This essay attempts a review of the economics – and the prevailing economic thinking – which have brought us to our present pass of high-leverage and heavy debt-dependence. It helps set the backdrop for an in-depth look at markets which will follow shortly…
Tag Archives: Credit
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It’s not just the leaves that often turn when the year begins, with gathering pace, to slip towards its chilly end. Markets often do, too.
Given this backdrop, the sell-off in the Nasdaq – in the marvelled-at ‘Growth’ stocks, in the FAANGs, and in Tesla – comes at a moment which is particularly intriguing for reasons which go far beyond whatever coup SoftBank may or may not have attempted and whether those irritating Lockdown Livermores have finally gotten their comeuppance.
A recent Wall St Journal article gave vent to a scare-story full of Underconsumptionist claptrap, carried under the catchy headline: “The Coronavirus Savings Glut”. Ironically, and only a day later, the paper ran a second piece entitled “How Coronavirus Upended a Trillion-Dollar Corporate Borrowing Binge and Kicked Off a Wave of Bankruptcies
While politicians anxiously check the shifting weather-vanes of public opinion and scientists squabble over facts as well as interpretations, central banks are resolutely doing what they do best – wildly exceeding their briefs and trying to drown all problems in a flood of newly-created money. As ever, the underconsumptionists worry that a lack of demand will usher in deflation, in spite of all such efforts. Some of us, however, worry more about what it will do to supply. Here, we explain why.
As a way of providing easy access to most of the regular work we have published over the past two years – and hence to getting a feel for what we do and how we do it – please see here for a collection in PDF form, offered in reverse chronological order.
For some months now, we have been warning of the stresses building in China’s credit structure and warning that, if unaddressed, they would lead to pain in asset markets and potentially to weakness out in the real economy. Here, we lay out the arguments in detail. 17-11-28 China
As world stock markets have continued to climb to cyclical – if not all-time – highs, it has become almost the norm for industry Talking Heads to season their smatterings of media insight with a brief, talismanic expression of scepticism, uttered partly to appease the ever-jealous God of the Markets but mainly so as to […]
[This article appeared in slightly abridged form in the Epoch Times under the title, ‘The Fed’s Quantitative Tightening‘] The older a bull market gets, those who are paid to comment on it become more and more desperate for new things to say about it – a professionally pressing need which tends to split the pundits […]
China, Commodities, Credit, Cycles, Equities, Fixed Income, Gold, Macro, Money, Oil, USA
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
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 […]
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