After some early selling - on the "great" retail sales data, bond yields are plunging now with the long-end dramatically outperforming with 2s30s 10bps flatter on the week so far...the biggest drop since August 2015
And stocks are starting to catch down...
What happens next?
On April 28, the catalyst the sent the stock price of AAPL to its post-August 25 frash crash lows, and launched a tremor not only within the Nasdaq but the broader market, was news that after several years of being AAPL's biggest cheerleader, even coming up with price targets north of $200, Carl Icahn had suddenly cooled on the China-focused growth company, and had liquidated his entire stake.
Last night, when previewing the most important macro event of the day - far more important than US retail sales which predictably tried to refute the gloomy reality reported by actual retailer CEOs - namely China's montly loan creation number, we said that "according to MarketNews, Chinese bank loan growth is expected to slow sharply in April compared with March as the pillar of bank lending, mortgage loans, slowed as the property market cooled." Citing bank officials, MNI said that combined new loans in April by the Big Four state-owned banks were more than halved from Mar
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
It is not possible to coherently discuss the "New Normal" economy without discussing financialization--the substitution of credit expansion and speculation for productive investments in the real economy--and its sibling: globalization.
For years the Fed has been lying about inflation.
There are many methods of doing this, but the simplest was to use a “measure” of inflation that did not actually measure inflation at all.
This is the famous Consumer Price Index of CPI. It is meant to measure inflation, but ignores obvious costs of living items like food and energy usage.
Why lie about inflation?
Two main reasons:
1) Doing so allows the Fed and others to overstate economic growth in the US.