Pulling on the Trigger of a Bazooka

I don't know how many times I have heard the words "pushing on a string" from the QE-hater community, but it certainly has been in the thousands, maybe even the tens of thousands. When I hear those four words I usually just get out my chart of spoos, or the nikkei,...

We Have a Few More Hands to Play with the Patsy

I have to admit, even as bullish risk assets as I am, and as happy as I am today with a spoos and chartreuse position, I didn't believe these guys would deliver so strongly on the dovish side. My hat's off to my colleague Ward McCarthy who stuck to his guns throughout...

The Summers Clean-up: Dump Vol, Buy Risk

Over the last couple months the Obama administration made it clear to all who would listen that Larry Summers was their choice for Fed Chairman. And by last week, most folks on both the investment side and policy side were resigned to the idea of a Summers Fed. There...

The Summers “Pivot”

There is no question that Larry Summers was the Administration's favorite to be the next Fed Chairman. And there is no question that his confirmation process would have been highly combative, creating some severe increases in market, and even economic, volatility. But...

Smaller or Later

The payroll report is NOT indicative of an economy that's killing it! Net of 2 month revisions, we added less than 100k new jobs this month. Also the household survey showed a drop of 115k jobs last month - and the only reason the U-rate fell to 7.3 is because 312k...

Summers/Bernanke Put Spread: +1/+2 Market, Summers Over

"The degree of central bank independence varies considerably across countries. Several authors including Bade and Parkin (1982), Alesina (1988,1989) and Grilli, Masciandaro, and Tabellini (1991) found that more independent central banks are associated with lower...