Tag Archive: rising dollar

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

2021-02-24

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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Is GFC2 Over?

2020-03-18

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-03-18

Is it over? That’s the question everyone is asking about both major crises, the answer is more obvious for only the one. As it pertains to the pandemic, no, it is not. Still the early stages. The other crisis, the global dollar run? Not looking like it, either.

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You Shouldn’t Miss The Cupom

2020-02-14

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2020-02-14

I actually wanted to focus on this yesterday but confirmation wasn’t forthcoming until today. So, it ended up being a broader note on the dollar which only included some mention of Brazil in passing. Still a worthwhile couple of minutes.

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Everything Comes Down To Which Way The Dollar Is Leaning

2019-12-21

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-12-21

Is the global economy on the mend as everyone at least here in America is now assuming? For anyone else to attempt to answer that question, they might first have to figure out what went wrong in the first place. Most have simply assumed, and continue to assume, it has been fallout from the “trade wars.”

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More Signals Of The Downturn, Globally Synchronized

2019-12-07

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-12-07

For US importers, October is their month. And it makes perfect sense how it would be. With the Christmas season about to kick into full swing each and every November, the time for retailers to stock up in hearty anticipation is in the weeks beforehand. The goods, a good many future Christmas presents, find themselves in transit from all over the world during the month of October.

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The Top of GDP

2018-07-26

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-07-26

In 1999, real GDP growth in the United States was 4.69% (Q4 over Q4). In 1998, it was 4.9989%. These were annual not quarterly rates, meaning that for two years straight GDP expanded by better than 4.5%. Individual quarters within those years obviously varied, but at the end of the day the economy was clearly booming.

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Central Bank Transparency, Or Doing Deliberate Dollar Deals With The Devil

2018-01-25

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-01-25

The advent of open and transparent central banks is a relatively new one. For most of their history, these quasi-government institutions operated in secret and they liked it that way. As late as October 1993, for example, Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress intentionally trying to cloud the issue as to whether verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings actually existed.

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US Export/Import: ‘Something’ Is Still Out There

2017-09-13

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-13

US Real Personal Income, Jan 2010 - Jul 2017

In January 2016, just as the wave of “global turmoil” was cresting on domestic as well as foreign shores, retired Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was giving a series of lectures for the IMF. His topic wasn’t really the so-called taper tantrum of 2013 but it really was. Even ideologically blinded economists like Bernanke could see how one might have followed the other; the roots of 2016 in 2013.

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Moscow Rules (for ‘dollars’)

2017-09-02

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-09-02

In Ian Fleming’s 1959 spy novel Goldfinger, he makes mention of the Moscow Rules. These were rules-of-thumb for clandestine agents working during the Cold War in the Soviet capital, a notoriously difficult assignment. Among the quips included in the catalog were, “everyone is potentially under opposition control” and “do not harass the opposition.” Fleming’s book added another, “Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy...

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Inflation Is Oil, But Inflation Is Much More Than Consumer Prices

2017-05-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-05-16

CPI Changes On Energy, January 2016 - May 2017

The average annual change in the WTI benchmark price was in April about 25%. That was still a sizable increase year-over-year, and just marginally less than March’s average of 33%. For calculated inflation rates, it represents the last of the base effects that have to this point made it appear as if economic improvement was possibly serious.

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‘Dollar’ ‘Improvement’

2017-04-29

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-04-29

US TIC Official Buying Of US Treasury Bonds And Notes, February 2013 - February 2017

According to the headline TIC statistics, foreign central banks have in the past six months sold the fewest UST’s since the 6-month period ended November 2015. That may indicate an easing of “dollar” pressure in the private markets due to “reflation” sentiment.

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Optimal Lunacy

2017-04-15

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-04-15

In June 2012, Janet Yellen, then the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, addressed an audience in Boston with what for the time seemed like a radical departure. It was the latest in a string of them, for conditions throughout the “recovery” period never did quite seem to hit the recovery stride. Because of that, there was constant stream of trial balloons suggesting how the Federal Reserve might try to overcome this economic inertia. At that...

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Pressure, Sure, But From Where?

2017-03-22

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2017-03-22

It may just be that in life you have to get used to disappointment. Though not for lack of trying, I have spent a great deal of time over the years intending to piece together exactly what happened on days like October 15, 2014. The official explanation is an obvious whitewash, one so haphazard that I doubt it will ever be referred to again outside of ridicule.

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Brazil: Continuing Problems

2017-02-13

by Jeffrey P. Snider

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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