Reinko

While Iran Threat Keeps Oil Elevated, U.S. Stocks and Dollar Slip

Upon Iran:

Finally OPEC is talking some sense and we must not forget that the latest time the Iranians went on an agressive war was somewhere in the 19th century...

Until now there is no quantum of proof that the Iranians are indeed building nuclear weapons, I follow this for years and there is not one quantum of proof.

There is only stupid talk by stupid generals.

Beside this many years ago I explained to the Iranians how to build bunkers that could withstand the US bunker busters.
Lately the USA had a brand new model of far bigger bunker busters but in case the Iranians have followed my bunker building advices the new bunker busters are not a real threat.
The trick is very simple: Since bunker busters are very 'needle like' shaped all you have to do is destabilize the tip of the weapon at impact.

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On the paragraph 'US Manufacturing Improves':

In the first place the reported 50.2 in some vague statistic falls inside the white noise range, that means it is not statistical significant.
In the second place, it is related to exports so it has nothing to do with local USA demand.
When the US$ declines it is rather logical exports climb...

Intense Inflation Pressure: Fed, Bank of England Have Their Hands Tied

Hello Grace, again one of your beautiful articles.

You mention that producer prices grew 1.4%, the highest in six months. Well, this is very nice but are these month on month figures or year on year stuff?

Let me quote from your source (gracecheng dot com):

The report showed that the producer price index rose 1.4 percent in May following an unrevised 0.2 percent increase in April. The increase came in well above economists’ expectations of an increase of about 1.0 percent.

Comment: This means that it is a mom figure... (Because April was not revised...)

So yoy fun is 1.014^12 = 1.18 hence 18% year on year producer fun.

Of course core inflation without that stupid food and energy is only 0.2% so the populace will be protected against that nasty inflation. Really true...

Week in Review: Dollar's Biggest Advance Vs. Euro in 3 Years

Correction: It must be 'everybody' instead of 'everybode'.

Week in Review: Dollar's Biggest Advance Vs. Euro in 3 Years

Oh Grace your articles are always a feast for the eye:

Bernanke suddenly sees no economical downturn any longer and points to the inflationary dangers of a low US$.
In fact when we are supposed to believe the inflation reports, in Europe and the USA they are about the same size of about 4% yoy right now.

And we have a rather strong currency...

But when you, just like me, digg a bit deeper in the wonderful world of US financial stuff you can calculate that from the top of 2006 US family home equity will get a ram of over 10 trillion.

Since Bernanke, just like me, is an academic; he too is capable of making such easy to understand macro calculations. That leaves you wonder why Bernanke tells crap like this?

Very simple: Because everbode wants to hear that kind of crap.

Yet rather likely the law of gravity will also apply to US housing value (let alone commercial real estate) so a few more trillion of home equity will fade away and it is hard to see economical recovery under such conditions...

Compared with Canada, U.S. Economy Looks OK

Canada having a problem because there was a small contraction?

After all these years I still do not understand why the Americans think that (small) contractions equal to death.

Contractions are just as natural as your sleep.

And don't forget: If you adjust the US GDP growth for all that extra debt, the USA is contracting for a lot of years already. Right now the US economy has over 50 trillion of debt standing over herself and it routinely grows about 8% a year (that's about 2 to 3 times the long term GDP YoY growth by the way).

No no Grace: Your looks are charming but your brains are not...