Abe’s 100 Trillion Yen Coin

In the last couple weeks the lines between US fiscal and monetary policy became uncomfortably blurred. In response to the impending US debt ceiling constraint on government spending, a number of prominent economists, congressmen, pundits and bloggers advocated that...

The Great Intemperance

In Jan 2012, the FOMC released the SEP showing that 3 participants saw the Fed Funds rate rising buy the end of 2012 - one member was at 50bps and two were at 1 percent. By the time we got to April 2012 there was one at 50bps, one at 1 percent and one at […]...

Houston, We Have Cliftoff!

In the last 6 months I have tried to spend as little time as possible discussing the fiscal cliff. It was always a farfetched notion that some static, partial equilibrium analysis of a $600b hit to the US economy was going to be relevant. But the markets love a good...

Deck the Halls with Spoos & Blues, Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la

This will be my last note for 2012, and as such I thought it would be most appropriate to review the one theme we have pushed consistently throughout the year. Yes, you guessed it, the third iteration of our rhyming risk-on refrain: spoos and blues. The origin of this...

The BoJ Pretends While the Fed Perplexes

Back on Nov 1st, when the NKY was below 9000, I wrote a commentary entitled “A lesson on how to lose central bank independence”. The note highlighted a “curious additional release” on the BoJ website after their October policy meeting entitled “Measures Aimed at...

Chairman Evans?

Interpreting the December FOMC statement is not an easy task. The market is still digesting what an explicit 6.5/2.5 "Evans Rule" really means. Is it bullish? Is it bearish? Is there room to miss? Under what conditions would a miss be tolerated? What are the next...