Alhambra Investment Partners, LLC

Why so much wholesale emphasis on collateral? Easy. The monetary history of recent times hasn’t been very kind in that regard. On the one hand, the repo market has become so much more important...

In 1999, real GDP growth in the United States was 4.69% (Q4 over Q4). In 1998, it was 4.9989%. These were annual not quarterly rates, meaning that for two years straight GDP expanded by better than...

After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Russians became hyper-aware of US and NATO counter movements. There was an increase in bellicose rhetoric on both sides, and the Andropov years...

The Russian ruble has fared far and away much better than its EM peers. Compared to something like the Brazilian real, there is no comparison. The ruble has been relatively steady following an initial...

Home construction estimates are notoriously variable. They can change oftentimes by a substantial amount on a month-by-month basis, and the numbers are just as frequently subject to serious revisions...

Sometimes it pays to wait. Better to be sure than premature. In January 2014, the journal Central Banking handed out its inaugural awards. Among the recipients was Paul Volcker who was bestowed a...

The PBOC really needn’t have conducted the last few of its RRR raises. By the time they were in the books, Chinese inflation was already well underway toward being tamed. Though their CPI...

When it comes to the stock market and the corporate cash flow condition, our attention is usually drawn to stock repurchases. With good reason. These controversial uses of scarce internal funds are...

Like all sentiment surveys, Germany’s ZEW is susceptible to overzealousness on the part of the survey participants. The Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung is a think tank...

Whether we notice them or not, there are a lot of things that do happen on a seasonal basis. Economists have tried to eliminate these patterns from our thoughts and analysis largely by smoothing them...

We ended last week on a pretty sour note. The Eurodollar Futures curve has inverted ever so slightly, which isn’t a very good sign of things to come. Since the inversion has to do with different...

Inflation hysteria and the boom hysteria may both seem like they are one and the same thing. They are related, sure, and they represent similar objects. However, there are subtle differences. The...

Mexico will have a new President on December 1. Falling short in each of the prior two elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador won convincingly this time. Though a thorough leftist, AMLO,...

There are several factors missing from the latest eurodollar rout. Well, not really missing so much as sitting this one out to this point in time. We knew things were really getting serious in 2015...

Not a good day to be a global central bank. Competitive devaluations all around?Kidding aside, it’s getting serious in China. CNY DOWN = BAD, so says Big Mama. “The kind of dollar selling...

In all honesty, I do mean to beat this one particular dead horse. In fact, I intend to pulverize it until there is nothing left but the smallest particulate matter. This is everything that is wrong...