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There has been quite a lot of movement in yields since last month, so I thought it would be useful to look at an update. During the last half of June and July, the long end of the curve came down while the short end moved up a little bit. I wish we had an NGDP futures market to check these i...
Here are the monthly inflation updates. It will be interesting to see if the Fed treats 2% as a symmetrical target or a ceiling. There might be an argument for treating it as a ceiling at this point in the business cycle, because employment is so strong. But employment is a lagging indicator....
The first ten of Grant's Rules are "Preservation of Capital" reiterated ten times. The reason for my thinking here is that it is far easier, and more important, to keep your hard earned money rather than make new money. Here is what happens if a stock, or the overall market, declines. Speculat...
The recent chatter among interest rate observers is the chance of the United States Treasury note paying nothing, nada, zilch. My take is the consensus for once is right. One trusted interest rate observer is now preparing his bank for a 0% interest rate environment; CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM...
The most striking thing about last week's price action was the surge in US yields. The 10-year yield jumped about 34 basis points, the most in three years and returned to levels not seen since August 2 (1.90%). A deluge of investment-grade corporate bonds and US Treasuries ($78 bln auctioned...
The financial press, and many institutions and individuals, are highly concentrated on our "Game of Thrones" with China. Make no mistake here, the tariff skirmishes are just part of the overall battle, one part. There is much more going on here besides the wrangling about tariffs and consumpti...
Just when it looked like inflation's threat was fading, Thursday's August report on consumer prices dispensed a not-so-fast alert. The core reading of the Consumer Price Index ((CPI)), which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% last month and accelerated to a 2.4% annual pace - the highest in 1...
What would the Fed do if economic factors were all it looked at? Inflation as measured by the "core" Consumer Price Index, which removes the volatile food and energy segments, jumped in August at the highest rate in 11 years, by 2.39%, a smidgen above the prior peaks of July 2018 (2.35%), Fe...
By Robert Hughes The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1 percent in August and is up 1.7 percent from a year ago. The volatile food and energy components had contrasting results, with food prices unchanged for the month, while energy prices fell 1.9 percent. In the food category, prices for food...
One of the most remarkable features of our current economy is that interest rates are flat or negative in real terms, and many people are advocating they need to, or should, go lower. This is not completely unprecedented. Real rates were negative after the second World War and again in the 197...