18 January 2022 In December, the US Federal Reserve abandoned its belief that rising inflation was "transitory", and signaled that monetary tightening may commence earlier that expected. In their defense, the extreme imbalances in aggregate supply and demand in both labour and goods markets (e.g. supply chain disruptions) during the 2020/21 economic recovery have complicated [...]
7 March 2021 We have all marvelled at the dramatic expansion of the US Federal Reserve's balance sheet following both the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Covid pandemic. And, the Chart illustrates quantitative easing (QE) policies have had a similar impact on the asset holdings of central banks worldwide (thanks to Yardeni Research for [...]
12 October 2020After Europe's devastasting Coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, painful measures succeeded in suppressing the spread of Covid-19 during the summer. As health experts warned, however, social lockdown is only akin to hitting the pause button; buying time to allow more sustainable mitigation to be put in place. Unfortunately, as lockdown measures were eased [...]
30 January 2020 In its recently released report on foreign exchange markets, the US Treasury added Switzerland to its watchlist of currency manipulators. To be sure, the Swiss franc does meet some of the criteria. Indeed, Switzerland's current account surplus is a staggering 10% of GDP, and its bilateral trade surplus with the USA has [...]