestically American policymakers’ clear lack of conviction and courage about that rate hike regime...

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For The Dollar, Not How Much But How Long Therefore How Familiar

2021-02-24

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2021-02-24

US Dollar / Brazilian Real, 2020-2021
Brazil’s stock market was rocked yesterday by politics. The country’s “populist” President, Jair Bolsonaro, said he was going to name an army general who had served with Bolsomito (a nickname given to him by supporters) during that country’s prior military dictatorship as CEO of state-owned oil giant Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna is being installed, allegedly, to facilitate more direct control of the company by the federal...

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Two Seemingly Opposite Ends Of The Inflation Debate Come Together

2021-02-19

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2021-02-19

US Import Price Index All Commedities, 2019-2021
It’s worth taking a look at a couple of extremes, and the putting each into wider context of inflation/deflation. As you no doubt surmise, only one is receiving much mainstream attention. The other continues to be overshadowed by…anything else.

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The Endangered Inflationary Species: Gazelles

2021-02-11

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2021-02-11

BLS National Business Employment Dynamics, 1993-2020
Nevada is, by all accounts and accountants, in rough shape. Very rough shape. An economy overly dependent upon a single industry, tourism, in this case, is a disaster waiting to happen should anything happen to that industry. Pandemic restrictions, for instance.

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If the Fed’s Not In Consumer Prices, Then How About Producer Prices?

2021-01-16

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2021-01-16

U.S. CPI Services Core Fed, Jan 1985 - -2020
It’s not just that there isn’t much inflation evident in consumer prices. Rather, it’s a pretty big deal given the deluge of so much “money printing” this year, begun three-quarters of a year before, that consumer prices are increasing at some of the slowest rates in the data.

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Inflation Hysteria #2 (Nominal UST)

2020-12-09

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2020-12-09

UST Yield Curve, 2017-2018
What had given Inflation Hysteria #1 its real punch had been the benchmark 10-year Treasury note. Throughout 2017, despite the unemployment rate in the US, globally synchronized growth being declared around the world (and being declared as some momentously significant development), and whatever other tiny factors acceding to the narrative, longer-term Treasury rates just weren’t buying it.

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What’s Going On, And Why Late August?

2020-10-29

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2020-10-29

ICE: US$ Index Futures, DX1
This isn’t about COVID. It’s been building since the end of August, a shift in mood, perception, and reality that began turning things several months before even then. With markets fickle yet again, a lot today, what’s going on here?

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Why Aren’t Bond Yields Flyin’ Upward? Bidin’ Bond Time Trumps Jay

2020-10-02

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2020-10-02

It’s always something. There’s forever some mystery factor standing in the way. On the topic of inflation, for years it was one “transitory” issue after another. The media, on behalf of the central bankers it holds up as a technocratic ideal, would report these at face value. The more obvious explanation, the argument with all the evidence, just couldn’t be true otherwise it’d collapse the technocracy right down to the ground.And so it was also in...

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What’s Zambia Got To With It (everything)

2020-10-01

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2020-10-01

Argentina Bank
As one of Africa’s largest copper producers, it seemed like a no-brainer. Financial firms across the Western world, pension funds from the US or banks in Europe, they lined up for a bit of additional yield. This was 2012, still global recovery on the horizon – at least that’s what “they” all kept saying.

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Reopening Inertia, Asian Dollar Style (Still Waiting On The Crash)

2020-09-20

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2020-09-20

Why are there still outstanding dollar swap balances? It is the middle of September, for cryin’ out loud, and the Federal Reserve reports $52.3 billion remains on its books as of yesterday.

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Bottleneck In Japanese

2020-09-09

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2020-09-09

US / Japan, 2018-2020
Japan’s yen is backward, at least so far as its trading direction may be concerned. This is all the more confusing especially over the past few months when this rising yen has actually been aiding the dollar crash narrative while in reality moving the opposite way from how the dollar system would be behaving if it was really happening.

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Meaning Mexico

2020-08-25

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2020-08-25

Mexico Light Vehicle Production, Jan 2006 - Jul 2020
It took some doing, and some time, but Mexico has managed to bring its car production back up to more normal levels. For two months, there had been practically zero automaking in one of the biggest auto-producing nations. Getting back near where things left off, however, isn’t exactly a “V” shaped recovery; it’s only halfway.

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Part 2 of June TIC: The Dollar Why

2020-08-21

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2020-08-21

Federal Reserve: H.10 Foreign Exchange Rates, 2008-2020
Before getting into the why of the dollar’s stubbornly high exchange value in the face of so much “money printing”, we need to first go back and undertake a decent enough review of the guts maybe even the central focus of the global (euro)dollar system.

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