Credit Writedowns

I am a bit time-constrained today. So I want to make this a relatively brief post. I am going to focus narrowly on initial claims for unemployment insurance in the US and on the political struggle to aid the 30 million people unemployed due…

How do like that for a title! Let me flesh this out relatively quickly here. It might end up spanning multiple posts as a result. But, yesterday I promised to follow up on thoughts about market volatility and market directional based on…

When I last wrote about the US economy on Friday, I wrote that the jobs numbers "support my baseline view that the rollover in US GDP growth has been mild so far. The threat to that outlook comes in the form of policy and the anticipated…

The jobs report that came out today and the jobless claims report that came out yesterday both support my baseline view that the rollover in US GDP growth has been mild so far. The threat to that outlook comes in the form of policy and the…

Real quick here The latest week's initial unemployment claims figures came out today. And they show claims have plummeted from their highest levels three weeks ago. I take this as a signal that the second wave of viral infections is not…

The new normal We are in the middle of a grand social experiment. That's the overriding thought I had this morning as I looked out my bathroom window on the empty streets below. Some of the longer-term impacts of this experiment are clear -…

I think the title of this post lays out exactly what I intend to cover. It's all about the US economy and its vulnerability to a double dip recession due to the fiscal cliff and rising jobless claims. To cut to the chase, I haven't been…

The news flow is eliciting five themes for me right now. And I will dive into them briefly below. They are gold, the US dollar and rates, Europe, Covid-19 in the US and US fiscal stimulus. I am not going to take a hard view here. I simply…

Different parts of the global economy are in very different places right now. And the sense I am getting is that this will have meaning only over the medium term. Over the longer-term, there will be a collective recovery. How robust the…

I am writing this initial part just after 8AM EDT while I await the jobless claims. I told you on Monday I expect a big number = larger than most. And I will update you when the claims come in, as I write. But I want to talk about the…