They’re having trouble with the Federal Funds rate.
If the unemployment rate reaches zero and wages still don’t explode higher, the economy falls off, will Economists, central bankers, and the media stop relying on this one statistic for overall economic interpretation? You can be reasonably excited when the unemployment rate falls below 5%, as it did four years ago. Three point six, however, […]
FCA, formerly Fiat-Chrysler, is the latest automaker to switch from a monthly sales report. Joining GM and Ford, beginning in October all three of Detroit’s big car companies will be publishing quarterly sales figures. The announcement comes at an auspicious moment. As with the other two, FCA claims the change is being done in the […]
They will have to be forced into it. There is no voluntary rate cut and there never has been. This idea, however, is what’s being offered today in the wake of another stubborn line in the sand. Central bankers are always, always the last to figure things out. Jay Powell was still talking about inflation […]
All Presidents love to talk stocks when the stock market is making record highs. It is the one asset class the public knows about. Even the iconic 1980’s movie Wall Street made it seem just that important. The Masters of the Universe are buying equities, so everything has to be awesome. The BSD’s on Wall […]
Federal funds is up again. As of yesterday, the 29th, the effective rate (EFF) is now 5 bps above IOER. That takes it to within 5 bps below the top of the Federal Reserve’s policy range. According to FRBNY, the 1st percentile in yesterday’s session was 2.40%, meaning that almost the entire federal funds market […]
Ever since the first major outbreaks of Euro$ #4 last year, the balance of data has tipped further and further toward the minuses. Yesterday was a big one. US income growth in 2019 is no longer growth. Not huge declines, but minus signs where, if the prior boom narrative had been valid, large plus signs […]
The administration continues to plead for rate cuts. I think they understand the gravity of the situation, if not quite the situation itself. The President’s chief economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, was back at his old TV home on CNBC today. In the wake of more “muted” inflation figures one quarter of the way through 2019, […]
Real GDP growth in the United States during the first quarter of 2019 was much better than expected. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates that total economic output expanded by 3.12272% in Q1 over Q4 2018. Most analysts were expecting somewhere around 2.3% to 2.5%. Considering mounting uncertainties and growing fears, in the face […]
The economic sickness is predictably spreading. While unexpected in most of the world which still, somehow, depends on central banking forecasts, it really has been almost inevitable. From the very start, just the utterance of the word “decoupling” was the kiss of death. What that meant in the context of globally synchronized growth, 2017’s repeatedly […]
