Tag Archives: Interest rates

Credit card use entails a degree of risk appreciated at the most basic level. Americans had certainly become more comfortable with debt in all its forms over the many decades since the Great Depression, but the regular employment of revolving credit was perhaps the apex of this transformation. Does any commercial package on TV today not include one or more credit card offers? It certainly remains a staple of junk mail. Leaning more and more on credit cards during the...

So, you’re convinced that low rates are powerful stimulus. You believe, like any good standing Economist, that reduced interest costs can only lead to more credit across-the-board. That with more credit will emerge more economic activity and, better, activity of the inflationary variety. A recovery, in other words. Ceteris paribus. What happens, however, if you also believe you’ve been responsible for bringing rates down all across the curve…and then no recovery....

Crispin Odey I am writing in response to the comments you made in a letter to investors yesterday, which were widely reported. You have set the gold community afire, with claims that are not new and not true. So I shall attempt to douse the flames. As everyone knows, President Roosevelt outlawed the ownership of gold in 1933. Although gold was legalized in 1975, fears linger today that the governments may repeat this heinous act. There is no reason for this fear. In...

Count me among the bond vigilantes. On the issue of supply I yield (pun intended) to no one. The US government is the brokest entity humanity has ever conceived – and that was before March 2020. There will be a time, if nothing is done, where this will matter a great deal. That time isn’t today nor is it tomorrow or anytime soon because it’s the demand side which is so confusing and misdirected. Realizing this is true does not cancel your vigilantism. For two years...

After years of futility, he was sure of the answer. The Bank of Japan had spent the better part of the roaring nineties fighting against itself as much as the bubble which had burst at the outset of the decade. Letting fiscal authorities rule the day, Japan’s central bank had largely sat back introducing what it said was stimulus in the form of lower and lower rates. No, stupid, declared Milton Friedman. Lower rates don’t mean stimulus they mean monetary policy has...

The eurodollar curve’s latest twist exposes what’s behind the long end. To recap: big down day in stocks which, for the first time in a while, wasn’t accompanied by massive buying in longer maturity UST’s. Instead, these were sold, too. Rumors of parity funds liquidating were all over the place, which is consistent with this curve behavior. Let’s start with eurodollar futures; the curve had absolutely collapsed up to Monday. It was remarkable even though not...

Swiss Franc The Euro has fallen by 0.40% to 1.0581 EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, March 06(see more posts on EUR/CHF, USD/CHF, ) Source: markets.ft.com - Click to enlarge FX Rates Overview: The sharp sell-off in US equities and yields yesterday is spurring a mini-meltdown globally today. Many of the Asia Pacific markets, including Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and India, saw more than 2% drops, while most others fell more than 1%. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index snapped the...

Taking another look at what I wrote about repo and the latest developments yesterday, it may be worthwhile to spend some additional time on the “why” as it pertains to so much determined official blindness, an unshakeable devotion to otherwise easily explained lunar events. The short version: monetary authorities as well as the “experts” describe almost perfectly risk averse behavior among the central money dealing system in outbreaks like September’s repo – but...

Earlier today, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) confirmed the country’s economy is in recession. Updating its estimate for Q4 GDP, year-over-year output declined by 0.5% rather than -0.3% as first thought. On a quarterly basis, GDP was down for the second consecutive quarter which mainstream convention treats as a technical recession. On a yearly basis, it was actually the third straight. Nothing seems to have changed as 2019 drew to...

We certainly don’t have a crystal ball at the ready, and we can’t predict the future. The best we might hope is to entertain reasonable probabilities for it oftentimes derived from how we see the past. Which is just what statistics and econometrics attempt. Except, wherein they go wrong we don’t have to make their mistakes. For example, in the Fed’s main model ferbus there’s no way to input a global dollar shortage. Even if there was, to this statistical...