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Tag Archives: economy

All Eyes On Inventory

You’ve heard of the virtuous circle in the economy. Risk taking leads to spending/investment/hiring, which then leads to more spending/investment/hiring. Recovery, in other words. In the old days of the 20th century, quite a lot of the circle was rounded out by the inventory cycle. Both recession and recovery would depend upon how much additional product floated up and down the supply chain. Deflation, too. On the contraction side, demand might fall off a bit for...

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Weekly Market Pulse: Time For A Taper Tantrum?

The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to say that it is talking about maybe reducing bond purchases sometime later this year or maybe next year or at least, someday. Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at which he’ll tell us that markets have nothing to worry about because even if they taper QE, interest rates aren’t going up for a long, long time. That statement might have more credibility if the Fed had been right about just about anything over the...

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Weekly Market Pulse: Time For A Taper Tantrum?

The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to say that it is talking about maybe reducing bond purchases sometime later this year or maybe next year or at least, someday. Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at which he’ll tell us that markets have nothing to worry about because even if they taper QE, interest rates aren’t going up for a long, long time. That statement might have more credibility if the Fed had been right about just about anything over the...

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August Retail Sales Surprise To The Upside, Because They Were Down?

According to the movie The Princess Bride, the worst classic blunder anyone can make is to get involved in a land war in Asia. No kidding. The second is something about Sicilians and death. There is also, I’ve come to learn, an unspoken third which cautions against chasing down and then trying to break down seasonal adjustments in economic data. Some things are best left just as they are published. . The Census Bureau today released its estimates for retail sales....

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August Retail Sales Surprise To The Upside, Because They Were Down?

According to the movie The Princess Bride, the worst classic blunder anyone can make is to get involved in a land war in Asia. No kidding. The second is something about Sicilians and death. There is also, I’ve come to learn, an unspoken third which cautions against chasing down and then trying to break down seasonal adjustments in economic data. Some things are best left just as they are published. . The Census Bureau today released its estimates for retail sales....

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Weekly Market Pulse (VIDEO)

Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun talks about last week’s surprising market reaction to the unemployment numbers and why it’s important to study the bond market. [embedded content] [embedded content] You Might Also Like SNB Sight Deposits: Inflation is there, CHF must Rise 2021-09-13 Sight Deposits have risen by +0.2 bn CHF, this means that the SNB is intervening and buying Euros and Dollars....

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What’s Real Behind Commodities

Inflation is sustained monetary debasement – money printing, if you prefer – that wrecks consumer prices. It is the other of the evil monetary diseases, the one which is far more visible therefore visceral to the consumers pounded by spiraling costs of bare living. Yet, it is the lesser evil by comparison to deflation which insidiously destroys the labor market from the inside out. You see inflation around you; anyone can only tell deflation by hopefully noticing and...

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The Changing Role of Gold

In our post on August 11 titled End of an ERA: The Bretton Woods System and Gold Standard Exchange, we discussed the significance of then-President Nixon’s action of closing the gold window thereby ending the Bretton Woods Monetary system. Under the Bretton Woods monetary system, central banks could exchange their US dollar reserves for gold. This also ended the gold fixed price of US$35 per ounce. This week we explore the two questions that concluded last week’s...

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Taper *Without* Tantrum

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. Taper. Then the tantrum. Except, no, it wasn’t sulking rage over the prospects for fewer...

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Weekly Market Pulse: Happy Anniversary!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the “Nixon shock”, the day President Richard Nixon closed the gold window and ended the post-WWII Bretton Woods currency agreement. That agreement, largely a product of John Maynard Keynes, pegged the dollar to gold and most other currencies to the dollar. It wasn’t a true gold standard as only other countries that were party to the agreement could demand gold in exchange for their dollars, but it was at least a standard of some...

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