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September 15, 2005
Inflation Watch Update The attached tables update inflation rates through August 2005. Also, a look at how Core CPI may be affected by rising rental costs due to Hurricane Katrina.
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September 1, 2005
Hurricane Perspective The events of Katrina may encourage the Federal Reserve to abandon its measured pace of rate hikes and reverse course to provide sufficient liquidity in the banking system. The historic precedents of the panics of 1873 and 1907...
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August 3, 2005
Who Is Getting “Screwed”, Mr. Berlusconi? With Italian elections due in the first half of 2006 and weaker economic data streaming on-line through year-end, debate about breaking from the euro will intensify. Whether Italy is better-off...
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July 21, 2005
Where Was The Damage From Higher Crude Oil? Higher crude oil prices have been accompanied by stable inflationary expectations and long-term interest rates, declining credit spreads, a flattening yield curve and a stronger economy. Are we better off...
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July 6, 2005
June Total Return Review: Is General Motors In Your Portfolio? The attached tables update the total returns through June. A look at the effect General Motors bonds had on the Merrill High Yield Master II Index and the Merrill Investment Grade...
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June 15, 2005
Inflation Watch Update The attached tables update inflation rates through May 2005. Also, note our comments with special attention to Housing and Owners’ Equivalent Rent inflation statistics. We believe the next great secular trend in inflation...
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May 16, 2005
Crude Prices And Inventory – How Do They Relate? While economic intuition, some empirical statistical evidence, and simplistic headlines argue for a perfectly inverse relationship between US crude oil inventories and crude oil futures prices,...
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May 12, 2005
Understanding the Problems in Credit/CDS Wall Street’s forensic scientists are out in full force for the post-mortem on this past week’s events in the credit and Credit Default Swap (CDS) markets. A number of conference calls have been...
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May 2, 2005
How Dangerous Are Credit Default Swaps? A transcript of the April 28, 2005 conference call.
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April 13, 2005
How Dangerous Are Credit Default Swaps? Few events in modern finance have been so profound as the growth and development of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market in the last few years. With such growth come reasonable fears that it can lead to...
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April 11, 2005
Is There Such A Thing As “Commodities”? The creation of commodity indices and the flow of funds to them as an asset class does not answer the question whether such an entity as “commodities” exists. The presence of negative...
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March 23, 2005
Does Commodity Indexation Distort Futures Markets? A subtle reason why commodity prices may not be reflective only of individual supply/demand balances and inflationary expectations is the changing nature of commodity futures markets themselves....