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Europe’s Economic Demise Is A Global Warning: “Tightening Conditions Are Already Causing Disruptions”

November 8, 2018

Europe’s Economic Demise Is A Global Warning: “Tightening Conditions Are Already Causing Disruptions”

Harmful Modern Myths & Legends

Loreley Rock near Sankt Goarshausen sits at a narrow curve on the Rhine River in Germany. The shape of the bluff produces a faint echo in the wind, supposedly the last whispers of a beautiful maiden who threw herself from it in despair once spurned by her paramour. She was transformed into a siren, legend says, a tantalizing wail which cries out and lures fishermen and tradesmen on the great river to their death.

While it makes a great story for local conversation, this part of the Rhine is now treacherous for far different reasons. Drought in middle Europe has caused water levels to drop, in places like near Loreley Rock making the river unnavigable. Nearly all freight coming from the lowlands passes through here on its way to Germany’s industrial heartland.

In more ancient times, it would have been a catastrophe. In modern times, it is an inconvenience, an economic inefficiency of the kind that strikes anywhere in the world with regularity. Rather than by boat, material and goods are being diverted to railroads and highways.

Still, there are going to be costs. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy this will mean German GDP in Q3 2018 contracted by 0.3%. Together with disruption in Germany’s automobile industry because of its slow reaction to the worldwide harmonized light-duty vehicles test procedure, the engine of Europe is experiencing a transitory blip.

Eurostat has already put together a flash estimate for the Euro Area’s GDP in Q3. Presumably these include something for Germany, even though that specific country’s statistics bureau, Destatis, won’t release its figures until midmonth. The Continental numbers are already alarming.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Without Recovery There Is Every Need To Examine The Worst Case

May 18, 2016

Without Recovery There Is Every Need To Examine The Worst Case

There is a great deal that is wrong with mainstream economic commentary, starting with its unwavering devotion to orthodox economics and unshakable faith in their “stimulus.” No matter how little is actually stimulated there is never any doubt that the media will simultaneously forget the last one while lavishing praise on the next one. It is, however, the actual economic commentary itself that may be the most damaging. Because nothing works, every news story is printed from the shallowest, narrowest perspective. It is a grave disservice to the public and journalism.

As an example, on July 15, 2015, the Wall Street Journal published an article on Industrial Production that wasn’t unique or atypical. If you read these kinds of stories you find them utterly devoid of differences, so this effort was entirely symptomatic. At the time, industrial production for June 2015 was estimated to have risen 0.3% month-over-month, ending a string of six consecutive M/M declines. That fact more than the degree of the rise was cheerfully reported as if meaningful.

U.S. industrial production rose in June, a sign that the improving economy is helping the sector break out of a slump.

Industrial production, a measure of output in the manufacturing, utilities and mining sectors, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% from May, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

Even though the article noted that one month was nowhere near enough to overcome those prior declines, it didn’t matter because it was finally a plus sign conforming to the mainstream “narrative.”

The pickup comes as other measures show improvement in the economy this spring, with employment continuing to climb and wages creeping up as the labor market tightens…

“Weakness in manufacturing appears to be past its peak,” wrote Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics in a note to clients.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

F(r)actions Of Gold

January 28, 2016

F(r)actions Of Gold

The simple fact of the matter is that gold is no longer money and hasn’t been treated that way in decades. It is a frustrating and often woeful outcome, but deference isn’t a reason to color judgement. As an investment, which is more like what gold has become, it isn’t all that straight, either. Gold behaves in many circumstances erratically; often violently so. In 2008, gold crashed three times; but it also came back (and then some) three times. The metal remains stuck in some orthodox limbo of duality, sometimes acting an investment while at others, more rarely, as almost reclaiming its former status.

The junction of that dyad format is wholesale collateral. It is a difficult and dense topic because it plumbs the very depths of the wholesale arrangement – factors like leasing, swaps and collateralized lending through binary bespoke arrangements.It is there that I think it helps to form the narrative, however, starting by reviewing what the BIS was up to in late 2009 and early 2010. I am going to borrow heavily from an article I wrote in April 2013 that describes the events in question but this is one of those times when you should read the whole thing.

Back in July 2010, the Wall Street Journal caused some commotion when it happened to notice in the annual report for the Bank for International Settlements the sudden appearance of gold swap operations to the tune of 346 tons. Subsequent investigation by media outlets, including the Financial Times, reported that the BIS had indeed swapped in 346 tons of gold holdings from ten European commercial banks. That was highly unusual in that gold swaps are typically conducted between and among central banks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jeffrey Snider: Kuroda’s Rebuke Came Awfully Swift

October 25, 2015

Jeffrey Snider: Kuroda’s Rebuke Came Awfully Swift

There must be a universal speech template included in the monetary textbook that is shared among the various central banks. On September 28, 2015, Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan, delivered a speech that wasn’t just similar to the press conference Janet Yellen had endured only a week or so before, it was a close enough replica that if stripped of geographic references would have made it impossible to determine who was giving the speech. Kuroda did as Yellen did, making a specific point to emphasize how “robust” the Japanese economy was showing itself in 2015 before trying his best to explain away all the ways in which it was not.

Saying, “First, domestic private demand has continued to be robust” Kuroda then listed factors that were only slightly related to “domestic demand.” Rather than find specific economic accounts performing as he suggested, the Governor was instead reliant on surveys. “Firms’ positive fixed investment stance could be confirmed by various survey results.”

For Japanese households, Kuroda followed as his American counterparts by leading with the declining unemployment rate, assuming its validity and meaningfulness, and then trying to explain why household spending (demand) wasn’t following all that.

In terms of household spending, private consumption is somewhat sluggish recently, reflecting bad weather in the April-June quarter. Nevertheless, as the employment and income situation has continued with its steady improvement and consumer sentiment is on an improving trend, private consumption seems to have remained resilient on the whole.

Consumer “demand” remains “robust” except that it is easily distracted by Japanese weather (obviously not the same storms and snow apparently afflicting the US in the quarter before) and can only charitably be described as “resilient.” As nice as all that may sound, couched carefully as always improving, it doesn’t quite explain the steady and growing chorus expecting and now demanding still more QQE.

– See more at: http://www.cobdencentre.org/2015/10/jeffrey-snider-kurodas-rebuke-came-awfully-swift/#sthash.8lsl2pab.dpuf

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