Thanks to Professor Anthony Sanders for the kind mention in his post about the US Treasury Kabuki Theater. This is part of a bigger issue that is…
Employers continue to ignore the signals sent by the recent stock market fracture. They are still hoarding their low cost labor forces at a record…
The Fed’s balance sheet went through the normal mid month fluctuations last week as MBS are paid down early in the month and then are replenished at mid month. There has been essentially no change in the total size of the balance sheet since QE officially ended a year ago. And there will be no material change going forward until the Fed either decides to start shedding assets (not gonna do it) or until it restarts QE (somewhat more probable than shrinking the balance sheet).
The Composite Liquidity Indicator has been inching sideways after hitting a new high during the August 26 week. More importantly, the slope of the line has been nearly flat since January. In this game, if liquidity isn’t growing, that’s tight. Governments are always borrowing more, so if the system isn’t providing new cash to absorb that debt, the cash to pay for the new debt needs to come from somewhere else. That spells liquidation.
Yesterday’s new home sales report from the Census Bureau triggered an ebullient response. Big media used words like “surge; soar; rise sharply; above expectations” to describe it.…
First time claims for unemployment compensation continued their string of record lows for the same week of the year. The actual number, not subject to any seasonal hocus…
Where else can we review the weekly balance sheet changes of a major corporation, bank, or other financial institution weekly? The Fed provides the means for us to look at its balance sheet every week and actually follow the flows of funds as they move from the Fed to the Federal Government to the banks and vice versa.
NAR data on housing sales showed the largest August decline since 1999, the earliest publicly available data.
With Janet Yellen virtually proclaiming that she is central banker to the world it’s time to roll out this post again, last retitled and reposted…
While everyone has been busy speculating about whether the Fed would try to raise the cost of money, we have lost sight of the most…
