Stockman’s Corner

Folks, it’s not a “skirmish”. On the scale of trade warfare we are now at DEFCON 2. At this very moment, the US is taxing $250 billion of Chinese imports or nearly half the total flow; and China is taxing $110 billion of its imports from the US or 85% of the flow. And it’s soon going full monte. The […]

Well, even JPMorgan got that right. Over the weekend a carbon unit identified as the banks’ “cross-asset strategist” (say what?) warned that investors should brace for a boo-b00 by the Donald with respect to the China trade skirmish conflict war: The other concern is that US economic and equity market resilience despite tariffs will embolden the President on all

Where the Great Disrupter’s Trade War will ultimately take us is anybody’s guess, but it’s a far worse place than GOP apologists and Wall Street punters can even remotely imagine. That’s because when it comes to trade, Trump is playing blind man’s bluff, poking his big fat tariff stick into an economic hornets nest called the Red

Back when the S&P 500 was at 2130, the Donald called the stock market “one big, fat ugly bubble”. Of course, those were the words of candidate Trump, which are not to be confused with today’s ALL CAPS twitter eruption from the Oval Office at 2930—a level 38% higher! S&P 500 HITS ALL-TIME HIGH Congratulations USA! The all caps part is

Leave it to MarketWatch to unearth the bottom of the barrel level of financial literacy trawling around the casino. In still another report on why the Donald’s global Trade War is allegedly nothing to sweat about, it cited an outfit called Voya Investment (a spin-off from one of the socialist banks of Europe) and its recent report which was aptly entitled,

If some misanthropic economic god wanted to put the American worker on a forever treadmill, he/she/it could not have perfected upon the work of the monetary central planners at the Fed. We are referring here to the impossible odds that over a 47 year span, the cumulative rise of the CPI and the hourly rate of

The history books will record, ironically, that the Donald peaked in September 2018. Obviously, that was the 10th anniversary of the Lehman financial meltdown. But the original event and its current commemoration actually book-end why Trump came out of nowhere, sojourned briefly in the Oval Office, and then fell victim to an even greater crisis that will end in ignominy for the Donald and staggering

During 94 days of sheer monetary madness in the aftermath of the stock market meltdown of September 2008, the Bernanke Fed printed 145% more balance sheet (money) than the nation’s central bank had accumulated during its entire first 94 years of operation. In dollar terms, its footings went from $925 billion to $2.25 trillion in virtually a monetary heartbeat. Naturally,

Festering in the 10-year shadow of the Lehman event, the Wall Street narrative has never been so dumbed-down and heedless as it is today. For example, MarketWatch sounded the all-clear to the dip-buyers this AM by describing today’s CPI release as an “underwhelming inflation report”. Apparently, this was warranted by a minor swiggle in the year-over-year sequence of the index,

Today’s insipid bubblevision coverage of the Bernanke/Paulson/Geithner 10th anniversary victory tour put us in mind of another trio, which was also famous for their relentless incompetence. That is to say, had Curly, Larry and Moe been in charge at the time of the Lehman meltdown we would have all been far better off. The real 3 Stooges would have predictably whirled around frenetically, pointing in all directions on