Tag Archives: 5) Global Macro

The holiday season was shaping up to be a good one, perhaps a very good one. All the signs seemed to be pointing in that direction, especially if you were a worker. All throughout last year, beginning partway through 2017, there wasn’t a day that went by without some mainstream story “reporting” on America’s labor shortage. It was so ubiquitous, this economic boom idea, the media created several spinoffs. The...

China’s central bank was given more independence to conduct monetary policies in late 2003. It had been operating under Order No. 46 of the President of the People’s Republic of China issued in March 1995, which led the 3rd Session of the Eighth National People’s Congress (China’s de facto legislature) to create and adopt the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the People’s Bank of China. This was amended in...

The Fed is the mortal enemy of the young generations, and thus of the nation itself. “The wealth effect” generated by rising stock and housing prices has long been a core goal of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. As Lance Roberts noted in his recent commentary So, The Fed Doesn’t Target The Market, Eh?(Zero Hedge), Ben Bernanke added a “third mandate” to the Fed – the creation of the “wealth effect”–in 2010,...

Rounding up the usual suspects won’t restore a vibrant middle class. What killed the middle class? The answer may well echo an Agatha Christie mystery: rather than there being one guilty party, it may be that each of the suspects participated in the demise of the middle class. If you doubt the middle class has expired, please consider the evidence: The Middle Class Is Shrinking Everywhere — In Chicago It’s Almost Gone...

While Western markets breathed a sigh of relief that US GDP didn’t confirm the global slowdown, not yet, what was taking place over in Asia went in the other direction. There has been a sense, a wish perhaps, that if the global economy truly did hit a rough spot it would be limited to just the last three months of 2018. Hopefully Mario Draghi is on to something. Therefore, Q4 US GDP wasn’t as bad as feared, cushioning...

It was always folly to believe that inflating asset bubbles could solve the structural problems of a post-industrial economy. The Doomsday Scenario for the stock and housing bubbles is simple: the Fed’s magic fails. When dropping interest rates to zero and flooding the financial sector with loose money fail to ignite the economy and reflate the deflating bubbles, punters will realize the Fed’s magic only worked the...

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. Not only would safety instruments like UST’s have to contend with the unemployment...

For years, realtors have been waiting for more housing inventory. It had become an article of faith, what was restraining a full-blown recovery was the lack of units available. The level of resales like construction was up, but still way, way less than it was now fourteen years past the prior peak despite sufficient population growth to have absorbed the previous bubble’s overbuilding. All the way back in March 2017,...

Unless the Fed is going to start buying millions of homes outright, prices are going to fall to what buyers can afford. There are two generalities that can be applied to all asset bubbles: 1. Bubbles inflate for longer and reach higher levels than most pre-bubble analysts expected 2. All bubbles burst, despite mantra-like claims that “this time it’s different” The bubble burst tends to follow a symmetrical reversal of...

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. It has been the one constant. Central bankers declare their policies successful, ignoring mountains of...