Tag Archives: 5) Global Macro

China’s growing troubles go way back long before trade wars ever showed up. It was Euro$ #2 that set this course in motion, and then Euro$ #3 which proved the country’s helplessness. It proved it not just to anyone willing to honestly evaluate the situation, it also established the danger to one key faction of Chinese officials. The entire world slowed in 2012 following #2, but until the bottom of #3 it wasn’t really clear what that might mean. For a very long time,...

If you’re truly interested in finding solutions to humanity’s pressing problems, then start helping us pry open the Overton Window. The Overton Window describes the spectrum of concepts, policies and approaches that can be publicly discussed without being ridiculed or marginalized as “too radical,” “unworkable,” “crazy,” etc. The narrower the Overton Window, the greater the impoverishment of public dialog and the fewer the solutions available. Those holding power in...

This is only a partial list of what we’ve lost to globalism, cheap credit and the Tyranny of Price which generates the Landfill Economy. A documentary on the decline of small farms and the rural economy in France highlights what we’ve lost in the decades-long rush to globalize and financialize everything on the planet— what we call Neoliberalism, the ideology of turning everything into a global market controlled by The Tyranny of Price and cheap credit issued to...

We are beginning to become more constructive on EM. The main trigger for some optimism is the shifting US-China dynamic. In our view, the partial trade deal reveals weakness on the part of the US. Reports suggest China will begin pushing for all existing tariffs to be dropped as part of Phase 2, which would be very positive for EM. That is still likely months away but this shifting dynamic bears watching. We will be putting out a longer MarketView piece on this topic...

We’re all against “fake news,” right? Until your content is deemed “fake news” in a “fake news” indictment without any evidence, trial or recourse. When propaganda is cleverly engineered, people don’t even recognize it as propaganda: welcome to the USSR, the United States of Suppression and Repression. The propaganda in the U.S. has reached such a high state that the majority of people accept it as “pravda” (truth), even as their limbic system’s BS detector is...

If we want to make real progress, we have to properly diagnose the structural sources of the rot that is spreading quickly into every nook and cranny of the society and culture. It seems my rant yesterday (Let Me Know When It’s Over) upset a lot of people, many of whom felt I trivialized the differences between the parties and all the reforms that people believe will right wrongs and reduce suffering. OK, I get it, there are differences, but if the “reform” doesn’t...

Because the prevailing theory behind the global slowdown is “trade wars”, most if not all attention is focused on China. While the correct target, everyone is coming it at from the wrong direction. The world awaits a crash in Chinese exports engineered by US tariffs. It’s not happening, at least according to China’s official statistics. The reported numbers aren’t good by any stretch, but they aren’t perhaps as bad as imagined by the constant references to what we...

The dollar remains under pressure due to weak US retail sales and rising optimism on Brexit and the trade war Brexit negotiations remain tense and we should expect a higher than usual noise-to-signal ratio at this stage China said its goal is to stop the trade war and remove all tariffs US has a full data schedule; we remain constructive on the US economic outlook UK reported September retail sales; Sweden’s unemployment rate hit a 4-year high of 7.4% Australia...

Maybe it’s my cheap seat or my general exhaustion, but the whole staged spectacle is beyond tiresome; I’ve had my fill. Let me me know when it’s over: yes, all of it: the impeachment, the trade dispute with China, U.S. involvement in Syria, the manic stock market rally and the 2020 election. I’m not interested in following every twist and turn of the endless trauma-drama because none of it changes anything: Swapping Pence for Trump changes nothing, and then swapping...

Some cracks have appeared in the market’s risk-on sentiment We continue to believe that recent developments take some pressure off the Fed to cut rates again this month Our base case for a Brexit delay has been strengthened; UK reported weak labor market data The situation is Turkey continues to develop negatively for asset prices; trade data out of China once again showed the impact of the trade war and the resulting global slowdown RBA minutes were released; Japan...