Author Archives

  • Smart Bird: Burning Down the House

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    The Fed basically risked everything. They thought the changing world meant no more worries of surging inflation and actual tightening measures. Keeping the markets elevated became their unstated priority. They’re now on the wrong side of a losing bet, a predicament that became increasingly clear this week with Chair Powell’s beltway testimony. The Fed, understandably, is Under Fire for surging inflation.

  • Smart Bird: Why Markets Bounced Friday

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    It was not the Federal Reserve flinching this time, it was China’s central bank that caused the bounce on Friday.

  • TSP Smart: The Fed Bailed out Buddies

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    The first 3 paragraphs of Doug’s article tell it all.

  • Doug Noland: A Fed focused on Markets and not Banks and not Talking About It

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    There is a monumental flaw in contemporary central banking doctrine, one not debated and seemingly not even recognized: it is perilous for central banks to manipulate the securities markets as their chief mechanism for managing financial conditions.

  • Doug Noland: Heels Dislodged

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    The bottom line: global Bubbles are fragile and increasingly vulnerable. In particular, China is a Credit accident in the making. And Fed policy certainty has been the glue holding things together – keeping the mania raging, keeping the leveraged players playing, keeping all the options and derivatives speculators betting on the long side, and keeping the weak dollar supportive of levered “carry trades” the world over.

  • TSP Smart: The US FUBAR Balance Sheet Update

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    I am going to pull the salient data out and print it up front… So my more simple conclusion is that our financial system is FUBAR.

  • Doug Noland: [Labor] Turned Tight

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    In other words, the labor market is tight today. Are we really worried about filling all the below-living-wage burger-flipping unfilled jobs? For reference, 5 million jobs paying $20K a year ($10/hr) comes to $100 Billion in wages a year – the Fed is printing $120 billion per month to monetize the stock market.

  • Doug Noland: History Screams

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    Michael Bond comment: Just read it. Term “coup de whiskey” means in 1927 with over heating markets the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates instead of raising them. The 1929 stock market bubble top took 30 years to be topped after… Read More ›

  • Doug Noland: Un-Anchored

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    The financial sphere is not driven by inflation, but “inflation expectations”. The Fed will say whatever it takes to attempt to manage expectations, but the market may not listen. Higher inflation pushes interest rates higher, higher interest rates will bring down stocks… and bubbles do not work in reverse. This is the risk of 2021.

  • Doug Noland: Generational Turning Point?

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    Everyone is prepared for unchecked monetary and fiscal stimulus as far as the eye can see. But is existing market structure sustainable in a backdrop of unrelenting non-productive debt growth, rising inflation, waning central bank flexibility and shifting political priorities?