Welcome to the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency. There are so many headlines, tweets and images, the media networks are having a field day. We will not be short of news for the foreseeable future, it would appear. In the UK, we are well used to campaigning politicians promising the earth on their election trails, only to conveniently forget about them upon taking office.
Long-term readers will have heard my big number maths before, back in 2012. At the time it was in reference to the extraordinary cost of the London Olympics and G4S’s contract for security at the games.
A million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 32 years and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.
Since Donald Trump’s unexpected election in the United States, there has been an ‘announcement’ of a U$1 trillion infrastructure program, which will include rebuilding roads, rails, shipyards, you name it, in order to ‘Make America great again’!
It’s always nice when someone mentions our research on their websites or on the news. Sean regularly gets called up for TV slots but today we’re very happy to draw attention to Sean’s work alongside Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo on the Substantive Research Website.
This article is from Sean’s Midweek Macro Musings dated 12th October.
Non-Farm Payrolls drew something of a yawn but, coupled with a look at how business revenues are faring, they do tell us that a little stress is building.
Meanwhile, sterling seems to be without a friend in the world, not least back in Threadneedle Street.
I was recently flattered to be asked how I envisaged the dreaded ‘helicopter money’ working if it were not to simply add further to commercial banks’ already crippling mass of deadweight liabilities and assets, given that not only would printing it up in physical form be tortuous, but that cash itself is only one conveniently heinous crime away from being proscribed altogether.
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Sean Corrigan has never been one to mince his words. As the extraordinary monetary policy of the last few years has unfolded, he’s again and again talked in numerous columns and in his Macro newsletters (both Midweek Macro Musings and Money, Macro and Markets) about the policy and the Macroeconomic implications.
An excerpt from a bigger HindeSight Dividend supplement written by Mark Mahaffey, Aalok Sathe and Ben Davies – the full PDF is available by signing up to our Dividend Letter.
Property valuations in the UK are extreme again, particularly for our main subscribers. However, China, Canada, Australia and many other countries look equally, if not more, at risk of a crash.
An excerpt from a bigger HindeSight Dividend supplement written by Mark Mahaffey, Aalok Sathe and Ben Davies – the full PDF is available by signing up to our Dividend Letter.
While not deluging us in typical rain showers, the month of April was colder than we might have hoped for, but the financial markets have potentially made up for all of that. We shouldn’t be surprised at this because, on a 15-year-average, April has the highest average return for UK equities and also the joint highest positive/negative observation skew.
Episode one of our Chief Editor’s (David Stevenson) new podcast – The Very Very Alternative Money Program, as he uses Ben Davies for a foil to his investing views. Usually when Ben and David get in a room together there’s some banter edged with fireworks, so having the two of them venting against each other seems like a bad idea… however it turned out to be a very, very good idea.
An special Op Ed piece of the bigger Money Macro and Markets supplement written by Sean Corrigan.
That the artificial interest rates in evidence in our hugely distorted capital and money markets can be made negative in nominal as well as in real terms is, alas, the curse of the modern age. Though entirely at odds with natural order – as we have repeatedly tried to make plain – they are also a curse that we are unlikely to have lifted any time soon, especially not in a Europe where there is no effective restraint to be had upon the exercise of his awful powers by the likes of a fanatic like Draghi.
