May 17, 2023
Since early 2022, the Federal Reserve has been raising its policy interest rate at breakneck speed by a full five percentage points. Inflation has indeed subsided a bit, but both price levels and percentage changes remain stubbornly high. When will inflation finally go back to normal? What’s the path forward for monetary policy? Will there be a recession? So many questions! Let’s take a look…
Continue reading “May 2023 Macro and Market Musings: Monetary Policy and Inflation”August 5, 2022
Last week we got the Q2 GDP numbers and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) confirmed that GDP has now declined for two consecutive quarters. What do I make of that? Are we in a recession now? Since several people asked me to comment on this issue, here are my thoughts…
Continue reading “Recession Or Not?”June 15, 2022
With the recent confirmation of a Bear Market finally taking hold, I’ve gotten some requests to comment on the situation: Are we going to have a recession? What’s my inflation outlook? What to expect from the Federal Reserve? What does this all mean for us in the FIRE community?
Let’s take a look…
Continue reading “The Bear Market is here. What Now?”February 1, 2021
Last week on Thursday we got a new snapshot on how the economy is doing. The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers that day and the headline number came out as +4%. So the economy grew at an annualized rate of 4% that quarter or about 1% quarter-over-quarter. Not bad! Considering the uncertainty about growth going forward after the blockbuster 33.4% third quarter growth number it’s reassuring that we kept some of the upward momentum in the fourth quarter.
But just to be sure, there is still a lot of economic pain and uncertainty out there. You ask two different people and you will hear two different opinions on how the economy is going. Unless, of course, they are economists and you will hear three different opinions, as the joke goes.
Since I wrote my post about the Q3 GDP release three months ago and it was quite popular, I thought it would be a good idea to write another update. Is the recession finally over? How much of the pandemic-induced loss has the economy recovered? Do we have to worry about a renewed drop in the economy? Let’s take a look..
Continue reading “Q4 2020 GDP Update: Are we on track for a sustained economic recovery?”
October 29, 2020
Today’s GDP release for the third quarter came in at 33.1%. Not a typo. After the disastrous second-quarter number of -31.4%, the worst quarterly number on record we now got the best quarterly reading on record. What’s going on here? What do I make of that number? Are we out of the woods now? I’m putting on my economist’s hat for today and share my thoughts in a short post. Let’s take a look…
