Tag Archive: Economics

Downturn Rising, German Industry

2019-03-12

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2019-03-12

US Treasury Yield Curve, Aug 2007 - Jan 2019
You know things have really changed when Economists start revising their statements more than the data. What’s going on in the global economy has quickly reached a critical stage. This represents a big shift in expectations, a really big one, especially in the mainstream where the words “strong” and “boom” couldn’t have been used any more than they were.

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ECB: running out of runway – Part II

2019-03-03

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2019-03-03

ECB Balance Sheet All Assets, 1999 - 2018
Overall, under Mr. Draghi’s watch, the ECB’s balance sheet has ballooned to a previously unimaginable scale and aggressive policies like the extensive QE program and negative rates have encouraged the accumulation of debt and heavily distorted market mechanisms.

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China: Harbinger of Global Economic Decline

2019-02-13

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2019-02-13

China's Slowing Economy
The latest numbers released by China’s statistics bureau fueled widespread concerns about the outlook of the global economy, as the Asian superpower reported its slowest growth rate since 1990. The figures showed a 6.6% growth for 2018, confirming the view that the growth engine of the world economy is running out of steam.

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Venezuela: when fiat money reaches its intrinsic value

2018-12-06

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2018-12-06

Hyperinflation Spiral, 2006-2018
Over the last years, Venezuela has become a modern poster child for the failure of socialism and with good reason. It offers an abundance of lessons and stern warnings for many western nations, but it also provides a very insightful and relevant reminder for individual investors too.

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Why Am I Fighting for the Gold Standard?

2018-08-31

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2018-08-31

Monetary Metals
Life is good. They could not have imagined what we have now, back in the dark ages. So I have never understood why people prep for a return to the dark ages. The only thing I can think of is that they don’t really picture what life is like. 14 hours a day of back-breaking labor to eke out a subsistence living. Subject to the risks of rain, sun, and insects.

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Aligning Politics To economics

2017-11-12

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2017-11-12

Real Final Sales to Domestic Purchasers, Jan 1983 - 2016
There is no argument that the New Deal of the 1930’s completely changed the political situation in America, including the fundamental relationship of the government to its people. The way it came about was entirely familiar, a sense from among a large (enough) portion of the general population that the paradigm of the time no longer worked. It was only for whichever political party that spoke honestly to that predicament to obtain long-term...

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The Savings Rate Conundrum

2017-11-08

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2017-11-08

Median Disposable Income and Debt Ratio, 1967 - 2015
The economy is booming. Employment is at decade lows. Unemployment claims are at the lowest levels in 40-years. The stock market is at record highs and climbing. Consumers are more confident than they have been in a decade. Wages are finally showing signs of growth.

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Dollar Surge Continues Ahead Of Jobs Report; Europe Dips As Catalan Fears Return

2017-10-07

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2017-10-07

CBOE VIX Gauge, 1990 - 2019
World stocks eased back from record highs and fell for the first time in eight days, as jitters about Catalonia’s independence push returned while bets on higher U.S. interest rates sent the dollar to its highest since mid August; S&P 500 futures were modestly in the red - as they have been every day this week before levitating to record highs - ahead of hurricane-distorted nonfarm payrolls data (full preview here). U.S. jobs report will also be...

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The Secret History Of The Banking Crisis

Accounts of the financial crisis leave out the story of the secretive deals between banks that kept the show on the road. How long can the system be propped up for? It is a decade since the first tremors of what would become the Great Financial Crisis began to convulse global markets. Across the world from China and South Korea, to Ukraine, Greece, Brexit Britain and Trump’s America it has shaken our economy, our society and latterly our politics.

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Reports on a Quarterly Survey Conducted: Qualifying Shortage (Labor)

2017-07-23

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2017-07-23

US Nonfarm Payrolls Missing
There isn’t a day that goes by in 2017 where some study is released or anecdote is published purporting a sinister labor market development. There is a shortage of workers, we are told, often a very big one. The idea is simple enough; the media has been writing for years that the US economy was recovering, and they would very much like to either see one and be proven right (and that recent revived populism is illegitimate), or find an excuse why...

