Tag Archive: US Treasury

Head Faking In The Empty Zoo: Powell Expands The Balance Sheet (Again)

2019-10-09

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet, 2001-2019

They remain just as confused as Richard Fisher once was. Back in ’13 while QE3 was still relatively young and QE4 (yes, there were four) practically brand new, the former President of the Dallas Fed worried all those bank reserves had amounted to nothing more than a monetary head fake. In 2011, Ben Bernanke had admitted basically the same thing.

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Janus Powell

2019-06-09

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-06-09

Again, who’s following who? As US Treasury yields drop and eurodollar futures prices rise, signaling expectations for lower money rates in the near future, Federal Reserve officials are catching up to them. It was these markets which first took further rate hikes off the table before there ever was a Fed “pause.”

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COT Blue: Distinct Lack of Green But A Lot That’s Gold

2019-04-24

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-04-24

Gold, in my worldview, can be a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. If it goes up, that’s fear. Nothing good. If it goes down, that’s collateral. In many ways, worse. Either way, it is only bad, right? Not always. There are times when rising gold signals inflation, more properly reflation perceptions. Determining which is which is the real challenge.

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Is Inflation Beginning? Are You Ready?

2019-03-25

by MN Gordon

2019-03-25

Extrapolating The Recent Past Can Be Hazardous To Your Wealth. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” remarked George Santayana over 100 years ago. These words, as strung together in this sequence, certainly sound good. But how to render them to actionable advice is less certain.

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The Real End of the Bond Market

2019-03-22

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-03-22

These things are actually quite related, though I understand how it might not appear to be that way at first. As noted earlier today, the Fed (yet again) proves it has no idea how global money markets work. They can’t even get federal funds right after two technical adjustments to IOER (the joke).

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Chart(s) of the Week: Reviewing Curve Warnings

2019-03-19

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-03-19

Quick review: stocks hit a bit of a rough patch right during the height of inflation hysteria. At the end of January 2018, just as the US unemployment rate had finally achieved the very center of attention, global markets were rocked by instability. Unexpectedly, of course.

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No Surprise, Hysteria Wasn’t a Sound Basis For Interpretation

2019-02-28

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-02-28

Labor Utilization Total Hours Worked 2008-2018

What gets them into trouble is how they just can’t help themselves. Go back one year, to early 2018. Last February it was all-but-assured (in mainstream coverage) that the US economy was going to take off. The bond market, meaning UST’s, was about to be massacred because the overheating boom would force a double shot down its throat.

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Sinking Shippers Signal Global Goods Troubles

2019-02-24

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-02-24

It infects every boardroom across the world. Big business requires decent forecasting, yet time and again it seems they are deprived of what they desperately need. Instead, even after this last decade, the world’s largest companies continue to be surprised by weakness that is far more prevalent than strength.

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Bond Curves Right All Along, But It Won’t Matter (Yet)

2019-02-03

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2019-02-03

Real GDP in the Eurodollar Era 1993-2017

Men have long dreamed of optimal outcomes. There has to be a better way, a person will say every generation. Freedom is far too messy and unpredictable. Everybody hates the fat tails, unless and until they realize it is outlier outcomes that actually mark progress. The idea was born in the eighties that Economics had become sufficiently advanced that the business cycle was no longer a valid assumption.

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Monthly Macro Monitor – January 2019

2019-01-27

by Joseph Y. Calhoun

2019-01-27

A Return To Normalcy. In the first two years after a newly elected President takes office he enacts a major tax cut that primarily benefits the wealthy and significantly raises tariffs on imports. His foreign policy is erratic but generally pulls the country back from foreign commitments. He also works to reduce immigration and roll back regulations enacted by his predecessor.

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Eurodollar Futures: Powell May Figure It Out Sooner, He Won’t Have Any Other Choice

2018-11-20

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-11-20

Eurodollar Futures Curve, May - Sep 2018

For Janet Yellen, during her somewhat brief single term she never made the same kind of effort as Ben Bernanke had. Her immediate predecessor, Bernanke, wanted to make the Federal Reserve into what he saw as the 21st century central bank icon. Monetary policy wouldn’t operate on the basis of secrecy and ambiguity. Transparency became far more than a buzzword.

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Downslope CPI

2018-09-16

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-09-16

Cushing, OK, delivered what it could for the CPI. The contribution to the inflation rate from oil prices was again substantial in August 2018. The energy component of the index gained 10.3% year-over-year, compared to 11.9% in July. It was the fourth straight month of double digit gains.

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Global Asset Allocation Update

2018-07-27

by Joseph Y. Calhoun

2018-07-27

Note: This will be a short update. We are shifting the timing of some of our reports. The monthly Global Asset Allocation update will now be published in the first week of the month, aiming for the first of each month. I’ll put out a full report next week. The Bi-Weekly Economic Review is shifting to a monthly update, published on the 15th of each month.

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Spoofing Futures and Banging Fixes: Same Banks, Same Trading Desks

2018-04-22

by Ronan Manly

2018-04-22

On 29 January 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Division of Enforcement together with the Criminal Division of the US Department of Justice and the FBI announced criminal and civil enforcement actions against 3 global investment banks and 5 traders for involvement in trade spoofing in precious metals futures contracts on the US-based Commodity Exchange (COMEX).

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US Gold Reserves, Of Immense Interest to Russia and China

2018-01-22

by Ronan Manly

2018-01-22

Recently, Russian television network RT extensively quoted me in a series of articles about the US Government’s gold reserves. The RT articles, published on the RT.com website, were based on a series of questions RT put to me about various aspects of the official US gold reserves. These gold reserves are held by the US Treasury, mostly in the custody of the US Mint. The US Mint is a branch of the US Treasury.

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The Great Risk of So Many Dinosaurs

2018-01-07

by Jeffrey P. Snider

2018-01-07

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) was established a long time ago in the maelstrom of World War II budgetary as well as wartime conflagration. That made sense. To fight all over the world, the government required creative help in figuring out how to sell an amount of bonds it hadn’t needed (in proportional terms) since the Civil War. A twenty-person committee made up of money dealer bank professionals and leaders was one of the few...

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New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland: Part 1

2017-05-21

by Ronan Manly

2017-05-21

“In the Governor’s absence I attended the meeting in Zijlstra’s room in the BIS on the afternoon of Monday, 10th December to continue discussions about a possible gold pool. Emminger, de la Geniere, de Strycker, Leutwiler, Larre and Pohl were present.”

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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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Who Owns the Public Gold: States or Central Banks?

2017-02-04

by Ronan Manly

2017-02-04

It’s a common misconception that the world’s major central banks and monetary authorities own large quantities of gold bars. Most of them do not. Instead, this gold is owned by the sovereign states that have entrusted it to the respective nation’s central bank, and the central banks are merely acting as guardians of the gold. Tracing the ownership question a step further, what are sovereign states?

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