It’s a clever bit of misdirection. In one of the last interviews he gave before passing away, Milton Friedman talked about the true strength of central banks. It wasn’t money and monetary policy, instead he admitted that what they’re really good at is PR. Maybe that’s why you really can’t tell the difference Greenspan to […]
It may be a good time to remind everyone of an old market adage: Nobody will ring a bell when market cycles end. There won’t be a grand announcement that a top […]
In October 2011, the bank’s Chairman bristled at the characterization. His was not going to be a “bad bank” as many in the financial media had been saying. Pierre Mariani, chief executive of Belgium’s Dexia, preferred instead to call it the “residual bank.” No matter the label, the firm was being bailed out for the […]
It was a poignant moment that has gone totally unappreciated. Lost in the noise about subprime mortgages, on August 9, 2007, what actually happened that day represented perhaps the best example of how things worked. Or suddenly didn’t. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary, I recounted the tale of BNP Paribas. You’ve heard of […]
It’s starting. Headlines are swirling that the US Treasury could run out of cash sooner than originally forecast. The Wall Street Journal featured a report…
Even though it was everywhere, one of the primary things that struck me about the peak period for Reflation #3 was how ridiculous it got. If you have a strong argument, there’s no need for so much hyperbole. But it wasn’t just that, it had become openly ridiculous. Interest rates had nowhere to go but […]
Maybe this was inevitable. After all, it is how things work in a lot of other places. When all is lost, that last thing that happens is the lawyers come in and pick through the bones. Christine Lagarde has been nominated to replace Mario Draghi as the next head of Europe’s central bank. She has […]
Well, at least it’s all out in the open now. Nobody even bothers about growth or earning anymore (at least for now). It’s all about the Fed, markets by central committee. Don’t […]
13-17 week cycles should be entering a corrective phase ideally due to last into late August-September. Most of our mining stops hit trailing stops, but…
The more extreme the speculative euphoria, the greater the risks of a reversal.One sentence sums up the speculative euphoria gripping markets: January and June of this year are the only months in the last 150 which have seen all assets post a posi…
