The MISS by the economic analysts of Friday’s unemployment data has rendered all data as tertiary relative to the policy that has been enacted to counteract the malicious effects of the Covid-19 shutdown. Global stock markets have rallied as if normalization has occurred and UNEMPLOYMENT has returned to its historic lows of 3.5%.
Posts Tagged ‘ECB’
Notes From Underground: Policy Trumps Data
June 6, 2020Notes From Underground: Courting Disaster
May 10, 2020Friday’s unemployment report was as bad as forecast and probably worse. Yes, the unemployment rate was not as high as suspected but once the data was analyzed it appears the actual number was close to 20%. The most problematic data point going forward is the AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS (AHE). The jobs report revealed a historic 4.7% monthly increase but this was for the worst reason.
Notes From Underground: May Day or Mayday Mayday Mayday?
May 3, 2020On Friday the world “celebrated” May Day, when the red flags of the world’s workers united in solidarity are traditionally unfurled. The fall of the Berlin Wall unleashed the rush for economic development and a plethora of workers in search of capital to lift its productivity. And for the past 30 years have capital and wages have been elevated for the emerging economies yet stagnant for the developed region. It has been capital that has been the recipient of increased profits as global capital went to the lowest wage regions.
Notes From Underground: From Bully Pulpit to Blabbermouth
April 21, 2020ATTENTION: What you are about to read IS NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT for I don’t care about your politics and you shouldn’t even know mine. The OVAL OFFICE provides the U.S. president a pulpit in which to amplify his/her voice in a an effort to tip the policy debates in their favor. But one a policy is ill advised from a trade/financial perspective and we will shout it from NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND.
Notes From Underground: What Does Friday’s Unemployment Mean, Mr. Natural?
April 2, 2020IT DON’T MEAN SHIIIIITTTTT.
Let’s put aisde all the nonsense. But I will offer this: The average hourly earnings are going to begin to take on increased significance as the energy sector begins a massive shedding of HIGH PRICED jobs. Also, many other high priced employees are going to be losing work so the data is going to reflect a hit to consumers not only through the loss of jobs but from the destruction of HOURS WORKED by high income earners.
Notes From Underground: And So It Goes
March 26, 2020Everything we’ve discussed at NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND has come to fruition in a very real time. This is not predicting year-end levels or quarter-end levels but very critical calls in real time. My inbox has been inundated with pieces from analysts well after the fact. Last Thursday. I warned about the need to weaken the DOLLAR. Any reader long dollars is desirous of losing money.
Notes From Underground: Three Cheers for Christine Lagarde
March 19, 2020While the rate cutters were busy dumping on ECB President Christine Lagarde for not cutting and only announcing an increase in bond purchases I opined that Lagarde was getting more by doing less. Lagarde did not go down the Draghi route and lock up with Jens Weidmann and the Fiscal Austerians in the Hanseatic League. The ECB president played for a bigger prize and tonight she delivered with an announced 750 billion euro bond buying program of both public and private issues.
Notes From Underground: We Walked Off to Look For America
March 15, 2020These are challenging times is the understatement of the decade.
The fear of pandemic has arrived and is causing great distress for families and the nation at large as we are tending to the sick and those forced into a change of everyday patterns. Since the beginning of February, we at NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND have been discussing the onset of the DEMAND SHOCK which would cause problems in the financial system because of the massive build-up of debt on a global scale. If businesses cannot operate as people hunker down in an effort to slow the spread of the virus then it goes without saying that DEMAND would suffer. If demand suffers on a global basis borrowers without cash reserves will struggle to sustain their businesses.
Notes From Underground: It’s Time For the Owl
March 8, 2020Well things are on the bubble as the Russians and Saudis had a “falling out” as lovers often because the OPEC talks resulted in an ostensible all-out war to break oil prices. The consensus loser will be the U.S. oil patch as the FRACKERS are carrying huge amounts of debt, which will not be paid while prices sharply decline.
There will be talks about a credit crisis as banks and other oil creditors will have to absorb losses and probably restrict lending to other borrowers. Those with private equity investments in the Bakken, Permian and others will be taking inventory on how battered their portfolios will be. The wily Putin will finally have his way as the sanctimonious Americans will have to rescind the ill-devised/ill-advised SANCTIONS that have had little impact.
Notes From Underground:
February 11, 2020In the 1960 classic film The Time Machine a traveler visits a future civilization in which a group of people is enslaved as a source of food. The food source are zombie-like and kept in comfortable captivity in an effort to control their protein source. After violence is done a siren sounds. When the time traveler questions the meaning of the siren the answer is it is ALL CLEAR but we never know what is all clear. Well, it seems the Coronavirus has been given the all clear signal based on the value of equity markets.
