The continued tariff war between the United States and the rest of the world shows no signs of abating anytime soon. Coca-Cola has announced price increases on its products due to US tariffs on aluminum imports raising the price of aluminum cans. Harley Davidson and BMW have both announced shifts of production from the US to factories in Asia...
President Trump recently took on the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy, although not in a good way. Rather than criticizing the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long, he criticized the Fed for raising interest rates, complaining that in so doing the Fed has taken away America’s competitive edge against China and is erasing all...
One key indicator of the economy’s health that economists and financial market observers look at is the yield curve. In particular, they look at the spread between the yield on 2-year Treasury bonds and 10-year Treasury bonds. As the difference between the yield on those two maturities narrows, the yield curve is said to be flattening. And in some...
Last week marked the 242nd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which began one of the greatest experiments in liberty the world has ever seen. But while we can see with hindsight how successful the American Revolution was, there were a number of times when it came perilously close to failure. Learning their lesson, the Founding...
With the Federal Reserve having raised its target federal funds rate for the past year and a half and showing commitment to slowly drawing down the size of its balance sheet, many have declared the era of easy money to be over. But that’s not really the case. Yes, interest rates will rise as the Fed tightens its policy,...
Market events this week have made even the most bullish investors realize that the US economy isn’t what it used to be. In an attempt to ensure “fair trade,” President Trump placed a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports last Friday. The Chinese retaliated, and Trump threatened on Monday to place additional tariffs on another...
Monetary policy is one of those topics that only a handful of people ever devote much time to studying. Most people ignore central banks during good times and beg them to intervene during bad times. During the worst part of the financial crisis Wall Street clamored for more assistance from the Federal Reserve. They got that assistance in spades,...
No matter which way stock markets are moving, there are always people trying to understand why they go up or down, or which way they’ll move in the future. It can be tough to weed out the important commentary from the downright false, as many pundits have a vested interest in seeing markets move one way or another. But...
Will he or won’t he? That’s the question everyone is asking about the nuclear summit between the United States and North Korea. Will President Trump pull the plug on the summit, or will it go ahead as scheduled? With all the back and forth, no one seems to know for sure. And that uncertainty has weighed on stock markets,...
After an amazing two-year run in which stock markets gained 60% in value, the past three months have seen stocks take a long hiatus. With the Dow trading mostly in the 24-25,000 point range, markets are largely waiting to see what direction the economy will take. On the positive side, the Trump tax cuts have put billions of dollars into...
