Category Archives: Credit

Fretting on the Fed: Monitor No.5

Falling returns in the US. Tight money in China. An upswing in Japan. Deflation in India. Gold goes cold. Fretting the Fed on falling CPI and a flattening curve? No need to panic, just yet. Please click for the latest Monitor. 17-06-20 M4 No5

Latest Edition

Please click the link for my latest thoughts, including a look at equity margin debt, the broad symmetry between today’s richest-ever & the 1980s’ cheapest bonds, the new natgas bulls, China, and gold.   17-05-29 M4 No 2  

Now where was I?

After a hiatus of several months, I have resumed publication of the newly-titled ‘Money, Macro & Markets Monitor‘ under the auspices of Cantillon Consulting. Please click the link for a complimentary copy:-  17-05-25 M4 No 1    

US GDP – Where’s the Beef?

The old adage that ‘the market must climb a wall of worry’ – i.e., that the best bull runs take place to the accompaniment of a swelling chorus of doubters – seems to have taken on a broader application in the economy at large where everything and anything which can be negatively construed currently calls […]

Dies illa? Not just yet.

The First Time as Tragedy In the past, our ready predisposition to fear the worst has proven to be well-founded. Indeed, through much of the two years leading up to the Great Crash of 2008, there was all too much evidence to ignore that a kind of collective madness had gripped the whole universe of […]

Give us another Oil boom

Dear Lord, Y’all give us another oil boom… If there is one sector of the US economy where an Austrian-style Boom-and-Bust bust has taken place, it is the onshore oil industry – though, by extension, other primary resource industries, such as metals and mining and farming have also suffered in the ongoing aftermath of the […]

Faking it

SUMMARY: Thanks to the election of President Trump and to his uncompromising attitude to the establishment media, much hot air is being expended on the subject of ‘fake news’. What we should really be getting worked up about is ‘fake economics’, for this is a much more pervasive evil, as well as a much more […]

The Austrian Prescription

At the start of the year it has become wearily traditional for us pundits to offer one of two genres of prediction. The first takes the form of a genuine—if ultimately foredoomed—attempt to lift a ragged corner of those thick shrouds of unknowability which separate today from tomorrow. The second combines such futility with a […]

You gets what you pays for

Reuters’ story that SAFE told its banks they should be as obstructive as possible in meeting customer demands for foreign currency, but should absolute not divulge the reason why, certainly succeeded in causing a stir in markets.   

Time to Get Real

Having just managed to quell a dangerous rebellion among her fellow Committee members, it did not seem the most opportune time for Janet Yellen to start dreaming of the sort of post-war ‘demand management’ that would happily trade a few extra percentage points of price inflation in order to move a little further up the […]