Weekly Commentary Archives

The Wall Street Journal ran with the headline “What if China’s Property Crackdown Goes Overboard Too?” for its Tuesday’s “Heard of the Street” article. A Bloomberg piece went with “China Property Crackdown Alarms Analysts as [...]

China’s historic Bubble has been integral to CBB analysis for two decades. I’ve on a weekly basis chronicled how interconnected Chinese and the U.S. Bubbles worked in harmony to inflate one epic global Bubble. Loose [...]

August 27, 2021: Bloomberg Wall Street Week’s David Westin: “Larry, you saw, you read what Jay Powell said [in his Jackson Hole speech]. What was your reaction?” Larry Summers: “I was glad to see him [...]

Bubbles are self-reinforcing, yet inevitably unsustainable inflation. There are different types of Bubbles – Credit and speculative asset Bubbles being the most common. Inflationary processes are fed by some extraordinary [...]

We shouldn’t read too much into one month of weak Chinese Credit data. July’s growth in Aggregate Financing (system Credit) slumped to $164 billion, almost 40% below estimates, and down from June’s booming $566 billion [...]

The U.S. economy created 943,000 jobs in July. With upward revisions, there were 938,000 positions added in June and 614,000 in May – for a notable three-month employment surge of almost 2.5 million. The Unemployment [...]

The Shanghai Composite sank 4.3% this week – and was down as much at 6.7% at intraday Wednesday lows. The Hang Seng China Financials Index was 5.7% lower intraday Wednesday, before closing the week down [...]

July 20 – Reuters (Karen Pierog): “Risk-off sentiment that drove Monday’s sell-off on Wall Street and rally in U.S. Treasuries widened credit spreads on corporate bonds to multi-month highs. The spread on the ICE BofA [...]

The week had an ominous feel. Ten-year Treasury yields dropped another seven bps to 1.29% – completely disregarding much stronger-than-expected reports on consumer and producer prices, along with inflation expectations. German bund yields fell another [...]

Please join Doug Noland and David McAlvany Thursday, July 15th, at 4:00 pm Eastern/ 2:00 pm Mountain time for the Tactical Short Q2 recap conference call, “Updating the Bubble Thesis.” [...]

Last week’s CBB focused on a fundamental flaw in contemporary central bank doctrine – using securities markets as the primary mechanism for managing system financial conditions. What began with Greenspan’s liquidity assurances following the “Black [...]

“When I refer to financial stability, I mean a financial system that is resilient to shocks. That is, one in which banks and nonbank financial institutions not only remain solvent but also continue to lend [...]

It was a fascinating set up. A pivotal FOMC meeting two days ahead of quarterly “quadruple witch” expiration of options and other derivatives. Option expiration-related volatility used to be largely [...]

Total Non-Financial Debt (NFD) expanded $879 billion during Q1 to a record $62.032 TN. NFD expanded an unprecedented $7.671 TN, or 14.1%, over the past five quarters. And with Financial [...]

U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls increased 559,000 in May, about double April’s 278,000 gain, but still below the 675,000 consensus forecast. Average Hourly Earnings rose a stronger-than-expected 0.5% for the month, with back-to-back robust monthly earnings gains [...]

It’s perhaps the greatest issue confronting today’s global markets. It didn’t work in the U.S. in the late-twenties. Arguably, it was an unmitigated disaster. Beijing has begun moving more aggressively to rein in speculative excess, [...]

For the Week: The S&P500 slipped 0.4% (up 10.6% y-t-d), and the Dow declined 0.5% (up 11.8%). The Utilities added 0.4% (up 4.7%). The Banks fell 1.0% (up 35.1%), and the Broker/Dealers declined 1.2% (up [...]

A big week on the inflation front. April CPI was reported up 0.8% versus estimates of 0.2%. And while the 4.2% y-o-y increase was partly a function of the year ago negative CPI prints, it’s [...]

There is an overarching issue I haven’t been able to get off my mind: Are we at the beginning of something new or in the waning days of the previous multi-decade cycle? May 5 – [...]

“I’m not sure why they think they know that it’s transitory. How do they know that when there’s plenty of money printing that’s been going on and we’ve seen commodity prices going up really massively? [...]