Tag Archives: Featured

Inflation* in the US is falling rapidly with the CPI rising just 0.9% in the second half of 2022 versus 5.4% in the first six months. Existing home sales are down 14.6% in the last 3 months and 34% over the last year. Housing starts are down 22% and permits are down 30% year-over-year. Orders for durable goods are down 1.2%, exports are down 3.8%, and imports are down 4.3% over the last 3 months. Real disposable income is up 0.8% in the last six months but was down...

Overview: The Lunar New Year holiday has shut many centers in Asia until the middle of the week, though China's mainland is on holiday all week. The signaling of a downshift in the pace of Fed tightening by some notable hawks helped lift risk appetites ahead of the weekend and saw the S&P 500 snap a four-day decline. Ahead of the weekend the NASDAQ posted its single biggest advance since last November. The downtrend line drawn of January 2022 highs in the...

The return of Chinese tourists to Switzerland is not expected just yet. Keystone / Mark R. Cristino Geneva airport was expected to see the return of direct flights from China next week, but the scheduled Air China flights of January 26 and February 2 have been cancelled due to lack of passengers, reports Swiss public broadcaster RTS. China reopened its borders on January 8 after three years of tough pandemic restrictions. However, there were not enough bookings to...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned about the optimistic estimates for 2023, stating that it will likely be a much more difficult year than 2022. Why would that be? Most strategists and commentators are cheering the recent decline in price inflation as a good signal of recovery. However, there is much more to the outlook than just a moderate decline in price inflation rates. Price inflation is accumulative, and the estimates for 2023 and 2024 still show...

Overpaying for something that could be found in a different store (or online), under the right circumstances, makes both parties happier. After looking around a bit, I asked the cashier at a nearby convenience store if he had any nine-volt batteries because I didn’t see any on the shelf. To my good fortune, he did. I asked for two of them and pulled a $5 bill out of my wallet as he rang them up. “$12,” he said. I gasped a little, put the $5 away, and reached for my...

[Reprinted with permission of the authors.] The year 2023 is shaping up to be a challenging one for the Federal Reserve System. The Fed is on track to post its first annual operating loss since 1915. Per our estimates, the loss will be large, perhaps $100 billion or more, and this cash loss does not count the unrealized mark-to-market losses on the Fed’s massive securities portfolio. An operating loss of $100 billion would, if properly accounted for, leave the Fed...

There are several macro highlights in the week ahead, during which Chinese markets are closed for the Lunar New Year celebration. The preliminary January purchasing managers surveys pose headline risk. However, the survey data, for example, had the US composite below the 50 boom/bust level every month in H2 22, which likely overstates the case, as the first look at Q4 22 US GDP will probably show. While some improvement is expected, composite PMI readings are...

At a meeting in Bern on 19 January 2023, Werner Luginbühl, the head of Elcom, Switzerland’s electricity regulator, called on the sector to be careful to manage consumer expectations, reported RTS. Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.comAccording to Luginbühl, many consumers are confused by Switzerland’s rising electricity prices. Some think the electricity consumed in Switzerland comes from hydro and nuclear production where production costs have been unaffected....

Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We’re supposed to be horrified and worried that the US might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the US has never defaulted, and that default be a disaster. (That’s wrong, by the way. The US has defaulted before.) But these debt ceiling debates always end the same way. Congress ends up increasing the debt ceiling and the US’s national debt...

The line for the self-checkout registers at my neighborhood Albertsons stretched into the store’s produce section. Is this human progress? I wondered, scanning my groceries—this just after I had filled my car’s gas tank at a not-so-convenient convenience store near work. Not long ago, someone not only pumped your gas and cleaned your windshield but also checked your oil and tire pressure while you waited comfortably behind the wheel of your car. Gas retailers were...