5 min readWhen the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported early this month that non-farm employment rose by only 20,000 jobs in February—a huge miss from consensus estimates of about 175,000 new jobs—it threw many observers for a loop. Was the low number an indicator of a slowdown in growth? Or could it be written off as a…
2 min readWith a March 29th deadline looming for the UK to leave the European Union, there is still no decision about how the departure will be managed. In the two years since a popular referendum triggered the Brexit process, negotiations over a deal for a smooth exit have been unsuccessful. Scenarios range from a “hard” Brexit,…
26 min readDOWNLOAD FULL REPORT Abstract With the March 29th deadline for the UK to leave the European Union looming, there is still no decision about how the departure will be managed. In the two years since a referendum forced the UK government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty indicating their intention to leave the…
7 min readIt’s been widely publicized that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has come under pressure from the White House to pause rate hikes for fear of straining the economy. More recently, there have been allegations that balance sheet reduction is in part to blame for the volatility that shook markets in December. At the same time,…
5 min readThe longest government shutdown in history is already having a significant impact on the economy. Equally important, but less well understood, is the potential impact on negotiations over the March 1 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. As President Trump has continued to insist on a $5.7 billion allocation towards construction of a border…
2 min readIn the midst of the recent saber rattling over a potential trade war between the U.S. and China, one salient point has often been overlooked: so far, other than narrowly focused tariffs on steel and aluminum, neither side has taken immediate concrete steps to act on the announcements. The recent tit-for-tat threats from the Trump…
4 min readAbstract Trade tensions between the U.S. and China have been making headlines recently. The Trump administration recently rolled out plans to place 25% tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports, to which China responded in kind. In the near-term, tensions may continue to escalate, but ultimately a negotiated settlement is in the best interests of…
2 min readWhen Jerome Powell emerged as the front-runner to succeed Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chair, he was quickly pegged as a moderate “continuity candidate.” A low-profile, but hard-working, member of the Federal Open Market Committee since 2011, he had supported Yellin’s course of slow-but-steady interest-rate increases as the economy gradually recovered from the great recession….
4 min readAbstract Jerome Powell is the new Chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) following Janet Yellen’s retirement from the Fed. In the near-term, Powell is likely to continue on the projected path of gradual interest rate hikes while also focusing on transparency and deregulation. However, as his background is not in economics, he will…
3 min readAs stocks soar to record highs, it seems as though the decline in long bond yields has been endless. Less than a year after the Federal Reserve saw economic conditions sufficient to warrant the first rate hike in almost a decade, rates on long-term U.S. Treasury bonds now lie at near-record low levels (with the…