Tag Archive: Federal Reserve/Monetary Policy

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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Polar Opposite Sides of Consumer Credit End Up in the Same Place: Jobs

2020-12-08

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2020-12-08

CPS Household Survey, 2003-2020
If anything is going to be charged off, it might be student loans. All the rage nowadays, the government, approximately half of it, is busily working out how it “should” be done and by just how much. A matter of economic stimulus, loan cancellation proponents are correct that students have burdened themselves with unprofitable college “education” investments.

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Don’t Really Need ‘Em, Few More Nails Anyway

2020-12-06

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2020-12-06

Pro forma CES Private Payrolls, 2020-2021
The ISM’s Non-manufacturing PMI continued to decelerate from its high registered all the way back in July 2020. In that month, the headline index reached 58.1, the best since early 2019, and for many signaling that everything was coming up “V.”

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There Have Actually Been Some Jobs Saved, Only In Place of Recovery

2020-12-04

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2020-12-04

IHS Markit US Manufacturing, 2012-2020
The ISM reported a small decline in its manufacturing PMI today. The index had moved up to 59.3 for the month of October 2020 in what had been its highest since September 2018. For November, the setback was nearly two points, bringing the headline down to an estimate of 57.5.

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Just Who Is, And Who Is Not, Selling T-Bills

2020-11-29

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2020-11-29

Are foreigners selling Treasury bills? If they are, this would seem to merit consideration for the reflation argument. After all, the paramount monetary deficiency exposed by March’s GFC2 (and the Fed’s blatant role in making it worse) was the dangerous degree of shortage over the best collateral.

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Treasury Auctions Are Anything But Sorry Because They’ve Never Been Sorry About Solly

2020-11-28

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2020-11-28

US TIC, 2010-2020
Twenty years ago, in November 2000, the Treasury Department changed one aspect of the way the government would sell its own debt. Auctions of these and other kinds of securities had been ongoing for decades, back to the twenties, and they had been transformed many times along the way. In the middle of the 1970’s Great Inflation, for example, Treasury gradually phased out all other means for issuing securities, by 1977 relying exclusively on...

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Deflation Returns To Japan, Part 2

2020-11-23

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2020-11-23

Japan PMIs, 2018-2020
Japan Finance Minister Taro Aso, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, caused a global stir of sorts back in early June when he appeared to express something like Japanese racial superiority at least with respect to how that country was handling the COVID pandemic.

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Extending the Summer Slowdown

2020-11-20

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2020-11-20

US Retail Sales, 2016-2020
A big splurge in September, and then not much more in October. While it would be consistent for many to focus on the former, instead there is much about the latter which, for once, is feeding growing concerns. Retail sales, American consumer spending on goods, has been the one (outside of economically insignificant housing) bright spot since summer

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Six Point Nine Times Two Equals What It Had In Twenty Fourteen

2020-11-17

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2020-11-17

China Industrial Production, 1999-2020
It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.”

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Where Is It, Chairman Powell?

2020-11-15

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2020-11-15

CPI less Food & Energy, 1983-2020
Where is it, Chairman Powell? After spending months deliberately hyping a “flood” of digital money printing, and then unleashing average inflation targeting making Americans believe the central bank will be wickedly irresponsible when it comes to consumer prices, the evidence portrays a very different set of circumstance.

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The Prices And Costs Of What Xi Believes He’s Got To Do

2020-11-12

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2020-11-12

China Exports, 1995-2020
It does seem, at first, a huge contradiction. On the one hand, what we know so far of China’s 14th 5-year plan apparently will lean heavily on new technologies not-yet invented to rescue the country’s economy from the pit of de-globalization the eurodollar system had thrown it into years ago.

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Good Payrolls Still Say Slowdown

2020-11-09

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2020-11-09

Pro forma CES Private Payrolls, 2020-2021
The payroll report for the month of October 2020 was a very good one. This shouldn’t be surprising, perfect BLS publications appear with regularity even during the most challenging of circumstances. Headlines and underneath, everything looked fine last month.

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Counting The Corroborated Stall, Not The Coming Lawfare Election Mess

2020-11-06

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2020-11-06

CPS Household Survey, 2003-2020
While we wait for the electoral count to be sorted out by what we hope are competent and honest people (not holding our breath), there’s a greater muddle growing where it actually counts and where it’s never fully nor properly accounted. By a large and growing number of accounts, the US economy’s rebound seems to have stalled out back around June or July, an inflection unrelated to COVID case counts, too.

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Meanwhile, Outside Today’s DC

2020-11-05

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2020-11-05

German Economy, 2012-2020
With all eyes on Washington DC, today, everyone should instead be focused on Europe. As we’ve written for nearly three years now, for nearly three years Europe has been at the unfortunate forefront of Euro$ #4. We could argue about whether coming out of GFC2 back in March pushed everything into a Reflation #4 – possible – or if this is still just one three-yearlong squeeze of a global dollar shortage.

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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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Consumer Confidence Indicator: Anesthesia

2020-10-24

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2020-10-24

European Commision Consumer Confidence Indicator, 2006-2020
Europeans are growing more downbeat again. While ostensibly many are more worried about a new set of restrictions due to (even more overreactions about) COVID, that’s only part of the problem. The bigger factor, economically speaking, is that Europe’s economy has barely moved, or at most not moved near enough, off the bottom.

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It Just Isn’t Enough

2020-10-10

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2020-10-10

Unemployment Insurance, Initial Jobless Claims, 1980-2020
The Department of Labor attached a technical note to its weekly report on unemployment claims. The state of California has announced that it is suspending the processing of initial claims filed by (former) workers in that state.

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Who’s Negative? The Marginal American Worker

2020-10-06

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2020-10-06

CPS Household Survey: Civilian Labor Force Level, 2007-2020
The BLS’s payroll report draws most of the mainstream attention, with the exception of the unemployment rate (especially these days). The government designates the former as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) series, and it intends to measure factors like payrolls (obviously), wages, and earnings from the perspective of the employers, or establishments.

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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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