Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

I for one can’t wait for a quadrillion. Nothing could so far both implicate economists as well as demonstrate the folly of following them like the potential for the Bank of Japan’s balance...

As the yield curve flattened out almost in a straight line from late 2013 until July 2016, it became common to suggest the historical relationship between inversion and recession. While that may still...

The Fed did, as expected, hike rates at their last meeting. And interestingly, interest rates have done nothing but fall since that day. As I predicted in the last BWER, Greenspan’s conundrum is...

China’s central bank, unlike other central banks, is constantly active almost never resting. Because it is always in motion, the PBOC can seem to be “adding” liquidity at the very...

Why aren’t there more homes for sale? The lack of inventory continues to stifle the real estate market, but there aren’t any good reasons offered for what seems on the surface a bit of a...

It may just be that in life you have to get used to disappointment. Though not for lack of trying, I have spent a great deal of time over the years intending to piece together exactly what happened on...

There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. The Fed spent the last month forward guiding the...

Retail sales comparisons were for February 2017 skewed by the extra day in February 2016. With the leap year February 29th a part of the base effect, the estimated growth rates (NSA) for this February...

The first major economic data of 2017 from China was highly disappointing to expectations of either stability or hopes for actual acceleration. On all counts for the combined January-February period,...

Something had to give one way or the other. With all the oil traders piled onto the long side, either demand had to seriously pick up (or plausibly appear ready to do so) or the weak hands would start...

We are at the stage ten years later where it is still necessary to define terms. In every finance and economics textbook, the chapter on monetary policy defines “tight” money as when the...

“I don’t understand you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s dreadfully confusing!’‘That’s the effect of living backwards,’ the Queen said kindly: ‘it always...

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates again at their meeting next week. They obviously view the recent cyclical upturn as being durable and the inflation data as pointing to...

It is surely one of the primary reasons why many if not most people have so much trouble accepting the trouble the economy is in. With record high stock prices leading to record levels of household...

Although he didn’t state it specifically in his November 2010 Washington Post op-ed formally justifying QE2, it was very clear that then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke intended it to work through...

Chinese trade figures for the month of February 2017 were decidedly mixed. On the import side, total trade rose by 38.1% from February 2016. That latter month, however, was one of the lowest trade...