America Has Squandered the Economic Recovery

The Harvard Business School has just released a report which finds current business and political leaders have squandered the economic recovery with loss opportunities for a stronger future economy

BIS Quarterly Review (December 2019) and Repo Markets

The December 2019 BIS Quarterly Review is out and it includes some very interesting articles.

There is one on the evolution of OTC interest rate markets.  Given these are an indicator of market volatility, the research is important, because the turnover of interest rate derivatives has increased for a variety of reasons; some of which are the changing structure of the market.

Collateral is king in the euro repo market.  Repo markets provide liquidity, but the euro repo market has seen activity which indicates investors are seeking particular securities rather than just liquidity and the availability and price of those particular securities has become a factor in the euro repo market.

One article receiving a lot of attention is one on the September stress in the U.S. dollar repo market

2020 Form W-4 Is Complicated and Invasive

 In June, I wrote about the proposed new Form W-4.  The final Form W-4 for 2020 can be found here with an explanation on how to fill it out.  Be prepared for a long process using a worksheet or an IRS calculator (which will not have 2020 tax information until 2020).  It is as complicated as filling out the new tax forms and requires an invasive amount of information about your incomes.

If you have multiple jobs, a employee job and a self-employed business, are a new employee but not

Beware: New Medicare Plan Finder Tool Misadvises

The new Medicare Plan Finder Tool has been found to have glitches which could result in consumers choosing more expensive plans by mistake.

It ranks plans by lowest premium without consideration to out of pocket copay expenses. 

In the past the Tool calculated total cost making the new Tool even more misleading if you have relied upon it in the past.

Print Page

Italian Mini-BOTs Would Be Liability Swaps

In the last two weeks there has been a flurry of economic/financial writing about the Italian proposal for a parallel currency in the form of mini-BOTs by an Italian Lega politician, Claudio Borghi, who, as a former Deutsche Bank person, should understand the implications of a parallel currency deployment and who has been quite vocal in his desire to exit the euro.  Since Italy is the third largest economy in the eurozone, the impact would be significant unlike Greece.

Most of the writing has been monetarily critical --- concentrating on perceived debt increase to unsustainable levels and legality.  Papadia and Roth have tried to review the competing viewpoints through existing literature, but they omit the earlier 2015 Andresen and Parenteau electronic TAN proposal, which was the basis of the Varoufakis plan via Galbraith.  Papadia and Roth would have us believe the paper form would be better than the electronic form, because it would be less likely to be used criminally.  In fact, the electronic form is even less like currency, less expensive and simpler to implement, and not subject to counterfeiting.  Papadia and Roth make a good listing of what makes currency and what makes a security.  In their conclusions, they worry about the mini-Bot enabling an

New W-4 Tax Withholding Form Is Not Simple

 The draft of the proposed, new W-4 tax withholding form has been released for comment until July 1.  In many ways it is like filling out a  supplemental 1040 and people will have to look at their last year tax form to fill it out. 

If you have a second job, summer job, both spouses work, own a small business and work another

Some Links from Week of 2/25 -- 3/3/2019

I do weekly research in economics and finance with the links available by subscription (contact me).  Here are a few of the approximately twelve pages for the past week.  The links are of interest and worthy of thought.  They do not reflect whether I agree with them or not.

Prospects for inflation in a high pressure economy -- Hooper, Mishkin, Sufi

Inflation Risks and Expectations

Fed Balance Sheet News

Future of Fed Balance Sheet - Quarles

What can we learn from the NY Fed's inflation gauge -- Tim Duy

 U.S. Economic Outlook and Fed Monetary Policy -- Clarida

Did the yield curve flip? -- SF Fed

Are Normal Yield Curves actually Normal?

20 Years of the eurozone

Public Debt through the years -- Eichengreen

Kraft Heinz exposes the corporate debt problem

Italy's Debt and the Spread

Italy's Carige bank faces 630 million euro capital gap 

What if the problem of the EU turns out to be Germany and its banks

Risky Retirement Business -- Carmen Reinhart

How imperfect knowledge shapes financial markets

Temporary price level targeting -- Bernanke

News and Central Bank Growth Forecasts

Bank of England reads the Guardian

Governments bears responsibility for income inequality and the tools to reduce it

Conversation with Emmanuel Saez


Print Page

Suffering from Tax Refund Surprise?

If you found you have no or much smaller tax refund this year, you did not pay attention to withholding amounts and the loss of itemized deductions.  I warned my readers of this on January
 15, 1918.

 Prior to that

Michael Pettis on "Why US Debt Must Continue"

Each week I do economic and financial research that results in over ten pages of links, which is available to those who contact me and subscribe.

One notable link from this past week is a new post by Michael Pettis entitled "Why U.S. Debt Must Continue" in which he tackles the issue of rapidly rising household, government, and business debt in the United States and many other countries around the world including China and some European countries.

In the first part, he discusses debt and some of the conditions under which it effects economic growth

Federal Reserve & Data Dependency

The Federal reserve will raise rates by 25 bps this Wednesday at the December FOMC meeting.  This is the expected economic consensus, although market participants want rates to be lowered to boost market valuations.  While fears of slower global growth are driving volatility, the markets are noisy data in the basket of data the Fed tracks and reviews, because the Fed makes its decisions not on fears or exuberance but on the data and the documented trend of the data.

While slower growth would normally be accompanied by lower inflation, trade wars and tariffs can yield slower growth and rising prices (inflation).  Political uncertainty domestically and internationally can cause endogenous and exogenous volatility and economic instability, but economic data reflects what has happened and reacts to what will happen.  The Fed is concerned about financial stability --- not politics --- not market fears; it is data dependent while recognizing