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Yellen, like notorious previous Fed chiefs including Strong, Martin, and Greenspan, can now claim success in having prolonged and strengthened an asset price inflation which otherwise may well have been about to enter its severe end phase. If history is any guide, the result of that success is to be feared. Asset price inflations — always

Markets have not been slow to see through the hollowness of the European Central Bank’s announced (on December 8) curtailment of the pace of money printing planned for April next year . The ECB plans to reduce its “stimulus” from 80 billion euros per month down to 60 billion euros per month. But, it plans to do this for nine months before any

Llevamos tres meses con la nueva administración y más de un año desde el inicio de un poderoso estímulo monetario de final de ciclo (descrito también como “el toque Yellen” en el que se detuvieron todas las subidas de tipos planeadas para 2016) por parte de la Reserva Federal. Pero no hemos oído ninguna queja de los republicanos acerca de los

The ECB’s increasingly shrill mantra that it makes policy for the monetary union as a whole and not for its largest member (Germany) could well cause a black swan to appear — in the form of a German political shock this autumn. The Frankfurt-based officials have been ignoring the historical observation of Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert

Demand for financial engineers rises and falls with asset inflation. So there is nothing odd about these professionals now enjoying a good market for their services. But why is Big Tech such a large recruiter? The art (not science) of financial engineering – camouflaging a rise in leverage which boosts present and future earnings for the purpose

Japan is now on its way to leaving the 2 per cent inflation standard, having been the last to join (in 2013). Accordingly, the Bank of Japan has scrubbed from its latest policy statement (end-April) all promise that the target will be met by any given time-line. The apparent indefinite postponement could be deceptive. BoJ Governor Kuroda may

Optical illusion in the form of a focus on flows — rather than stocks — is a well-known flaw in the analysis of asset markets. Two examples this year demonstrate the phenomenon: one from the market for gold and the other from the market in stock options. Analysis of the illusion in gold helps provide a clue to how present high speculative

The British are finding out in their Brexit voyage that escaping from the “might” of an EU dominated by Germany is perilous. At this point there are many grounds for despairing about the ability of their political leaders to achieve a meaningful exit. There would have been much stronger grounds for hope if the May government had nurtured an

Big government, big banks, and big tech are now all on the same side in the war against cash. Government — we all know about already. Big banks — they do not want to see the users of cash in retail transactions (for goods and services) getting keener prices than the users of their electronic payment systems. They use their oligopoly power to

According to the mainstream narratives, a state of inflation alert was the catalyst to the US stock market mini-crash of February 2 and February 5, 2018. This explanation echoes the run-up to the October 1987 stock market crash. On other occasions in history, inflation alerts have not had such an immediate effect, with the pull-back of asset price