interest rates

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…

Recession Watch America's business leaders are growing more worried that the United States will enter a recession by the end of 2020. Their primary fear: protectionist trade policy. That is the topline finding of a report released Monday…

Like yesterday, I have a few thoughts on the economic headlines below. This one is behind the paywall though and I am going to focus mostly on two topics. Yield curve inversion At its worst yesterday, the risk-off play saw the 10-year…