Deeper Analysis
April 2024 in Figures
May 1, 2024
In April, 10-year sovereign debt yields rose roughly as much, and in the U.S. case more, than in the whole first quarter. Central bank short-term interest rates were not changed in any of the central banks featured in the table below but fell by 20 percentage points in Argentina, 200 basis points in Kyrgyzstan, 100 […] More
March 2024 and 1Q24 in Figures
March 31, 2024
The dollar, ten-year sovereign debt yields, and equities and commodity prices rose in the first quarter. The Swiss National Bank became the first major developed economy central bank to lower interest rates in this cycle, and the Bank of Japan became the last to abandon a negative short-term interest rate. The Fed pushed out the […] More
Under Whom Would the Dollar Likely Perform Better: Biden or Trump?
March 20, 2024
Previous updates on this website have compared the U.S. economic performance during the Trump and Biden administrations and produced evidence pointing to a better record under the current president than his predecessor. Another question of importance concerns which of their potential second terms is likely to foster a stronger dollar. In the post-March 1973 era […] More
February 2024 in Figures
March 1, 2024
February 2024 was another strong month for global equities and the dollar and a spectacularly good one for holders of Bitcoin. None of the major central banks in the table below changed their reference interest rates. Outside that group, central banks cut rates by a full percentage point in Hungary and by 50 basis points […] More
U.S. Growth & Inflation Since 2021 Versus Performance of Other Key Industrialized Economies
February 19, 2024
Despite widespread yet thus far incorrect predictions of a U.S. recession in 2023, opinion poll findings indicate that voters are not happy about the U.S. economic performance during the three years that Joe Biden has been president and show that more confidence exists in how the economy would perform if Trump is the next president […] More
Age Emerges As Big Issue in Looming U.S. Presidential Election
February 12, 2024
If this year’s election is the widely assumed rematch of the vote in 2020, the person sworn into office on January 20, 2025 would be either 78 years seven months in the case of Donald Trump or 82 years and two months if Joe Biden wins. The U.S. Constitution places no age limit on the […] More
January 2024 in Figures
February 1, 2024
10-year sovereign debt yields in Europe and Japan posted larger net increases than did the comparable U.S. Treasury yield last month. None of the major central banks in the table below changed their interest rate benchmark during the month. Among other central banks, cuts were made of 100 basis points in Chile, 50 bps in […] More
Economic Records in Their Third Years: Biden Versus Trump
January 25, 2024
It takes a while for the policies implemented by a new presidential administration to affect the U.S. economy. Today’s fourth-quarter GDP report provides useful information for comparing the U.S. economic performance in the the third year of the Biden Administration to the record of his predecessor. It’s also a good time to take stock because […] More
Americans Pay More Attention to Inflation than Growth in Jobs and GDP
January 22, 2024
Popularized in the 1970s, the misery index adds the year-on-year inflation rate to the unemployment rate to create a summary index of an economy’s economic performance. When used as gauge of how consumers might perceive economic performance, the misery index embodies a fundamental flaw by treating rising unemployment and rising prices as equally appreciated problems. […] More
Movements of EUR/USD Around Yearend 2023
January 15, 2024
Movements in the dollar in late December and early January have traced a pattern that has been repeated many times. This tendency pertains to the dollar’s value against Europe’s most influential currency, which was the Deutsche mark from when the dollar first floated in 1973 through 1998 and thereafter has been in the relationship against […] More
