The first and more notable one was the payroll data. Back on August 21st, the BLS revised job numbers downward by 818,000 or about 30% for the 12-month period from April 2023 through March 2024. This is the biggest downward revision since 2009. They still estimate that jobs were created, but 818,000 shy of the previously reported cumulative number

When we use Brazil as a quintessential example, we can see how much their dollar-denominated GDP suffered during the three times where the dollar index spiked significantly:

The most expensive stocks currently are generally the defensive non-cyclical ones. The strong performance of the S&P 500 as of late is not because investors are crowding into bullish cyclical stocks on a strong economy; they’ve instead crowded into wide-moat “sure thing” risk-off stocks with low earnings volatility, such as big tech and companies

Global liquidity, which I measure as global broad money supply of major currencies, translated into a dollar denomination, continues to be rangebound as well. The weaker dollar index has been supportive for global liquidity growth in recent months, but China’s flat money supply from March 2024 to the present has been a drag on global liquidity

The reverse repo facility has been flat lately, and there’s still $433 billion in it. The big draining of the reverse repo facility from over $2 trillion in May 2023 to the current low levels was the main reason why the Fed was able to keep performing quantitative tightening without causing further liquidity problems in the banking system.

Analysts have been trying to forecast or spot a recession in the United States for years, looking for the classic disinflationary recession. And maybe we’ll still get one in the year ahead. But fiscal dominance is a different environment than the past four decades in the United States, and in many ways the United States already went through an

(Early 2020 was a big exception to that, since the fiscal impulse and the rate of quantitative easing were so big that they overrode the rise in the TGA, which on its own would be negative for liquidity. The TGA was only increased that high basically for extra financial buffer to support everything else that was happening, since the sheer magnitude

Emerging markets are responsible for the majority of marginal economic growth and commodity demand growth in the world, since they collectively have a larger population and have far less per-capita commodity usage as a starting point compared to developed markets. Emerging markets also have a lot of dollar-denominated debt, which is lent to them

Basically, if someone went into these past couple of years owning a house with a low fixed-rate mortgage, a portfolio of financial assets, and decent income, then they’re probably feeling pretty okay right now, economically speaking. However, those who didn’t manage to get a house before mortgage rates rose sharply, and/or who don’t have a lot of