United States

Today, we got a pretty shaky US jobs report. Non-Farm Payrolls were up only 142,000, well below the 190-203,000 range of median expectations I have seen quoted. But the previous month was also revised down to 136,000 from 173,000 and July…

John Boehner is not conservative enough. At least that's what the firebrand Republicans in the US House of Representatives believe. And so he has resigned from his position as Speaker of the House and will resign Congress altogether as…

Now that I am writing for free again, let me give you a quick update on what I'm thinking about. I still think the removal of China as a marginal buyer of last resort is the macro event that dominates all others. But there are a few…

Many markets have now recovered from the initial wave of selling associated with the Chinese mini-devaluation catalyst. This should be expected. Some of these markets will surely continue higher. Nevertheless, the Chinese devaluation still…

My base case is that the US stock market correction will not extend to major losses without a U.S.-based economic slowdown. Therefore, as potent as the Chinese devaluation crisis is as a signal for increasing global deflationary pressures,…

The macro environment right now is disinflationary as many countries struggle with product and labour ‘overcapacity’. The missing element is demand to meet supply. I want to talk about Fed monetary policy and the new Chinese currency regime…

Yesterday I mentioned markers of economic and financial weakness that I believe show cracks in the facade of benign economic data out of the US and Europe. Today I want to briefly go through a few of these data points and highlight what…

I know the title of this post has a somewhat alarmist feel to it. However, I think it is the title that best describes the biggest macro theme now unfolding in the global economy. I have been in Grand Canyon country in the southwest of the…

As Q2 continued along, it became ever more evident that private forecasts above 3% annualized were overly optimistic and that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast below 1% would get revised up. We met in the middle at 2.3%. What’s more is Q1…

Last week the Fed admitted to having mistakenly made public forecasts by staff economists which suggested that the Fed is indeed on a 2015 rate hike path. As a result, policy divergence is now set to widen, with the result being a bid for…