Credit Writedowns

The latest US GDP report was just released showing the US economy expanded at a 2.1% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2019. This was marginally better than expectations for a 1.8% increase, and significantly above the Atlanta Fed's…

Yesterday, I highlighted Germany in terms of downside global economic risk. We are experiencing a manufacturing- and trade-led deceleration in global growth. Germany is the most prominent large Western economy leveraged to both.

As I write this, Washington is fixated on the congressional testimony of Robert Mueller. My attention is elsewhere though. For me, it's the economy that matters. Over the past two weeks, we have had a "recession watch" on Real Vision,…

I was thinking about this topic this morning and I wanted to run it by you. The genesis of it all was an interview I did with Rohan Grey and Kevin Muir on Real Vision regarding MMT. And one conclusion I drew - partially motivated by the…

This is a follow-up to my subscriber post from earlier today on the US economy. For those of you who are not paying subscribers, let me summarize the post by saying I think the US economy is slowing but not in a recession. Nevertheless, I…

None of the metrics I look at are screaming recession right now. In fact, for the US, some of the data is improving. Nevertheless, there is reason to be concerned about the state of the US economy in mid-2019 - so much so that my base case…

In the US, we are officially in the longest expansion of all time. And, as yet, there are no definitive indicators I can see that it will end in short order. So I remain hopeful, if cautious about the potential for the US economy to avoid…

Today, we saw a nice pop in equities on the back of a dovish Fed and falling interest rates. Equities moved to new highs as a result. But, clearly, falling yields are a sign of economic distress that one might think would cause equity…

At the end of May, I started a post on very negative market signals saying "he economic data out of the US and elsewhere still point to continued economic expansion over the near term. But, what we’re seeing in financial markets right now…

Let me follow up this morning's general post with some longer term thoughts here via the Patreon platform. And while I want to make some geopolitical comments, let me look at this mostly from a markets perspective. I am once again thinking…