Tag Archive: taper

The Hawks Circle Here, The Doves Win There

2022-01-26

by

2022-01-26

We’ve been here before, near exactly here. On this side of the Pacific Ocean, in the US particularly the situation was said to be just grand. The economy was responding nicely to QE’s 3 and 4 (yes, there were four of them by that point), Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had said in the middle of 2013 it was becoming more than enough, creating for him and the FOMC coveted breathing space so as to begin tapering both of those ongoing programs.A...

Read More »

Taper Discretion Means Not Loving Payrolls Anymore

2022-01-10

by

2022-01-10

When Alan Greenspan went back to Stanford University in September 1997, his reputation was by then well-established. Even as he had shocked the world only nine months earlier with “irrational exuberance”, the theme of his earlier speech hadn’t actually been about stocks; it was all about money.The “maestro” would revisit that subject repeatedly especially in the late nineties, and it was again his topic in California early Autumn ’97.

Read More »

As The Fed Tapers: What If More Rapid (published) Wage Increases Are Actually Evidence of *Deflationary* Conditions?

2022-01-05

by

2022-01-05

Since the Federal Reserve is not in the money business, their recent hawkish shift toward an increasingly anti-inflationary stance is a twisted and convoluted case of subjective interpretation.

Read More »

Start Long With The (long ago) End of Inflation

2021-12-24

by

2021-12-24

With the eurodollar futures curve slightly inverted, the implications of it are somewhat specific to the features of that particular market. And there’s more than enough reason to reasonably suspect this development is more specifically deflationary money than more general economic concerns.

Read More »

This Is A Big One (no, it’s not clickbait)

2021-12-02

by

2021-12-02

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: dollar up for reasons no one can explain; yield curve flattening dramatically resisting the BOND ROUT!!! everyone has said is inevitable; a very hawkish Fed increasingly certain about inflation risks; then, the eurodollar curve inverts which blasts Jay Powell’s dreamland in favor of the proper interpretation, deflation, of those first two.

Read More »

The Wile E. Powell Inflation: Are We Really Just Going To Ignore The Cliff?

2021-11-06

by

2021-11-06

Last year did not end on a sound note. The initial rebound after 2020’s recession was supposed to be a straight line, lifting upward for the other side of the infamous “V” shape. Such hopes had been dashed, though, and as the disappointing year wound toward its own end yet another big problem loomed.

Read More »

What Does Taper Look Like From The Inside? Not At All What You’d Think

2021-11-05

by

2021-11-05

Why always round numbers? Monetary policy targets in the post-Volcker era are changed on even terms. Alan Greenspan had his quarter-point fed funds moves. Ben Bernanke faced with crisis would auction $25 billion via TAF. QE’s are done in even numbers, either total purchases or their monthly pace.

Read More »

The Real Tantrum Should Be Over The Disturbing Lack of Celebration (higher yields)

2021-11-03

by

2021-11-03

Bring on the tantrum. Forget this prevaricating, we should want and expect interest rates to get on with normalizing. It’s been a long time, verging to the insanity of a decade and a half already that keeps trending more downward through time. What’s the holdup?

Read More »

The Curve Is Missing Something Big

2021-10-21

by

2021-10-21

What would it look like if the Treasury market was forced into a cross between 2013 and 2018? I think it might be something like late 2021. Before getting to that, however, we have to get through the business of decoding the yield curve since Economics and the financial media have done such a thorough job of getting it entirely wrong (see: Greenspan below).

Read More »

Tapering Or Calibrating, The Lady’s Not Inflating

2021-10-07

by

2021-10-07

We’ve got one central bank over here in America which appears as if its members can’t wait to “taper”, bringing up both the topic and using that particular word as much as possible. Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve obviously intends to buoy confidence by projecting as much when it does cut back on the pace of its (irrelevant) QE6.

Read More »

Taper *Without* Tantrum

2021-08-17

by

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.

Read More »

CPI’s At Fives Yet Treasury Auctions

2021-08-12

by

2021-08-12

A momentous day, for sure, but one lost in what would turn out to be a seemingly endless sea of them. October 8, 2008, right in the thick of the world’s first global financial crisis (how could it have been global, surely not subprime mortgages?) the Federal Reserve took center stage; or tried to.

Read More »