Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

The advent of open and transparent central banks is a relatively new one. For most of their history, these quasi-government institutions operated in secret and they liked it that way. As late as...

On April 29, 2011, the US benchmark oil price (WTI) surged above $113 per barrel. It wasn’t just American oil prices, either, as other benchmarks around the world were on a huge run. It was the...

As with other prices, if we are interested in what’s going on with dollar exchange values (not be confused with eurodollars, the shadow conditions behind everything) we have to start with the...

There’s nothing especially special about 2.62%. It’s a level pretty much like any other, given significance by only one phrase: the highest since 2014. It sounds impressive, which is the...

The August appearance of Hurricane Harvey has made economic analysis a little more challenging than usual. That it was followed closely by Hurricane Irma only compounded the difficulty. What we have...

Economic ReportsEmploymentWe received several employment related reports in the first two weeks of the year. The rate of growth in employment has been slowing for some time – slowly – and...

For quite a long time I obsessed over November 20, 2013. It was a day that for the vast majority of humanity was like any other, nothing too far out of normal and certainly nothing that would seem to...

FRBNY’s December 2017 Primary Dealer survey results aren’t yet published, so we will have to wait a few days for the collection of those banks’ economists to tell us what they think...

I suppose it’s easy to look at gold and see only fear. It is, after all, the ultimate currency hedge. Therefore, if the price is rising there is probably a good chance fear over monetary...

One of Candidate Trump’s biggest priorities was to renegotiate NAFTA. Seen as an accelerator for harm not just inside of the nation’s rust belt, the incoming administration made it a top...

Just before Christmas 2014, the Bureau of Economic Analysis upgraded Q3 2014 Real GDP to +5.0%. That represented a huge acceleration from earlier that year when during the depths of its Polar Vortex...

Sales of existing homes soared in November 2017, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Up 5.6% in just the one month, at 5.81mm (SAAR) homes sold that’s the highest pace for...

If China wishes to ever throw off the shackles of the eurodollar system, and they do, to eventually go out on its own in an RMB dominated world there is a lot to cleanup long before that’s ever...

The Federal Reserve’s Empire State Manufacturing Index fell slightly in its December 2017 estimate. At +18, that’s down from 19.4 in November and a high of +30.2 in October. It’s...

The PBOC has two seemingly competing objectives that in reality are one and the same. Overnight, China’s central bank raised two of its money rates. The rate it charges mostly the biggest banks...

The biggest proponents of the BLS data have been FOMC policymakers. Right from the taper tantrum of 2013, the unemployment rate has given them, and the Economists who depend on their views for...