Over the last 30 years I have not had much regard for Alan Greenspan. He has been wrong on many of the issues on which he has opined, not least his speech on home bias and his pleadings for U.S. homeowners to refinance their mortgages and use home equity as a piggy bank. But like Holden, I digress. In his CNBC interview Wednesday he was adamant that fiscal stimulus was ill-advised, but tax reform was necessary. He said Congress should use the reform to close tax loopholes and run budget surpluses while we are at some modicum of full employment. I agree with this and as Greenspan maintained, the beginning of this tax reform OUGHT to be the reconsideration of Bowles/Simpson. Greenspan also stressed “… the folks in Washington do not understand that reducing the size of the system portfolio is a necessary condition for normalizing the price of credit.” I also agree with this viewpoint. And, in regards to BITCOIN, Sir Alan explained you can’t create VALUE out of nothing.
Posts Tagged ‘u.s. unemployment’
Notes From Underground: Hey Bojangles, Whose Inflation Is It Anyway?
January 9, 2014No surprises from the ECB or the BOE in their interest rate decisions today. Yesterday I wrote that President Draghi would deliver a Gene Kelly-like press conference, dancing his way through the questions unscathed. I was wrong. Draghi tapped dance his way through the entire Q&A in Bojangles-like fashion. In far, it was so smooth he didn’t even look like he was dancing. (Combine Draghi and the big noise from New Jersey and it was a complete vaudeville show). President Draghi kept insisting that the ECB‘s mandate was inflation and he reminded his inquisitors that inflation cuts two ways and the ECB would be vigilant on any downturn to inflation, which could result in a deflationary spiral. In regards to the recent report of EU-wide inflation coming in at 0.8%, President Draghi assured that he would keep monetary policy on a continued policy of very low interest rates.
Notes From Underground: The Fed’s Dilemma
January 7, 2013The Fed’s policy has painted itself into a proverbial corner. A ZEROHEDGE piece shows that in the age group of 16-55 there has been a loss of 2.7 million jobs during the previous few years, while in the 55-69 age group there has been a gain of 4 million jobs. This has been a recurrent theme of Notes From Underground during the last two years. The FED‘s policy of financial repression has resulted in an outcome that its beloved models failed to predict. The baby boomers haven’t been able to retire because their saving plans have been undermined by the zero interest rate policy. Zerohedge shows that debt-ladened college graduates are unable to find jobs and thus are struggling to repay education loans. Recent college grads are forced to live at home and are not creating new households.
Notes From Underground: Hark There Are No Angels as the Devil is In the Details
January 3, 2013The fiscal crisis came and went and yet the Potemkin village remains. So much was made about the looming fiscal calamity and its dire consequences that the probabilities of a compromise were overwhelming. Not only did fiscal sanity fail to show, the final package was beyond my comprehension. As the nation’s focus was supposedly on Congress, these purveyors of fiscal rectitude passed a BILL that was laden with pork. NASCAR, Hollywood, alternative energy et. al. were the recipients of CONGRESSIONAL LARGESSE IN THE TIME OF FISCAL AUSTERITY. There is no shame in the payment of political favors even in the full view of the MIDDLE CLASS.
Notes From Underground: The financial markets buy what Trichet is selling
March 3, 2011First things first: Tomorrow is unemployment data day and this report will not be preceded by the CANADIAN release as our northern neighbors need an extra week to compile the data as February is a shortened month. The jobless claims and Thursday’s ADP data is driving up the non-farm payroll number from an early consensus of 175,000 to a whisper number above 250,000.
Notes From Underground: Where are the jobs? Recent employment report doesn’t jive
December 5, 2010Friday’s U.S. unemployment report was far less robust than anticipated. This consensus miss led to a selloff in the DOLLAR and a rally in commodities as the weak number gave rise to the need for more aggressive FED action. At first blush the GOLD was sold and other commodities also were falling but that didn’t last long as the risk-on trade gained the upper hand on the full execution of QE2. The worst part of the unemployment data was that the RATE INCREASED TO 9.8 PERCENT and this is what drives the FED at this juncture.