interest rates

Understanding curve flattening Long-time readers know that I have talked for a number of years about a longer-term global convergence to zero play that I see shaping up. It first emerged during the mid-cycle slowdown in 2015 and 2016 as…

I was in Cologne and London last week, two places I know quite well. And as I went out, my trip down memory lane was greeted by the eternal progress of human endeavour. Whether riding the frequently behind schedule Deutsche Bahn by the…

I am going to argue here that monetary policy is both less effective than fiscal policy, and that over-reliance on it unnecessarily politicizes monetary policy by putting unelected officials in too prominent an economic role. I would argue…

Back at the end of July, I was talking about my macro thesis. And I led off writing this: The US is the laggard in this slowing but is affected as well. From a markets perspective, that means a convergence to zero, with yield curves…

My macro view What's my overall thesis at this juncture? It's that the global economy is slowing and is likely to slow further before it picks up. The US is the laggard in this slowing but is affected as well. From a markets perspective,…

The US Personal Income and Outlays report for June 2019 came out this morning. It showed personal income increasing 0.4% and wages and salaries increasing 0.5% last month. These are good numbers. And in conjunction with a lot of other data…

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,…

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…

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…

I have been troubled by the lack of policy space in Europe for some time now, particularly as it concerns Italy. But this is coming to a head for me this morning, with the German government auctioning 10-year paper at 24 basis points below…