Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Exporting Deflation
Three topics were dominating the news this morning: the Gates divorce, inflation, and the trade deficit.
I’ve got nothing to say about the Gates divorce, except that it’s shocking and saddening. I had always assumed their being a couple was eternal, but who knows what happened behind the scenes. I’ve got no chart for it.
As for the data news stories, I looked at our Economic Database for some charts. When I was growing up, inflation is all people thought about. Over the past thirty years, it had faded from the national conversation. Let’s just say I think it’s coming back in style and will be here for a long time to come.
Stock of the Union
Well, it seems that the markets sure do like what the President is saying during his SOTU – – or at least are embracing the fact that asset inflation is going to continue to run wild. Here we see the small caps (/RTY) roaring higher:
An Inflationary Slingshot
Cost-push inflation could break out (and a note on gold)
Before beginning the post a little context is in order. We (NFTRH) anticipated the current pause in long-term Treasury yields (one indicator of inflation) because pro-inflation sentiment became over-done in March and was due for a cool down; so said a contrarian view. This post discussing the likelihood of more inflation to come is not written by a one-way bias booster. It’s important for credibility to make these distinctions from the herds running with the daily news cycle.
The short-term contrary sentiment situation against the inflation view began with the Bond King’s media-touted short of long-term Treasuries (i.e. expectation of higher yields), per one of our best macro tools…
(more…)A Decidedly Different Look at the ISM
ISM’s Report on Business (RoB) blisters upward, but…
My former residence within the real economy was right here, in the manufacturing base. I don’t miss it even one little bit, but were I still involved we’d be booming and bitching. Business would be very good and prices and supply constraints very aggravating. The way things went in my segment – Medical Equipment, often pressured by Medicare constraints and general competition – I’d be getting hit over the head by customers about maintaining low prices while facing immovable obstacles in the form of supplier prices and extended deliveries. Now I write for a living. It’s a no-brainer I guess.
That digression aside, let’s look at the RoB. Here is the headline. You can click the graphic to grab the entire report (pdf).
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