Tag Archives: Federal Reserve

Summary: Trump has moderated in several areas, he is being checked in others, and less impactful in others. This will underscore the focus on Yellen’s testimony this week. At same time, many will be reluctant to short the dollar ahead of the tax reform plans that may be unveiled in Trump’s upcoming speech to Congress. There is a lull in the maelstrom launched by the Trump Administration.  His ban on...

Summary: Fed, BOJ, and BOE meet next week, each may adjust economic assessments in more favorable direction. Key challenge for many investors is the new US Administration. US employment, EMU inflation, Q4 GDP, and China’s PMI are among the data highlights. Three major central banks meet in the week ahead, and there are several important reports due out that will give investors more insight into how the...

Having discontinued its production of EUR500 banknotes, it appears Europe is charging towards the utopian dream of a cashless society. Just days after Davos’ elites discussed why the world needs to “get rid of currency,” the European Commission has introduced a proposal enforcing “restrictions on payments in cash.” With Rogoff, Stiglitz, Summers et al. all calling for the end of cash – because only terrorists and...

In September 1986, The Economist weekly newspaper published its first-ever “Big Mac Index”. It was a light-hearted way for the paper to gauge whether foreign currencies are over- or under-valued by comparing the prices of Big Macs around the world. In theory, the price of a Big Mac in Rio de Janeiro should be the same as a Big Mac in Cairo or Toronto. After all, no matter where in the world you buy one, a Big Mac...

Tens of millions of Americans and their employers pour money into pension plans each month, counting on those funds to grow and to be there when needed at retirement. But a time bomb awaits. The bulk of U.S. pension funds are dangerously underfunded, and the assets are often invested in securities that have bleak prospects for providing income that keeps up with a general decline in purchasing power. A pension plan...

Tens of millions of Americans and their employers pour money into pension plans each month, counting on those funds to grow and to be there when needed at retirement. But a time bomb awaits. The bulk of U.S. pension funds are dangerously underfunded, and the assets are often invested in securities that have bleak prospects for providing income that keeps up with a general decline in purchasing power. A pension plan...

For over four decades, many of the planet’s biggest trouble makers and assholes have met each year in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum with the humble mission of, “Improving the state of the world.” Each year since 1978, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has sponsored a symposium in Jackson Hole on an important issue facing the world’s bankers and their pet politicians and government bureaucrats....

As tumultuous as last year was from a global political perspective on the back of a rocky start market-wise, 2017 will be much more so. The central bank subsidization of the financial system (especially in the US and Europe) that began with the Fed invoking zero interest rate policy in 2008, gave way to international distrust of the enabling status quo that unfolded in different ways across the planet. My prognosis is...

If you thought 2016 was full of market maelstroms and geopolitical gotchas, 2017’s ‘known unknowns’ suggest a year of more mayhem awaits… Here’s a selection of key events in the year ahead (and links to Bloomberg’s quick-takes on each). January Donald Trump will be sworn in as U.S. president on Jan. 20.QuickTakes: Immigration Reform, Free Trade and Its Foes, Supreme Court, Oil Sands, Confronting Coal, Climate Change,...

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after...