While last week's Chicago's PMI staged a strong bounce from its recent contraction and back into expansion, New York did not. ISM New York just printed at 50.4, just barely above the contraction point, and the lowest headline print since mid 2015.
The extremely noisy time series continues to swing, this time lower, with every single underlying component deteriorating in the month of March.
Back in the summer of 2014, when the ECB first unveiled NIRP, many were concerned that this submersion into the monetary policy twilight zone would first crush Europe's money markets. However, at least until now, European MM funds have proven relatively resilient,
The story in Japan is different.
When the Bank of Japan announced they were instituting NIRP back in January, they intended to spur lending and push inflation up. As often is the case with central planners, their academic theory was much different than the economic reality.
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
The cartels and state organs are frantically trying to co-op, outlaw, corral or control this disruptive technology.
In a quiet start to the week following last week's surprisingly strong rebound which followed a stronger than expected jobs report (perhaps to demonstrate that good news is once again good news), Japan stocks continued to sink as the USDJPY dropped to fresh lows, while commodities declined for a fifth day as the supply glut from crude to copper weighed on prices, dragging down commodity currencies. European equities rose, rebounding from a one-month low.