Medium – A New Cryptocurrency For Coordinating Artificial Intelligence on Numerai Nearly all of the most valuable companies throughout history were valuable through their strong network effects. If there is one motif in American economic history it is network effects. Every railroad made the railroad network more valuable, every telephone made the telephone network more… Continue reading A New Cryptocurrency?
The New York Times – Binyamin Appelbaum: Some Fed Members Back Quicker Move on Rates The Fed also announced a few housekeeping changes, primarily of interest to close watchers of the central bank. Fed officials are now prohibited from speaking about monetary policy for 10 days before a policy-making meeting, rather than one week. The… Continue reading Is The Fed Tweaking Its Dot Chart?
<Click on chart for larger image> Bloomberg.com – El-Erian Warns Bond Market It’s Underestimating March Fed Odds Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz SE’s chief economic adviser, is warning traders not to get complacent about the prospect of a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike next month. Given the minutes from the Fed’s Feb. 1 meeting and recent economic data, the… Continue reading Timing The Next Rate Hike
Bloomberg – Ben Emons: How the Fed Could Unwind Its Balance Sheet In her testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen explained a strategy for unwinding the central bank’s balance sheet. Three factors could determine how this could unfold. The reduction must be gradual, it must be natural and there must… Continue reading The Fed’s Balance Sheet
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg – Fed Officials Not Losing Patience Fast Enough to Hike in March Lack of big momentum in inflation keeps gradual policy intact Many FOMC voting members “continued to see only a modest risk of a scenario in which the unemployment rate would substantially undershoot its longer-run normal level and… Continue reading Inflation Protection Flows Waning Relative to US Treasuries
Bloomberg – Carney’s Inflation Equation Heats Up as Stores Plan Price Hikes Consumer inflation expectations are on an upward trend The surge in the retail-price index and the increase in inflation expectations highlight one of the most dramatic repercussions of the Brexit vote on households. With the pound down 16 percent since the June vote to… Continue reading Yawning Gap Between Inflation and Growth
<Click on chart for larger image> Balding’s World (Blog) – Changing Nature of Chinese Capital Flight I have written previously about one key way that Chinese firms and individuals moved large amounts of money out of the country by falsifying import invoices. As a simple example, customs reports an import invoice of $100 but the… Continue reading How Capital Is Fleeing China Via Imports & Exports
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg.com – Hedge Fund Liquidity Falls to Danger Zone in U.S. Stock Market There’s safety in numbers. Until a stampede starts. That’s the theory underlying a study of hedge fund holdings by Novus Partners Inc., which sought to calculate how easily the market could absorb concerted selling by large… Continue reading Hedge Fund Liquidity Gives Cause For Concern
[pageview class=”PDFViewer” url=”https://www.biancoresearch.com/bianco/wp-content/plugins/PDFViewer/plugin.php?id=355″] Bloomberg Business – Many Fed Officials See Rate Hike ‘Fairly Soon,’ Minutes Show Federal Reserve officials expressed confidence they can raise interest rates gradually, while a hike “fairly soon” might be appropriate to avoid the risk of an overheated economy, minutes of Federal Open Market Committee’s latest meeting showed. “Many participants expressed the… Continue reading Got “Uncertainty” on the Brain?
<Click on graphic for larger image> Bloomberg.com – At Last, a Way to Count the Cost of an Uncertain Future Research by BOE staff shows an average 0.5 percentage point hit to euro-area GDP during the financial and sovereign debt crises Most people would instinctively feel that when the world is full of strange and… Continue reading Measuring Uncertainty
<Click on table for larger image> Liberty Street Economics (NY Fed Blog) – The Evolution of Home Equity Ownership For the majority of households, housing equity is the principal form of wealth, other than human capital, and it thus represents an important form of potential collateral for borrowing. In that sense, housing equity is an… Continue reading The Housing Market’s Changing Landscape