Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

Despite last month’s substantial revisions that wiped out most of “residual seasonality” from the seasonally adjusted revolving consumer credit series, it still remains for this...

The primary example of globally synchronized growth has been Europe. Nowhere has more hope been attached to shifting fortunes. The Continent, buoyed by the persistence of central bankers like Mario...

If we are analyzing funding risks of late, which is a perfectly natural thing to do given where things stand, we shouldn’t only focus on the technical aspects. Sure, there is LIBOR-OIS and all...

No one seems able to account for the rise in LIBOR-OIS. I think it’s a vain effort, and focuses on the wrong segments, but nonetheless there is considerable uncertainty which always casts...

Since the announced conditional cut in China’s RRR won’t begin to show up in various figures (particularly for the MLF) until next month, the updated PBOC balance sheet for March 2018 is...

Before Mario Draghi took over the ECB, he was head of the Bank of Italy. In between, Draghi was also Chairman of something called the Financial Stability Forum (FSF). This latter organization was...

The current US Treasury yield curve in between the 5-year and 10-year maturities is today just 15 bps. It had dropped down to this level of flat about ten days ago. When it did, it had been the first...

Thursday, for the first time in over a week, HKD moved. That’s not unsurprising, as we should expect that nothing goes in a straight line – even devaluation of this kind. The issue is more...

Throughout much of last year, we were told repeatedly that the PBOC was tightening monetary policy. China’s central bank had raised its reverse repo rate twice early on, and then once more last...

Retail sales rose (seasonally adjusted) in March 2018 for the first time in four months. Related to last year’s big hurricanes and the distortions they produced, retail sales had surged in the...

Allusions to a labor shortage continue to be ubiquitous. Two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published yet another such story under the headline Iowa’s Employment Problem: Too Many Jobs, Not...

Former US Senator Augustus Hawkins died in November 2007. It may seem superstitious to superimpose meaning on the timing, but maybe the only way it wouldn’t was if he had passed right on August...

The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to produce and release its economic projections and assumptions every year. Typically, the CBO does so under initial...

Wholesale sales, seasonally adjusted, bounced back moderately in February 2018 after a sharp decline (revised even lower) in January. Sales in the latest monthly figures are left still lower than in...

One of main elements of the true seasonal Q1 weakness, or what has been called residual seasonality, has been the embrace of revolving credit. The Federal Reserve’s statistics for consumer...

Early in the morning on October 7, 2016, during Asian trading, the British pound experienced a flash crash. Driven down 6.1% in a matter of two minutes, it left the rest of the markets stunned. The...