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: NIRP
Mario Draghi emerged last week from the much-awaited meeting of the ECB Governing Council meeting clutching a fairly bland official communiqué which extended the envisaged freeze on interest rates out to the latter part of next year (aka, ‘forward guidance’), pledged that there would be no shrinkage of the Bank’s securities portfolio (so-called ‘quantitative tightening’) […]
After the excitement of the past few sessions, it was not entirely unexpected that what we old market stagers used to call, ‘Turnaround Tuesday’, would deliver its traditional mix of reflection, position rebalancing, and general counter-trend moves of either the stop-profit or the ‘Why do I always buy the top?’, buyers’ regret kind. [First Published […]
Though the connexion is not always explicitly drawn, one obvious corollary of the perceived current shortfall in corporate investment spending is to be found in the lacklustre nature of the gains being recorded in something called ‘productivity’. This latter deficiency is often said to have ‘puzzled’ the Good and Great who presume to be able […]
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 […]
The craziness that is Abenomics seems to have one flimsy foundation: viz., that Japan’s fiscal situation seems so dire as not to be susceptible of a rational approach. Not that this is any real excuse for the political cowardice which attempts to disguise the problem through gross financial and monetary manipulation. Please click the link […]
I was recently flattered to be asked how I envisaged the dreaded ‘helicopter money’ working if it were not to simply add further to commercial banks’ already crippling mass of deadweight liabilities and assets, given that not only would printing it up in physical form be tortuous but that cash itself is only one conveniently […]
In light of the breathless anticipation which preceded the Fed Chair’s speech to her peers at Jackson Hole and cognisant of the mild state of befuddlement with which it was received, we felt it would be of interest to readers to have a translation, together with a gloss (each in bold), in order to try to remove some of […]