2018

The midterm election is over. So we can go back to worrying about the Fed! I ended yesterday's political economy piece saying: My sense, here, is that a divided Congress means we are in a ride it out period economically. There are no more…

Let me run something by you. I was thinking about the economic implications of the US midterm election this morning when I happened across various accounts about Donald Trump's press conference yesterday. A lot of the focus was on his…

The US midterm elections last night saw the biggest turnout for a midterm in at least half a century because voter enthusiasm was high. But it was high because the United States is very polarized right now about the job performance of…

There isn't a lot of economic news out today, so let me focus today's piece a bit on the economic and social messaging ahead of the US midterm elections. What about the economy? I was in the car just now, listening to the radio, when a…

I don't have a daily post for you today. So, in lieu of a daily, I wanted to make some more general comments about interest rates that I have been making in my market commentary pieces. The accelerated hike timetable In February, I wrote a…

This morning, I gave you an initial reaction to the jobs number, saying: A bad number won’t change the Fed’s forward guidance because the Fed has a tightening bias. But that bias means that a good number could tip us toward four rate hikes…

No more oil black swan Remember Al Arabiya channel’s General Manager Turki Aldakhil warning that imposing sanctions on, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter could spark global economic disaster? I wrote about it when the  Jamal…

Birthright citizenship Yesterday, I wrote about what unilateralism looks like on the domestic front. And in many ways, it's similar to international unilateralism. The guiding principle is to prematurely forgo compromise and take a stance,…

In contrast to the last month, it was a good day for the markets today. So I want to do a mini-recap. All eyes on Apple First up: Apple is slated to report tomorrow afternoon after the closing bell. Expectations for their earnings report…

If you look up the word 'unilateralism', you would see it defined as "the process of acting, reaching a decision, or espousing a principle unilaterally." And we often hear of the US choosing to act using unilateralism or multilateralism on…