Deeper Analysis
February 2023 in Figures
February 28, 2023
The dollar appreciated significantly and broadly during February as risk aversion returned. The tone of remarks by Federal Reserve officials became more hawkish, and U.S. price and activity data suggested that U.S. monetary policy is not yet out in front of the problem and will need to be tightened more than previous forward guidance had […] More
The Dollar Then and Now Highlights Why the Current Inflation Has Been Different from the Previous Bout
February 20, 2023
The dollar was a poorly bid currency during the high-inflationary period of the 1970’s. In the wake of World War Two, a new international monetary system based on fixed dollar parities and dollar-gold convertibility was established, and it performed well in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Difficulties arose in the second half of the 1960’s […] More
January 2023 in Figures
January 31, 2023
The Bank of Canada was the only Group of Seven central bank to change its policy interest rate during January, but many others engineered adjustments during the month. Like the Bank of Canada, central banks in Israel, those in Romania, Israel, Serbia, Peru, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and South Africa enacted rate hikes of 25 […] More
Takeaways from Today’s U.S. Data Releases
January 26, 2023
Quarterly U.S. real GDP growth of 2.9% annualized in the final quarter slightly exceeded expectations and was only marginally slower than the third quarter’s 3.2% pace. Despite back-to-back contractions of 1.6% in 1Q and 0.6% in 2Q, GDP still managed to expand on average by 2.1% in 2022 after the prior year’s rebound of 5.9%. […] More
Another Look at Inflation
January 11, 2023
Paul Krugman’s New York Times column this past Tuesday reprimands economy deniers spreading the fallacies that the U.S. economy is in recession and inflation is still rising. Gross domestic product and employment are both increasing at a respectable pace, and consumer price inflation fell to 7.1% in November after cresting at 9.1% in June. History […] More
December and 2022 in Figures
December 30, 2022
The primary driving force behind financial market activity in 2022 was the unexpected reality that elevated inflation was not going to be short-lived and self-correcting, which resulted in substantial monetary policy tightening by almost all central banks around the world. Considerable wealth stored in fixed income securities, equities (and the technology sector in particular), and […] More
November 2022 in Figures
November 30, 2022
The dollar, Bitcoin and long-term interest rates in North America and Europe fell sharply in November, while equities and oil and gold prices climbed substantially. November was an active month for central banks. In addition to the 75-basis point policy rate hikes shown below at the Fed and Bank of England, monetary benchmark rates were […] More
Inflation and Crime
November 4, 2022
The U.S. midterm elections on November 8 are just days away, and Republicans appear headed for a very successful evening, vindicating their choice to focus the campaign on inflation and crime. America is in fact at a crossroads on many issues that ought to be debated, but Republicans took their lead from polls that identified […] More
October 2022 in Figures
November 1, 2022
In an otherwise dismal year for equities, share prices bounced sharply higher in October. In this revival, the British market and technology sector lagged. Among the major central banks shown in the table below, only the European Central Bank, which matched September’s 75-basis point rate hike, changed its key interest rate. But among other monetary […] More
Thursday’s U.S. Data Release Highlights
October 27, 2022
The composition of U.S. real GDP growth last quarter reveals a weaker economy than the quarter-on-quarter annualized growth rate of 2.6% or the unchanged 1.8% year-on-year GDP increase. Personal consumption, which accounts by far for the largest share (70.7%) of GDP, rose only 1.4%, or a bit less than half as fast as GDP, and […] More
