After a highly eventful week, the stock market is at a two-year high, about the same level as we were when Lehman was allowed to collapse. Nonetheless, that is some three thousand points on the Dow — below our all-time high in 2007. The market is still down 21% from those heady days. Think back to last Spring when the market was moving up daily.…
The study of economics has always been an enjoyable intellectual pursuit. There are lots of arcane terms and inside jokes that economists enjoy discussing and sharing. But, it seems we have reached a tipping point where economics is becoming polluted by politics, and I’m sad about that. Should I parse my thoughts to support one political side over the other? As I’ve said many times,…
The most important monthly economic report each month is the “Jobs Report.” The last few months, the report has shown a sadly weak economy, producing few jobs. Voters took the President to task for that on Tuesday. Today, the Labor Department announced that the private sector created 159 thousand jobs, twice what was expected. This was great news, and the Dow futures immediately jumped 40…
Today, the Fed announced another round of quantitative easing, which means they will buy Treasury bonds, which means the Treasury then gets that amount of money ($75 BILLION per MONTH over the next 8 months) deposited into Treasury’s checking account, which Treasury can then use to write checks for Social Security, infrastructure, anything . . . even interest payments to the Fed for having bought…
I think the late comedian was the first to describe our electoral process as “political masturbation”, a very intense, focused effort to accomplish nothing. The Libertarian view is that elections merely change the Masters, with the slaves remaining the same. It is just a different set of thieves. Maybe, that’s a little cynical. OK, that’s a lot cynical. Wall Street traditionally likes divided government, and…
In this world of 24/7 cable news, which spin the news as well as report the news, it is easy to become both confused and depressed. Therefore, I recommend a disinterested foreign perspective to balance the right-wing Fox News and the left-wing MSNBC. Religiously, I read The Economist, a newsweekly magazine from England and recommend it. Sometimes, it is helpful to read things like this,…
Next week, the market could be exciting, maybe too exciting! As I’ve been predicting all year, the market will begin to rally when the election outcome comes into focus. I expected that in October and was pleasantly surprised when it started in September. Historically, the market likes gridlock, which appears to the outlook. Another reason for the recent rally is the expectation that the Fed…
Economists get ridiculed frequently and richly deserve it. In fact, they usually enjoy it! However, today was a good day, in that they accurately predicted the GDP growth rate in Q3 would be 2.0%, compared to 1.7% in Q2. This makes it even less likely we will see a “double-dip” or experience the worst of the recession again. This makes my forecast of a “long,…
Of all the many market indicators, this is the most useless but must be fun, as it rolls out year after year. Here it is: Since 1950, the stock market performs best from the last trading day of October to the end of April. (Of course, there are always obvious exceptions, like the oil embargo of 1973-74, the dot com bust of 2001-2, and the…
When you look at a cake, you are seeing the end result of whatever ingredients went into it. The same is true when you look at the market. Instead of flour, butter, mix or whatever goes into a cake, information and expectations go into the market. Most people understand why information moves a market, but expectations about information are just as important. Yesterday’s roller-coaster market…
Arthur Conan Doyle once described how Sherlock Holmes unraveled a mystery because of the “dog that didn’t bark”. That’s reminds me of the G-20 meeting in Korea. China is clearly manipulating its currency, but so is the U.S. But, there was little furor about this. While the finance ministries are warning of a currency war, there was no furor that we were already in it.…
Yesterday, the Treasury Department issued $10 billion in five-year bonds. In other words, they borrowed another $10 billion. But, something was different . . . very different. Instead of repaying $10 billion at the end of five years PLUS interest earned by the bond-holder, the government will repay $10 billion LESS interest paid to the government for holding the money. This has never happened before!…
One of the benefits of aging is that a person has had time to benefit from all the good advice they have received over the years. One of the disadvantages is that you cannot remember who gave you the advice . . . Some of the best advice I received as a young investment advisor was to be an “economics agnostic and a political atheist”.…
With regret, I have noticed my blog gets neglected whenever I finish doing my quarterly column for Inside Business. (You can receive copies by email at no cost by signing up at www.baycapitaladvice.com.) To be even more confessional, I have also been working on a book, which is still another excuse for my keyboard burnout. No more excuses, just apologies! With the highly important G-20…
The famous fat lady sang this morning, and, thankfully, didn’t sing anything surprising. The rate of unemployment remained constant at 9.6%, instead of increasing to 9.7% as expected. Total non-farm jobs decreased by 95 thousand, far better than the 600-700 thousand monthly decreases we saw last year but way below the 250 thousand a month increases that we need. Tragically, 6.1 MILLION people have been…
She will sing this Friday morning, when the monthly Civilian Unemployement Report or “Jobs Report” will be released. To the market, this is the single most important economic report each month, probably too important. But, it is even more important this month. Yesterday, the Non-Manufacturing ISM Report indicated there was more job growth in the services sector than expected. As a result, the Dow roared…
