by pentoport | Jul 13, 2020 | Commentary
July 13, 2020 We can all be very confident that there will be no change to monetary policy for a very, very long time. But there is a fiscal cliff coming—and indeed has already begun. It is clear that Mr. Powell is all-in on his unlimited QE and ZIRP. And, that he is...
by pentoport | Jun 29, 2020 | Commentary
June 29, 2020 We start this week’s commentary with some rather depressing news from Reuters: The ratio of downgrades to upgrades in the credit ratings of leveraged loans has spiked to a record level, five times above that hit during the last global financial...
by pentoport | Jun 22, 2020 | Commentary
June 22, 2020 The Fed mistakenly believes it can control the rate of inflation with relative ease. While it believes it is far easier to fight a rising rate of inflation than deflation, it is still completely convinced the puppet strings of extant price levels rest...
by pentoport | Jun 8, 2020 | Commentary
June 8, 2020 The sad truth is that few people really know very much about gold, especially when it comes to investing in the metal. They don’t understand what makes it so valuable and unique, and they know even less what moves its price. Since I don’t want to spend an...
by pentoport | May 26, 2020 | Commentary
May 26, 2020 The Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now Estimate for Q2 Economic growth is minus 41.9%. Thirty-nine million people filed Initial Jobless Claims in the past nine weeks. Continuing Jobless Claims (including Pandemic Unemployment Assistance) surged to over 31...
by pentoport | May 11, 2020 | Commentary
May 11, 2020 Since the Great Recession hit in 2008, central banks have been in the business of keeping insolvent governments from defaulting through the process of pegging borrowing costs near zero. These money printers are now in the practice of propping up...
by pentoport | May 4, 2020 | Commentary
May 4, 2020 My friend Larry Kudlow always says that Profits are the mother’s milk of stocks. That used to be true when we had a real economy. But sadly, that is no longer factual because we now have a global equity market that is totally controlled by central...
by pentoport | Apr 13, 2020 | Commentary
April 13, 2020 We are all praying for the Wuhan virus to die. But there is something the virus can actually “cure” itself: deflation. I put the word cure in quotes because it’s not an actual issue in reality. Low inflation and disinflation are actually great...
by pentoport | Mar 30, 2020 | Commentary
My clients have known for a long time that the nucleus of the next crisis will be in the over-leveraged corporate bond market. This notion was confirmed recently in an article from the WSJ: companies that borrow in the junk loan market are now in a far weaker...
by pentoport | Mar 23, 2020 | Commentary
The U.S. National Debt is about to surge like never before, along with the rest of the entire planet’s gigantic pile of sovereign IOUs. America started with a $23.5 trillion debt before the Wuhan virus outbreak, with annual deficits running over a $1 trillion; and...
