Markets

For the first time in 3 months, oil dropped below $50 a barrel after crude inventories were shown rising by 8.2 million barrels last week. Inventory levels are now at their highest levels since the US government began recording data in…

Now the market are putting the odds of a hike next week at 96%, a virtual certainty. But the very fact that Yellen and her compatriots commented on the likelihood of a rate hike at a specific meeting has been the subject of consternation.

For years, many Fed watchers have claimed that the Federal Reserve has a secret third mandate beyond inflation and full employment. And this past February 21st, for the first time a Fed President said directly that, indeed, the Fed does…

If you look at the difference in yield between 2 and 10-year treasuries, the numbers in the last year are the lowest since 2008, when the US economy was in a recession.

I have three charts for you which demonstrate that the US Federal Reserve is tightening monetary policy.

This chart speaks volumes about the Trump rally.

The failure of Japan’s grand monetary policy experiment to meet expectations is a warning sign we all should heed. But right now fears of so-called secular stagnation have receded as the global economy has roared back to life. We should not…

Imagine you could issue 30- or 50-year paper today at 3 or 4%. And you have a strong suspicion that - in the future - 2-year paper won’t be 1.15% like it is today. You think it could be 4, 5 or 6%. Why not lock in the long-term rates of…

The problem with the Trump administration’s talk about lengthening the maturity of debt issuance is that it confuses the future path of interest rates with the steepness of the yield curve. They talk about locking in low rates. And what…

This is going to be a quick hit post to get some thoughts down on paper because a few threads are coalescing for me that I want to give some coherence to. The essence of the threads revolves around the tension at the Fed between normalizing…