Credit Writedowns

Links on trade, Trump, the UK economy, ECB trightening and much more

Former Fed insider Daielle DiMartino Booth knows the Fed will be out of bullets at the next recession. Even so, its Chairman Jay Powell is now desperately trying to create as much runway as possible.

We suspect some of the pressure on dollar-yen had been hedging activity ahead of the end of the fiscal year.  The end of the hedging operations may be sufficient to ease the pressure on the greenback.

The US Department of Labor released poor data for jobless claims this week. The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance jumped to 242,000. This is the last piece of data to come out before the jobs report.

Links on Apple, Amazon, the Postal Service, Puerto Rico and more.

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it. This column asks what would happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff…

Links on Facebook, trade, wages and more.

Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard gave a speech on financial stability yesterday afternoon. The big takeaway is that the "Powell Put" is not very strong. The Fed will stress economic tailwinds and inflation concerns. And it will not…

China has retaliated to US duties with tariffs on $50 billion of US goods. An all-out trade war is a distinct possibility.

The UK says it will leave customs union on in a year's time. But the border issue between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland remains unsolved. And while the Irish border is a particularly vexing issue, there are other near-term…