US residential construction can slightly lag private housing starts, but never to this extent. Either the US residential construction industry has become a lot less efficient (as in the ratio of employees needed to build the average house), or there’s something increasingly fishy with the official BIS employment data.
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Has the US BIS not got the memo to support the easing narrative with softening economic data, or is the ECB and Euro being hung out to dry? For those hoodwinked by the manipulated GDP deflator assumptions (see below) between Q4 2023 and Q1 this year, into over-estimating the slowdown in economic activity must have […]
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As markets lose faith in the Fed’s ability to manage its easing pivot, gold and silver prices are soaring to new records notwithstanding hardening long bond yields. For investors wanting to participate in this trade, the choice seems to be between physical gold bullion, paper gold certificates or those mining the stuff. Those with a […]
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At times like this it is difficult to comprehend whether there are any adults left at the helm in the US. Jerome Powell’s attempts to ape his failed predecessor, Arthur Burns, is unraveling as fast as gold prices and bond yields are rising in the face of a so-called Republican Congress seemingly incapable of reining […]
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“All warfare is based on deception”, albeit presumably Sun Tzu expected those following this advice to be able to have a modicum of proficiency in misdirecting their opponents. So what are we to make of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s promise today that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO”, knowing full well this […]
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Rising wage settlements and the falling Yen may have finally forced the Bank of Japan to reverse its negative interest rate policy, if recent media leaks ahead of its March meeting are to be believed. Behind this however, is the inexorable pressure to fund structural deficit spending when previous debt monetisations are cascading through into […]
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“Follow the Fed” has been a winning investment strategy, but that ought to be confined to what the central bank is actually doing rather than the narrative that it is trying to communicate. Since early December, that narrative has been plainly on offer, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell signalling a series of interest rate reductions […]
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Once again we have a US government department (Bureau of Labor Statistics – BLS) conveniently releasing some economic guesstimates that are supportive of the official narrative and the Fed’s decision to again hold interest rates unchanged. According to this, inflationary pressures from the jobs market are abating as wage growth tumbles to a sub-inflationary +2.5%, […]
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