Deeper Analysis
August 2026 in Figures
September 6, 2026
The back-and-forth developments from the war between Iran on the one hand and the United States and Israel on the other chugged on without resolution during August. The bottom line from an economic standpoint is that the price of oil climbed 6.5% on top of a July increase of more than 20%, ending up around […] More
July 2026 in Figures
July 31, 2026
The net July changes in the table below for the most part understates the extreme financial market turbulence caused by the re-escalating Middle East war, resulting sharp rise in the price of oil, rollout of a new U.S. tariff plan, extreme fires ravaging Europe and other parts of the world, and new regime at the […] More
Consumer Price Results Last Month Around the World Varied
July 20, 2026
After today’s morning rundown of news, data releases and financial market changes, Canada released June consumer price figures, showing the biggest month-on-month drop (-0.4%) since the Covid-distorted month of April 2020 and a 0.4 percentage point slowdown in the 12-month rate of increase to 2.8%. That level exceeded the 2.0% target for the ninth time […] More
A Subtle But Meaningful Shift in Monetary Policy-Making Seemingly Favored by the New Fed Chairman
July 20, 2026
Fed Chairman Warsh fully embraces the mission of price stability that the congress has assigned to the Federal Reserve but aims to implement vast modifications to how the central bank pursues its mission. Five broad task forces have been set up to broadly review and make radical changes in a wide range of areas towards […] More
June and the Second Quarter of 2026 in Figures
June 30, 2026
Around the world, the monetary policy pendulum swung more decisively in the direction of restraint. Among the five central banks the table that appears in this monthly feature of Currency Thoughts, the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank each raised their key interest rate by 25 basis points in June, and none of the […] More
May 2026 in Figures
May 29, 2026
For many weeks now, Trump administration officials have been saying that a peace deal may be just around the corner, but the conditions for such have so far proven elusive. That hasn’t mattered. Repeat something long enough and people will come to believe it, and so financial markets in the third month of the Middle […] More
April 2026 in Figures
April 30, 2026
A second full month has now passed without an end to the Middle East war that had been projected initially as likely to last only a few weeks. In March with world energy prices soaring like it was 1974, 1979 or the late summer of 1990, financial markets experienced a significant drop in the appetite […] More
March and First Quarter 2026 in Figures
March 31, 2026
March was dominated by wild daily and intra-daily swings in financial vital signs as sentiment about the outcome and duration of the Middle Eastern war swung with each news flash, and investors tried to figure out the implications for the path of energy prices, general inflation, and the shape of Middle East oil facilities when […] More
How Often Do U.S. Stock Market Corrections Evolve into Bear Markets?
March 20, 2026
With key U.S. stock market indices fast approaching correction status, I asked Google AI Overview how often previous corrections of the S&P 500 (defined as a cumulative high-to-low movement of at least 10%) have evolved into a bear market, where the requirement is a decline of 20% or more. I learned that Corrections are actually […] More
Post-Covid Inflation Heavily Influenced by Global Factors
March 16, 2026
National inflationary trends this decade have by and large followed a similar pattern. Consumer price inflation peaked in June 2022 at 9.1% in the United States, at 8.1% in Canada and at 10.6% in Euroland. The British and Turkish CPI peaks of 11.1% and 85.5% happened in October 2022. Swiss inflation crested at 3.5% a […] More
