The Fed it seems is off the hook for an interest rate increase for at least another month after the May non-farm payroll number. At +38k of net additions for the month (+25k for private sector) and with March and April figures also restated down by -59k, this is hardly the escape velocity of a […]
Continue reading
“Silence”. That is what I hear after yesterday’s March US non-farm payroll figures. Even a few months ago, these data points, while flawed were eagerly awaited as harbingers of revisions in US Fed monetary policy. Not any more. After February’s decision to hold rates in what looks like a clumsy attempt to goose oil prices […]
Continue reading
So much for the Yellen’s promise to be “data dependent” in its interest rate policy! With core inflation above the Fed’s forecast range, unemployment well within its longer term target range and private sector job and average wage growth offering no rational support for maintaining the near zero interest rate environment, Yellen’s decision to hold […]
Continue reading
Economics is proving to be a little like a tube of toothpaste. Squeeze it one place and the toothpaste is just displaced elsewhere. When the Fed adopted what was already a failing Japanese experiment in QE in 2008/09, it provided a much needed liquidity fix for the credit crisis, but a dangerous temptation that […]
Continue reading
After the equity market drubbing into the first week of 2016, attention was back on the Fed and whether an expected weak set of employment data for December might provide some political cover to forestall the next upward revision in interest rates possibly due in March. If the Fed holds rates however, it won’t be […]
Continue reading
Has Yellen seen the movie Margin Call, I wonder? In it, Jeremy Iron’s classic Wall Street boss (John Tuld) referred to 3 ways of making a living: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Of course in financial markets these are not mutually exclusive options where Governments habitually use their central banks to operate their own […]
Continue reading
//youtu.be/ag14Ao_xO4c Has Yellen seen the movie Margin Call, I wonder? In it, Jeremy Iron’s classic Wall Street boss (John Tuld) referred to 3 ways of making a living: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Of course in financial markets these are not mutually exclusive options where Governments habitually use their central banks to operate […]
Continue reading