The Fed must have seen the relentlessly spiking margin debt. Leverage is a sign of investor confidence. The great accelerator. On the way up. And on the way down. Margin debt has a nasty, very consistent habit of peaking just when the stock market begi…
“Global emerging markets are now trading in full-blown panic mode”
Statistically speaking, the Fed’s heroic actions conquered the Great Recession years ago. But most Americans, struggling to make ends meet in the real economy far from the hoopla, hype, and buzz of Wall Street or Silicon Valley, have a more accur…
Now that we learned that the 85 richest folks own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion, we want to know where they’re staying when they come to town for dinner. We already know where the poorest 3.5 billion are staying: in shacks, hovels, and moldy…
Prices for housing have jumped and rents have jumped too, yet the 38.7 million renters, 34% of all households, watched with dismay as their real wages declined. They’ve got a problem with the “wealth effect” that Bernanke held up as p…
Today’s employment report is special. Exactly five years ago, the Fed kicked off its zero interest rate policy and QE to create the “wealth effect”: the elite would borrow for free and buy assets to drive up asset prices and make thos…
Hidden in the middle of the 25-page minutes of the last meeting, under the most wooden and convoluted prose, the Fed issued a doozie of a warning: it fretted about financial stability. It named soaring forward P/E ratios, stock buybacks, margin credit, and leveraged loans.
Bernanke wanted to reflect on the “accomplishments of the past eight years,” demolish the “sceptics” that still doubted the Fed was the best thing since sliced bread, and pat himself on the back. His policies “have helped promot…
Nothing could have been a more pungent metaphor for the current investment climate than the headline, “Macau gambling revenue hits record $45 bn in 2013.”
Central banks rule! We’ve seen it in 2013. They’ve accomplished the impossible: separating stock markets from the economies they’re based on. But in 2014, the US and China are trying to unwind these crazy policies – without taki…