Tag Archives: inflation

Inflation rates in the advanced and developing economies are showing little upside pressure.  Global inflation trends remain quite benign. In most of the major advanced economies, headline inflation peaked in the first quarter once the positive base effects from energy price developments had faded....

Europe is as we all are. Ben Bernanke wrote a few years ago that his tenure at the Fed must have been a success in his view because the US economy didn’t perform as badly as Europe’s. As usual, this technically true comparison is for any meaningful purpose irrelevant. For one, the European economy underperformed before 2008, too. Second, after 2008, really August 9, 2007, there isn’t nearly as much difference as...

After a tumultous week in the world of politics, with non-stop Trump drama in the US, a disastrous for Theresa May general election in the UK, and pro-establishment results in France and Italy, this is shaping up as another busy week ahead with multiple CB meetings, a full data calendar and even another important Eurogroup meeting for Greece. Wednesday’s FOMC will be the main event, with the Fed expected to hike 25bp...

JOLTS figures for the month of April 2017, released today, highlight what is in the end likely to be a more positive outcome for them. It has very little to do with the economy itself, as what we are witnessing is the culmination of extreme positions that have been made and estimated going all the way back to 2014. At that time, the BLS in its various data series suggested an almost perfect labor market acceleration...

I have been writing for many years that they really don’t know what they are doing. I only wish it was that simple. There has been developing another layer or dimension to that condition, a second derivative of stupid, whereby when faced with this now well-established fact the same people, experts and authorities all, they have no frame of reference to figure out what next to do. In other words, they really don’t know...

The irony of the unemployment rate for the Federal Reserve is that the lower it gets now the bigger the problem it is for officials. It has been up to this year their sole source of economic comfort. Throughout 2015, the Establishment Survey improperly contributed much the same sympathy, but even it no longer resides on the plus side of the official ledger. So many people may have exited the labor force in May that the...

Negative interest rates and the populist uprising that spurred the UK to vote for Brexit and Americans to elect Trump has helped reignite a rush into physical safe haven assets like gold and silver, which however has led to a shortage of safe venues where to store the precious metals (unlike bitcoin, gold actually has a physical dimension). And now companies that operate storage facilities for precious metals and other...

On VoxEU, Myrvin Anthony, Narcissa Balta, Tom Best, Sanaa Nadeem, and Eriko Togo discuss the history of government debt with state contingent coupons and offer some lessons. In the mid-19th century, the Confederate states issued cotton-linked bonds In the late 1970s, Mexico issued oil-linked bonds In the 2000s, Turkey issued revenue-indexed bonds Since 2014, Uruguay issues nominal wage-issued bonds Some other examples (figure taken from the column): Obviously, confidence in data quality...

Negative interest rates and the populist uprising that spurred the UK to vote for Brexit and Americans to elect Trump has helped reignite a rush into physical safe haven assets like gold and silver, which however has led to a shortage of safe venues where to store the precious metals (unlike bitcoin, gold actually has a physical dimension). And now companies that operate storage facilities for precious metals and other valuables are ramping up their capacity to help cash in on the soaring...

Whether or not San Francisco Fed President John Williams is right about US inflation and employment being about as close to the central bank’s targets as investors have seen – as he told CNBC two days ago – is irrelevant: The central bank is going to raise interest rates two more times this year no matter what happens to consumer prices, says Credit Suisse Chief Investment Officer for Switzerland Burkhard Varnholt....