The US fiscal stance is potentially necessary but by itself insufficient as an explanation for persistent econ resilience. Apparent inconsistency between the credit cycle and business cycle is a multi-causal phenomenon worthy of more nuanced commentary
Pandemic transfers buffered balance sheets of some of the most vulnerable households as hike cycle started because they had just paid down a load of revolving debt. And consumption implications are different in curtailed leverage vs disorderly deleveraging cycles.
Mortgage refi story well covered, but in effect whole swathe of middle/upper income brackets knocked out interest costs at cycle lows and now sitting pretty on the result. Corps in aggregate did something similar - though w/shorter lock-ups.
Strongly recommend listening to this in some ways as a piece with the excerpt from Romney’s biography in the Atlantic. Trivially, they’re similar in that both Stewart and Romney fell out with the parties they felt/feel deeply emotionally and intellectually associated with
More significantly, though, in both cases they both try on versions of “it was better to try to save the project from within the tent than be a powerless external critic” even where the risk was clearly going to be one of looking complicit in what subsequently happened.
And there’s a certain naivety to that that we’re invited to find charming and/or even noble. But it also illustrates that they entirely misread the moment in a way that maybe should at least make us question their judgement.
There is a line on here particularly from some *cough* former Tory advisers currently gainfully employed in the financial sector that austerity can’t be blamed for the woes that the U.K. is currently experiencing. Worth thinking about what that implies.
That the extent of the planned cuts ultimately failed to materialise is just pointing at the failure of the policy (the expected efficiencies weren’t there and lots of cuts turned out to be false economies) and ex post claiming it as vindication.
Osborne then chose not to chase down his deficit targets by slashing and burning even more. That was the right decision but again mostly just illustrated the folly of the targets in the first place.
Still getting a lot of this and it’s obviously bad faith at this point. Where there is potential legal remedy to the current impasse, there’s arguably an *obligation* on the executive to use it rather than allow a default.
“We thought it might look too silly to issue high coupon bonds/consoles so we decided to let the treasury market go into freefall” isn’t a reasonable case to make. If Biden team really aren’t willing to make policy concessions under this threat they have to be looking at this.
Why does so much “serious” macro start with drawing silly arbitrary lines on a chat and calling it potential?
Anyway this is all very time-series macro and hand-waivy. Can agree that U.K. has some unique constraints that are lowering supply potential but not clear they’re addressed particularly well here bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/fi…
How do you rescue the MPC’s own inflation forecast (which has headline falling below target through the forecast period) from this analysis?
The rush to "normalise" rates in Europe is increasingly divorced from any economic justification. Evidence we are getting from negotiated wage settlements are showing one-off front-loaded jumps before resetting to normal(ish) growth thereafter. Econ is slowing. Energy still risk.
Idea that a soft(ish) landing in '23 provides scope for higher terminal rate than currently priced gets the logic here backwards - if energy prices come down, and econ isn't too damaged then ECB no longer needs to chase headline HICP for fear of second round effects.
This shouldn't be controversial. Private sector demand has still not recovered from the pandemic, wages do not look like they're running away, energy prices are de facto policy tightening anyway, ECB just making things worse. We *want* this cycle to end with lower terminal rate.