Forbes – This Is The Clown Show That Could Lead To A Government Shutdown This Month Funding for the federal government will run out at midnight on April 28. If some type of new appropriation isn’t enacted by then, there will be a government shutdown the next day. You would think the Republican-controlled Congress would want… Continue reading Odds Of A Government Shutdown Rise Slightly
Bloomberg Markets – Wage Stagnation in the U.S. Might Not Be As Bad as You Think Typical inflation-adjusted gauges of American pay are at odds with consumption patterns Is wage stagnation real? Even as lower-income pay has officially stagnated since the 1970s, consumption has climbed, Sacerdote points out. For households below median incomes, the number of cars… Continue reading Is Wage Growth Really That Bad?
CNBC – Next crisis could come from the shadow banking system, says ex-Fed member Lockhart The U.S.’s substantial shadow banking system could be the source of the next financial panic, the former president of Atlanta’s Federal Reserve Bank has suggested. The U.S. banking system itself is in rude health, having reformed under increased regulatory pressure in… Continue reading Why The Shadow Banking System Could Cause The Next Crisis
Bloomberg View – Mohamed A. El-Erian: How This Week Will Affect U.S. Reflation In sum, the data and policy signals taking center stage this week will reinforce the continued gradual reflation plot rather than shock the audience with the twist of either a dramatic breakout or a major slump. It is the ensemble of European and… Continue reading U.S. Reflation
Bloomberg – ETF Investors Dumped U.S. Small Caps, Loved Emerging Markets In the first quarter, investors dumped an U.S. exchange-traded fund that holds mid and small-cap U.S. stocks and flooded into another that owns large emerging-market equities. The iShares Russell 2000 ETF, which tracks the namesake index, was hit with $1.41 billion in outflows since the… Continue reading ETF Investors Flocking to Emerging Markets, Fleeing U.S. Small Caps
The Financial Times – Global surveys or hard data – which are the fake news? In conclusion, we believe that the hard data in the US are understating activity growth in that economy, and consequently in the official GDP series for the global aggregate. We expect to see this reflected in much stronger growth in US… Continue reading Hard Data May Catch Up, But Does NOT Imply Risk Assets Perform
The Wall Street Journal – This Volatility Warning Has a Different Ring to It Today Extreme volatility hasn’t played out like James Dimon predicted a year ago, but low volatility is creating a whole bunch of new concerns Realized volatility is usually lower than the VIX and the gap between two today isn’t out of the… Continue reading Realized Volatility Forcing Investors to Find Riskier Assets
The Financial Times – Franco-German short term yield spreads blow out to eurozone crisis high The yield gap between French and German two-year debt has blown out to its highest level since the eurozone crisis as investors snap up German assets ahead of France’s presidential elections in three weeks’ time. The two-year spread – a measure… Continue reading France/Germany Spread
Bloomberg.com – Almost a Decade Later, U.S. Money Markets Are Yet to Recover Foreign banks shift funding to areas such as repo agreements Regulators’ post-crisis reforms mean to avoid repeat of 2008 ar less cash than anticipated has returned to the higher-yielding slice of the money-fund world, after the overhaul that took effect in October led… Continue reading Struggling Money Markets
The Financial Times – Are ECB asset purchases hindering monetary transmission or not? Yields of high credit quality bonds in the eurosystem have been gradually decoupling from swap rates since about the middle of last year. But the question everyone wants answered is whether the disconnect will eventually undermine the ECB’s monetary policy transmission mechanism. After… Continue reading Is The ECB Helping?
Bloomberg.com – The GDP Is a Flawed But Magical Indicator Economists have long argued that the gross domestic product has many flaws as a measure of well-being and policy success. Yet there’s a good reason it’s still being used: There’s a certain magic to it, despite its science being somewhat iffy. On Monday, the National Bureau of… Continue reading Measuring GDP