Starting today, The Capital Spectator is offering a subscriber-only research service for monitoring US business cycle risk—The Business Cycle Risk Report. Regular readers are already familiar with the monthly updates of this data—see the August review, for instance. The monthly reports will continue to appear on CapitalSpectator.com, but now there’s a higher level of service that will keep you informed in real time. For details, including subscription options and a sample issue that’s hot off the press today, click on the “Premium Research” tab above or follow this link.
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Daily Archives: September 11, 2015
The Trend Turns Negative For The Real Monetary Base
High-powered voices are calling on the Federal Reserve to delay raising interest rates beyond its policy meeting next week, but it’s not obvious that a stay of execution for squeezing liquidity is a done deal. One reason for thinking that the central bank is still considering the case for pushing rates higher this month: inflation-adjusted money supply continued to contract in year-over-year terms for the third month in a row through August. The slide marks the first run of red ink for base money (M0) in real terms in three years. Meanwhile, the effective Fed funds rate continues to inch higher. These aren’t definitive signs that a rate hike is fate, but on the margins the data supports a hawkish outcome next week.
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