With the third round of Quantitative Easing behind us and the first FOMC meeting of 2015 a month away, let’s take a quick look at US Treasuries. The yields on the 10-, 20- and 30 year Treasuries have generally trended downward since the end of 2013. They hit their 2014 lows on December 16th, t...

China has zombie malls and even zombie cities, so zombie factories can hardly be a surprise. And as the malinvestments pile up, so do unrealized shadow bank losses. The Financial Times reports China Zombie Factories Kept Open to Give Illusion of Prosperity. In the shadow of a group of enormous smo...

Twelve short months ago, the immediate future looked like a lock. Overvalued equities had to fall, ridiculously-low interest rates had to rise, and beaten-down precious metals had to resume their bull market. The evidence was overwhelming. Debt in the developed world had risen to $157 trillion, or 3...

As usual when the market is rallying, the focus is on the positive news events and economic reports, as reasons for a rally to continue. And during pullbacks, the focus is on the negative reports as reasons why this time might be the beginning of more than just a pullback. Economic reports were mix...

The Personal Income and Outlays report for November was published last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest Headline PCE price index year-over-year (YoY) rate is 1.17%, down from 1.42% the previous month. The Core PCE index of 1.41% down from the previous month’s 1.53% YoY. As I...

The Weekly Leading Index (WLI) of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) is at 130.9, down from the previous week’s 131.1, its lowest level since early November 2013. The WLI annualized growth indicator (WLIg) is at -3.3, down from -3.1 the previous week. This is its lowest level since m...

The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) data on volume sales is over two months old when it released. The latest numbers, through mid-October, are now available. However, despite the lag, this report offers an interesting perspective on fascinating aspects of the US ...

Chinese banks have experienced an outflow of deposits for the quarter for first time since 1999. Customers are attracted to trust funds and the stock market which has been on a tear, up 43% in the last six months. In the first week of December, Chinese investors opened almost 600,000 stock-trading a...

The 2000’s gold bull has brought a lot of attention to West Africa.  This attention has not always translated to success given the unstable geopolitical environment in this part of the world.  But the diligent miners able to endure and overcome the challenges have been rewarded with some maj...

In a larger sense, the Fed is already intervening in the oil sector via its zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and its unlimited liquidity for financial speculation. The problem with financializing a critical sector of the economy is the financialization process transforms it into a systemic risk. The...

We can’t predict the future – if it were possible fortune tellers would all win the lottery. They don’t, we can’t and we aren’t going to try to. However, we can analyze what has happened in the past, weed through the noise of the present and try to discern the possible outcomes of the futu...

The Greek financial/political crisis is becoming an annual event. For a sense of just how long this unfortunate little country has been struggling to survive under the relative sound money regime of the eurozone, here’s a Greek Crisis Timeline that CNN published in 2011. Even back then the pattern...

In the last couple of months, the sharp reversion in oil prices has certainly caught the world’s attention.  While the majority of economists and analysts continue to expect incorrectly that falling oil prices are a positive input to economic growth, the reality is that it is not.  The negative ...

Currently we have an international monetary non-system. Nobody has to follow any rules. Everybody does what they consider is in their own short-term best interest. The real difficulty is: What is in their short-term interest – for example, following ultra-easy monetary policy – could well backfi...

The NYSE has released new data for margin debt, now available through November. I’ve updated the charts in this commentary to include the latest numbers. The New York Stock Exchange publishes end-of-month data for margin debt on the NYX data website, where we can also find historical data back...

In a normal economic times falling energy costs would be considered unadulterated good news. The facts are simple. No one buys a barrel of oil to display above the mantle. No one derives happiness from a lump of coal. Energy is simply a means to do or get the things that we want. We use it to stay w...