Monthly Archives: December 2021

Book Bits: 18 December 2021

Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises
Edited by Youssef Cassis and Catherine R. Schenk
Summary via publisher (Oxford U. Press)
The chapters in this book reflect on people’s relationships with past financial crises – from public opinion to business leaders and policy makers. In connection with financial crises, Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises addresses three fundamental questions: first, are financial crises remembered, and if so how? Second, have lessons been drawn from past financial crises? And third, have past experiences been used in order to make practical decisions when confronted with a new crisis? These questions are of course related, yet they have been approached from different historical perspectives, using methodologies borrowed from different academic disciplines. One of the objectives of this book is to explore how these approaches can complement each other in order to better understand the relationships between remembering and learning from financial crises and how the past is used by financial institutions.

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Outlier Risk, Part III

In first two previous articles in this series (see here and here) we reviewed basic applications for identifying outliers in data set – a crucial task for analyzing financial and economic time series. Let’s push on and kick the tires on another tool: the Hampel filter, another methodology to identify extremes values in a data set.

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Macro Briefing: 17 December 2021

* Build Back Better spending bill will be delayed until next year, says Biden
* Central banks see inflation as bigger threat than Omicron variant
* Bank of England is first major central bank to raise interest rates in pandemic
* US economy remains resilient in December via PMI survey data
* US industrial output continued rising in November
* Jobless claims rose last week but remain close to lowest level in decades
* US housing starts rose more than forecast in Nov, reaching 8-month high:

Macro Briefing: 16 December 2021

* Fed hints at several rate hikes for 2022 to fight inflation
* Study finds Omicron variant infects dramatically faster with less severe effects
* Leaders of China and Russia show united front amid rising tensions with US
* Eurozone growth slows to 9-month low in December via PMI survey data
* Omicron variant weighs on UK growth in December, PMI survey data shows
* Homebuilder sentiment in US continued rebounding in December
* Business activity continued to grow “strongly” in December: NY Fed Mfg Index
* US retail sales slowed in November, rising at pace well below expectations:

Desperately Seeking Yield: 15 December 2021

Interest rates are front and center today as the Federal Reserve prepares to update the world on its current thinking about monetary policy. The main question: Will the central bank offer new clues on laying the groundwork for interest-rate hikes to combat the recent surge in inflation?

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Macro Briefing: 15 December 2021

* Federal Reserve expected to move closer to rate hike in today’s announcement
* Investments in US inflation-protected Treasuries surged in 2021
* China’s economic activity slowed in November
* Germany is on brink of recession due to coronavirus
* UK inflation reaches 10-year high in November
* US producer-price inflation accelerated in November to highest on record
* Congress votes to raise US debt ceiling
* Small US business optimism ticked up slightly in November
* US financial stress is below average but rising fast through early December:

10-Year Treasury Yield ‘Fair Value’ Estimate: 14 December 2021

The recent rise in the 10-year US Treasury yield has stalled. It’s unclear if this is a pause before the upside trend resumes vs. the early stages of new leg down. The sharp rise in inflation this year and the potential for an economic slowdown in the new year are conflicting factors that are muddying the outlook. While this scenario continues, our baseline forecast anticipates that a trading range for the 10-year rate will prevail in the near term, in part based on today’s update of The Capital Spectator’s ensemble model for estimating the benchmark yield’s “fair value.”

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Macro Briefing: 14 December 2021

* California reimposes mandatory indoor mask requirement
* 2-dose Pfizer jab reportedly protects 70% against hospitalization from omicron
* US secretary of state warns China to end ‘aggressive actions’ in Asia-Pacific
* Second case of Omicron variant found in China
* US small business sentiment ticked up in Nov but still far below previous peak
* Wall St is starting to see opportunity in China’s battered stock market
* Apple on track to become world’s first $3 trillion company
* US 10yr Treasury yield falls to 1.42%–second-lowest level in over two months: