Category Archives for "Politics"

Gone by May?

As a student of history, Putin is probably well aware of Napoleon’s maxim of  “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”.  The US, France and UK may well feel empowered this morning after attacking Syria with around $200m worth of missiles, but what have they achieved? The Syrian military has not been […]

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Weaning consumers off the debt fix – maybe

Well that seemed short-lived. Perhaps the bounce in US equity markets on the February non-farms was just a one day wonder. The numbers however, weren’t too shabby for equity prices; the combination of a better than expected net job growth (including upward revision in the January guesstimate), but with a lower pace of average wage […]

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If the Tories are heading for extinction, what next – Corbyn for PM?

Can it get much worse for Theresa May? Having botched an unnecessary general election, her grand solution to the Brexit negotiations is basically to try and do nothing.  Having been sucked into the EU’s negotiating agenda of pay now, talk later on trade (or perhaps not at all), her ‘Florence’ proposal is now to seek […]

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“Carney warns fall in migrant workers could push up wages and inflation” – Doh!

“There’s an old saying. Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining” (The Outlaw Josey Wales – 1976)   The headlines, such as the one above from the Guardian may have juiced up the point a little, but underlying the attempted prevarication in his recent speech on Globalisation and inflation, this is pretty […]

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US adds +205k jobs in July – normally a positive for the US dollar, but now?

The problem of communicating a softening macro outlook is that it lowers interest rate expectations which in turn is a buy signal for not just investors, but also recruiters.  So while the IMF cut its US GDP expectations for 2017 and 2018 by -20bps and -30bps respectively (both now to +2.1%) and currency markets have ‘drumfped’ […]

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Yellen does virtuous – 5 years too late!

Confused?  Well you should be be if you’ve been believing the usual output from the Federal Reserve. Contrary to the narrative of robust US economic growth and tightening labour markets requiring a normalisation of interest rates, things aren’t quite as rosy as Ms Yellen had been suggesting.  Behind the increasingly absurd non-farm payroll data with […]

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