In a double surprise, the job market may at last have begun to revive, but the double-the-forecast, 243,000-job surge in January has done little harm to mortgages. We are still near 4.00%; 10-year T-notes up from 1.82%, but holding nicely at 1.95%. Ordinarily a payroll jump like this would have killed us, especially in combination [...]
“‘Stranger and stranger’, said Alice,” and so it was this week at the Fed, in Europe, and Mr. Obama’s State of the Union. Some brave souls thought the Fed would surprise by rolling out QE3, and begin to buy more MBS, driving mortgage rates down. Everyone expected a pair of meaningless inside-Fed jokes (more transparency, [...]
More positive US data and relaxation of European frights have combined for higher interest rates and support for Wall Street’s warm-fuzzy machine. One week ago, downgraded credit in Europe and another failure in Greek debt negotiations had taken the 10-year T-note to 1.85% and big-equity refis a hair below 4.00%. Today, nothing is resolved in [...]
The one bright spot in the world is the resilience of the US economy, not re-entering the recession so widely forecast last fall, and so far impervious to events in Europe. However, the failure of leadership in Europe, and here — hell, everywhere — seems to be coming together in another chaotic moment. There is [...]
It is an election year. In addition to the distorted economic “analysis” offered by the ever-cheerful stock-market channels, CNBC and Bloomberg, all year long this year political interests will add their garbled gabble. Today’s reports of 200,000 new jobs in December and unemployment down from 8.7% to 8.5% were greeted with happy bugles from the [...]
A New Year begins next week, and it is time for my annual dodge. Peter Drucker, one of the world’s few worthwhile business theorists: “Nobody can predict the future. The idea is to have a good grasp of the present.” This year, no flinching from predicting. Why such foolish courage? In several econo-political arenas we [...]
“Marley was dead; to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that… Marley was dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.” “Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and [...]
Optimism about the US economy has actually crowded Europe off-screen from time to time this week. The center of US happy-talk: an abrupt decline in new filings for unemployment insurance. Stuck near 400,000 each week for 18 months, last week’s figure dropped to 366,000. As in all things economic, changes in trend are more important [...]
The newest European maneuvers have trigged a stock rally, but credit markets are not buying the deal. The small upward pressure on US yields today is preparatory to a big borrowing binge by the Treasury next week, not anything fundamental. Through the fog of Europe, dominating and concealing everything, one pattern is clear: the US [...]
Everybody struggles now to find guideposts in the thicket of new economic information. Two old ideas may help. First, the time-sense of humanity is more calibrated to getting the bear out of the cave than musing about why bears like caves. Second, a version of frog-in-hot-water: we tend not to notice the gradual onset of [...]
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