For years, economists and financial analysts have talked about the BRIC countries, i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China. As a group, they were rapidly growing economies dependent upon export growth. As a group, they need to curb their internal savings by individuals and increase consumption spending by those individuals. This is a happy problem. Now, economists and financial analysts are talking about the HIIC countries,…
All of my life, the U.S. has been the engine of growth for the world. That is no longer the case, as China has clearly taken our place. While that may be sad, I don’t think it is anything to be feared. During my travels over the last two weeks or so, I’ve focused on China, but it is time to move on. For now,…
The Bush Administration started applying pressure on China years ago, to allow their currency to increase in value. This makes their exports more expensive to foreigners who buy them, like the U.S. As a result, foreigners buy less, which means China produces less, and fewer Chinese workers are needed. Layoffs increase and so does social unrest. The Obama Administration has substantially increased that pressure on…
The Chinese have a progressive tax on income, which means your tax rate increases as your income increases, similar to ours. However, they have no estate tax, at least not yet. As income inequality increases, so does social instability, which is the greatest fear of the Chinese government and can hardly be emphasized enough. To take more from the rich, there is now growing pressure…
Last week, I marveled that China was making the same mistake as the U.S. by letting its Social Security system get as out of control as ours. Digging into this has not been easy, but I have learned that: 1. It started in 1978, when China was still a “socialist-paradise”. 2. By 2030, it is expected to be the oldest, on average, population on the…
Back in 1986, I was a Vice President with Citibank out of New York, and based in Dallas. With no data to go on, except a general sense of unease about the possibility of serious over-building, I rented a large van for a full day and invited all the best bankers I could to spend a day . . . sightseeing in our hometown. Collectively,…
I was born immediately after World War II. It was a time when America became the most powerful nation on the planet. We had triumphed over evil during the War and “deserved” to be #1 among nations. We were truly “exceptional”. As a young man (and especially when I wore my Army uniform), I walked with a swagger . . . because I was an…
Certainly, one of the most apparent changes in China from my last visit in 1987 is the western style of clothing, which has been completely adopted by the Chinese. It is not unlike a typical walk thru Chinatown in San Francisco. Who said advertising doesn’t work? Yet, this is one of those discussions where business bleeds into ethics quickly. If advertising works for clothing, why…
This nation boasts the greatest number of newspapers, with over 400. It is also accused of having jailed the most jounalists, number unknown. Still, a good read of one day’s edition offer insights into Chinese thinking see www.chinadaily.com.cn: 1. Pressure from the U.S. to allow the Chinese currency (Yuan) to appreciate is not motivated by any trade protection of Chinese exporters but entirely by the…
Mao said that all great men have climbed The Great Wall. What he meant to say was “All great financial advisors have . . . “
As a child of the Cold War, I just assumed I would die in a nuclear war. When I first heard the song by rocker Sting, called “Do the Russians Love Their Children Too?”, I was caught a little off-balance by the question. Yesterday, I watched an older lady stop a young mother to admire her baby. I saw a man photographing his wife and…
Last month, China passed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. At current rates, it should bypass the U.S. in 2020, which is a mere ten years away. It may do so, but it is interesting that they are not learning from our mistakes. Already, they are allowing retirement for women at age 50 and men at age 55, along with a comparable Medicare…
The flight attendants for Air China are young and pretty, obviously a proven branding campaign for generations. However, just like all flight attendants everywhere, they were over-worked, harassed, and annoyed. Rolling their eyes seemed to be a primary job requirement. Yet, they seem to have more authority than U.S. travelers normally see. When they tell you to close the window, it is not a request.…
In 1987, I made my last trip to China. Mao had only been dead 11 years, and Deng was still trying to figure out how to use Soviet-style Five Year Plans to unleash the Chinese economy. To me at that time, it was a large, Second-World nation with an agrarian economy. My principle take-away was military, i.e., that China really could field a ten-million man…
Regulators for the world’s central banks meet in Basel, Switzerland. On two previous occasions, they have re-written the rules for banks worldwide. Now, we have the third revision, called Basel III. The more capital a bank has, the less likely it is to fail and need taxpayer dollars. So, why not require banks to have lots of equity? Because it is an expensive source of…
Yesterday, it was announced that wholesale inventory levels rose 1.3%, which is the best performance in two years. Sometimes, a rise in inventory means sales have decreased, causing inventories to backing up. However, it was also announced that sales at the wholesale level increased twice as much as expected. This means wholesalers are re-stocking their inventories . . . because they have reason to believe…
There is no good measure of globalization, a fact that drives economists crazy. Traditionally, we have used the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the cost of shipping dry goods around the world. It’s a good start, but here is another. Every three years, the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland measures the volume of trading, not in stocks or bonds or commodities, but in currencies.…