What an appropriate song for the band Hedgehoppers Anonymous. This week is loaded with potential market-moving outcomes. On Wednesday we have the final FOMC statement of the year followed by Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference. The CONSENSUS is for no change in the current fed funds target range of 1.5% to 1.75%. The real key will hopefully be Powell’s press conference as market participants are hoping for any sort of dialogue about the Fed’s role in the repo market.
Posts Tagged ‘Euro’
Notes From Underground: “It’s Good News Week”
December 10, 2019Notes From Underground: The Jobs Picture Is Robust, But Where Is the Wage Increase?
December 8, 2019This is a rhetorical question of course, for the lack of wage growth is to be found in the vast amount of money chasing a global labor pool.
It is capital that had benefited from the last 30 years of the unleashing workers after the fall of the Soviet Empire and the black/white cat policies of Deng in pursuing growth in China. Now that other emerging economies are attracting capital in an effort to create jobs, there still remains a great deal of downward pressure on wages. Even the movement of supply chains out of China will act as a drag on global earnings as manufacturers will act to hold down wages as way of remaining attractive to foreign direct investment. The world has been watching as Chinese earnings growth has accelerated over the last 10 years but one of the outcomes from the Trump tariffs will be to force a slowdown in China’s wage inflation.
Notes From Underground: Was Trump Addressing Mnuchin or Powell?
November 19, 2019On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Muchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell met with President Trump at the White House where the duo “advised” and “forecasted” the economy to the president as 2020 election posturing is in full swing. NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND has maintained that Trump used the tariff threat to cajole Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, weaken the DOLLAR and end the balance sheet runoff that the administration believed has held back the U.S. economy. What was Powell buying insurance against?
Notes From Underground: The ECB and the Swan Song of Mario Draghi
September 10, 2019We are coming to the end of Mario Draghi and the “Whatever It Takes” era. Remember, the head of the European Central Bank said he would do whatever it takes to preserve the EURO. This fealty to the currency has resulted in a -40 basis point deposit rate, a massive expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet via sovereign and corporate bond purchases.
Notes From Underground: Woody Hayes’ Advice to Mario Draghi
September 4, 2019Football season in the U.S. is just beginning. That said, it would be appropriate for President Mario Draghi to refrain from any type of new QE program or cut in interest rates at next week’s meeting. There have been several comments from ECB members during the past week advising against more QE or additional interest rate cuts.
Notes From Underground: Time It Was, What a Time It Was
August 27, 2019These Simon and Garfunkel lyrics could apply to the events of this past weekend, the bookends of Jackson Hole and the G-7 meeting. The meaning was best summed up i a Financial Times story that quoted St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, who said, “Something is going on ,and that’s causing I think a total rethink of central banking and all our cherished notions about what we think we’re doing. We just have to stop thinking that next year things are going to be normal.”
Notes From Underground: Another Fine Mess You Got Us Into, Olli Rehn
August 18, 2019The Federal Reserve just won’t admit that President Trump and the European Central Bank are holding its policy designs captive. Trump ramps up talk of tariffs in an effort to keep the financial markets uncertain while the ECB wishes to pursue an ever expanding balance sheet in an effort to reach an ambivalent inflation target. There is no doubt that REAL YIELDS throughout the European Union are NEGATIVE. Even the Italian 10-year is trading around 1.35%, which is below the inflation level however dubious it is calculated.
Notes From Underground: It’s a Drag For Draghi Getting Old
July 24, 2019On Thursday morning we will hear from the ECB about its desires to raise inflation to its self-imposed 2% target. But on Wednesday we received more tepid economic data from the EU. Then couple that with the ascent of Boris Johnson to the position of British Prime Minister. The rise of Boris Johnson is a problem for Draghi as the possibility of a HARD BREXIT increases dramatically. The market and its DAVOS media sycophants have sold the narrative of a hard Brexit as being devastating for the U.K. economy, the British GILTS, the British pound and the Footsie 100. President Draghi has to be careful that a severe rally in the EUR/GBP cross doesn’t damage the European exporters, especially Germany, who runs a 50 billion-plus surplus with Britain.
Notes From Underground: ECB, Political Pawn?
July 4, 2019Warning: There’s a great deal of colorful language in this very important discussion regarding the nomination of Christine Lagarde to the post of European Central Bank president. This is another political move by the EU elite to avoid placing a German at the helm of the ECB. Jens Weidmann may be a tough choice but Lagarde is preposterous, as Jean Claude Trichet might say. If you thought Mario Draghi was a politician and a dove by design, Lagarde will make Draghi look like a HAWK. In my opinion, IMF Director Lagarde has been and remains the ultimate politician. The role she played in the Greek bailout was pure politics and the price paid by the Greek citizenry has been steep. All in an effort to bailout many European financial institutions. Ask Yanis Varafoukis what he thinks of the Lagarde nomination.
Notes From Underground: Trump Has Weaponized The Dollar. Do the Longs Know?
June 12, 2019Some shots were fired last Friday, but it seems that the markets can only hear the siren song of White House tweets. There was an important story from Bloomberg reporter Saleha Mohsin titled, “Trump’s Currency War Plan Puts Treasury and Commerce at Odds.” The article noted that “a Commerce Department proposal to impose countervailing tariffs on countries that it determines have devalued their currencies has alarmed officials at the Treasury Department.”
It appears that President Trump has grown frustrated by Treasury’s failure to name any country as a “currency manipulator.” It has been Treasury’s bailiwick to monitor the foreign exchange interventions of countries who strive to artificially hold down the value of their currencies in an effort gain a competitive advantage versus any G20 country, especially the U.S. (from the Treasury Department perspective).