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US Federal Funds, Bond Market and WSJ Economic Survey: The Hidden State of Money

2017-07-13

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2017-07-13

US WSJ Economic Forecast Survey
Correctly interpreting the bond market is more than just how and when to invest your money in UST’s. Not that it isn’t useful in such a money management capacity, but interest rates starting at the risk-free tell us a lot about what is wholly unseen. There is simply no way to directly observe inside an economy what is taking place at all levels and in all transactions. We try to estimate as best we can in the aggregate, but the real economy works...

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Necessity is the Mother of Invention – Retirees Desperate Reach for Yield

2017-06-10

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2017-06-10

Ben Bernanke’s creativity inspired a generation of economists and central bankers. QE, ZIRP and NIRP established a new class of economics that is mathematically sound but practically disastrous. Billions of dollars were transferred from savers to investors to boost the economy, but the wizards of quant forgot that something has to give. In this case, it was the formation of a pension crisis that threatens the golden years of millions of retirees...

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A Problem Emerges: Central Banks Injected A Record $1 Trillion In 2017… It’s Not Enough

2017-05-11

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2017-05-11

Aggregate Balance Sheet Of Large Central Banks, 2000 - 2017
Two weeks ago Bank of America caused a stir when it calculated that central banks (mostly the ECB & BoJ) have bought $1 trillion of financial assets just in the first four months of 2017, which amounts to $3.6 trillion annualized, "the largest CB buying on record."

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True Cognitive Dissonance

2017-03-04

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2017-03-04

Inflation In Japan 2011-2016
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.”

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Video: The Swiss National Bank Is Acting Like A Hedge Fund

2017-02-26

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2017-02-26

Mario Draghi ECB SNB
We discuss the fact that Central Banks have basically morphed into Hedge Funds with similar risky investing strategies, except they buy without any regard to the underlying fundamentals of the assets they are buying. When did the Swiss Citizens say it was the proper role for the Swiss National Bank to be buying US Stocks? How is this stimulating the Swiss Economy?

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Brazil: Continuing Problems

2017-02-13

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2017-02-13

Brazil Industrial Production 1975 - 2016
The cruelest part, perhaps, of this economic condition globally is how it plays against type. In all prior cycles, economies of all kinds and orientations all over the globe would go into recession and then bounce right of it once at the bottom. It was often difficult to see the bottom, of course, but once recovery happened there was no arguing against it.

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80 percent Of Central Banks Plan To Buy More Stocks

2017-01-24

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2017-01-24

Central banks foreign-exchange reserves, Global debt
Regular readers remember how, when we first reported around the time of our launch eight years ago that central banks buy stocks, intervene and prop up markets, and generally manipulate equities in order to maintain confidence in a collapsing system, and avoid a liquidation panic and bank runs, it was branded "fake news" by the established financial "kommentariat."

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Toward A New World Order, part III

2016-12-19

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2016-12-19

A new world order is coming of age and the transition is painful to accept for a Western middle class with a deep-seated sense of entitlement. We showed how the West feels threatened globally in Toward a New World Order and followed up explaining how this translate into domestic politics in Toward a New World Order Part II. We will now continue this series by showing how gross economic mismanagement have created the new political class that we...

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WTI Crude tumbles To $49 Handle, Erases OPEC/NOPEC Deal Gains

2016-12-15

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2016-12-15

WTI Crude
But, but, but... growth, and inflation, and supply cuts, and growth again... Well that de-escalated quickly... As Libya restarts exports and The Fed sends the dollar soaring so WTI crude prices just broke back to a $49 handle for the first time since Dec 8th.

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Former CEO Of UBS And Credit Suisse: “Central Banks Are Past The Point Of No Return, It Will All End In A Crash”

2016-11-21

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2016-11-21

Remember when bashing central banks and predicting financial collapse as a result of monetary manipulation and intervention was considered "fake news" within the "serious" financial community, disseminated by fringe blogs? In an interview with Swiss Sonntags Blick titled appropriately enough "A Recession Is Sometimes Necessary", the former CEO of UBS and Credit Suisse, Oswald Grübel, lashed out by criticizing the growing strength of central banks...

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