Archive for the ‘Inflation’ Category
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Economists can be an interesting group of people. Although they don’t like to be wrong, occasionally they will fess up when they’ve been way off the mark in the past. To an extent, that’s what happened at this year’s Capital Economics Annual Conference in Chicago. The conference kicked off with an admission from Capital Economics Managing Director Roger Bootle that they had been wrong in their forecast last year. Although they had said world economies would continue to be bad, reality was that economies were even worse than they had expected. (more…)
Tags: austerity, crisis, Europe, financial crisis, inflation, sovereign debt
Posted in Credit crisis, Eurozone crisis, Inflation, economy | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Well now the United Nations has wandered into the analysis of what is going on in commodity markets, releasing a report this week, and appears to have fallen into the blame speculators camp. While I did not read the 80-page report cover to cover, some of the recommendations in the UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) report are downright scary.
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Tags: Federal Reserve
Posted in Inflation, Manipulation, Regulatory/actions, Spec limits | 6 Comments »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
There seems to be some debate over whether Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke closed the door on additional quantitative easing or not during the Federal Reserve’s first ever press conference this week. The statement put out by the Fed prior to the press conference simply indicated that QE2 would be completed on schedule in June but added, “The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings in light of incoming information and is prepared to adjust those holdings as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability.”
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve
Posted in Inflation, economy | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
On a day that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average reach its highest close since June 5 (nearly three years/see chart) and yet the sector which is most responsible for the Great Recession—housing—continues to exhibit weakness, all the talk is on tomorrow’s first ever Fed Chairman press conference following the Federal Open Market’s Committee (FOMC) meeting.
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Economic outlook, Federal Reserve, FOMC
Posted in Inflation, economy | No Comments »
Friday, April 15th, 2011
During the Futures Industry Association’s annual conference in Boca Raton Fl. in March Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioner Bart Chilton said that it just wasn’t true that that there was no empirical evidence that speculators in general and more specifically the presence of long-only commodity indexes were at least partially responsible for rising commodity prices.
In numerous Congressional hearings the leadership of CME Group and some industry leaders have consistently pointed out that there were no empirical studies linking high prices with speculation. They also pointed out that the CFTC’s own study in September 2008 seemed to indicate speculators were not the problem. A couple of years ago Chilton had promised a more in depth study from the agency on the matter that would indicate something different, but no such study has come forward.
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Tags: crude oil, speculators
Posted in Inflation, Regulatory/actions, Speculators | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
In our November 2008 cover story, “Great bailout of 2008:What’s next” — the first issue published following the 2008 Lehman Brother’s collapse and TARP — we discussed the cause and ramifications of the “Great Bailout.” One source, Bud Conrad of Casey Research, pointed out the bailout was tragically flawed and said it would lead to inflation and a devaluation of the dollar. I know nothing earth shattering there, but wait, here is the important part. Conrad added the devaluation would not occur in relation to other currencies, which are also in trouble but in purchasing power of commodities like petroleum and gold.
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Posted in Inflation, economy | No Comments »
