Economic Perspectives February 2024
Economic Resiliency The U.S. economy continues to outperform expectations. Aggressive interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve to slow the economy and combat a spike in inflation following the pandemic were widely predicted to result [...]
Economic Perspectives August 2023
Chugging Along At the beginning of this year, many economists forecast a significant recession to materialize by now. Instead, the economy has continued to grow despite the strong headwind from much higher interest rates. With [...]
Economic Perspectives April 2023
Headwinds to Tailwinds Continuing uncertainty about the path of the economy has created significantly bearish investor sentiment and positioning. Investors are unclear about the stickiness of inflation and how extreme the Federal Reserve will have [...]
Economic Perspectives January 2023
2023 Outlook Inflation heated up throughout 2022, prompting an aggressive response from the Federal Reserve to bring it back under control. The Fed increased short-term interest rates from 0.1% to 4.4% by year-end and signaled [...]
Economic Perspectives November 2022
Waiting for the Pivot The financial markets continue to be laser-focused on inflation. Price increases that were initially thought to be transitory have instead been persistent and more widespread. The Federal Reserve has vowed to [...]
Economic Perspectives July 2022
Highly Unusual Times There have been many twists in the odd trajectory of the pandemic economy. Global supply-chains got snarled, workers were suddenly in short supply, demand for some items exploded then evaporated, entire industries [...]
Economic Perspectives May 2022
Yield Curve Confusion A strong economy combined with the impact from a shortage of workers, continued supply chain issues, Covid lockdowns in China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have together generated the highest levels [...]
Economic Perspectives March 2022
Fearing Inflation? Markets will be laser-focused this year on inflation and the actions required to bring it under control. The latest reading for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 7.9% from a year ago, its [...]
Economic Perspectives February 2022
Fearing Inflation? We entered 2021 with promising new vaccines, oodles of fiscal and monetary stimulus and almost no inflation. We exited with a highly contagious Covid-variant, tighter monetary policy, 7% inflation and rising tensions with [...]
Economic Perspectives November 2021
The Long View Third quarter economic activity was underwhelming. Earlier this year, investors looked forward to a robust reopening of the economy generated by a vaccine-led victory over the pandemic. While new Covid cases have [...]
Economic Perspectives September 2021
Bursting at the Seams In these unprecedented times, changes in the economy have occurred very quickly. Last year, the pandemic suddenly decimated large numbers of businesses and entire industries globally while throwing many out of [...]
Economic Perspectives June 2021
New Cycle Emerging While we have by no means reached the finish line for the Covid pandemic, the economic reopening boom is upon us and it looks as if we are exiting the final phase [...]
Economic Perspectives March 2021
2021: Vaccine Versus Virus To say that 2020 was an unusual year would be an understatement. We experienced a global pandemic that caused a rapid worldwide economic recession. In the United States, the service sector [...]
Economic Perspectives December 2020
Covid and Gridlock The stock market has had to digest multiple significant events recently. The Covid virus is in the midst of a dramatic resurgence with a highly potent third wave, adding incremental risk to [...]
Economic Perspectives November 2020
Covid and Gridlock The stock market has had to digest multiple significant news events recently. The Covid virus has made a dramatic resurgence in Europe and the United States and added incremental risk to the [...]
Economic Perspectives October 2020
Forward Momentum Continues Global economic growth has moderated from its blistering mid-year pace, with a full recovery from the pandemic-induced lockdown recession not likely until well into next year. Failure to contain the virus has [...]
Economic Perspectives September 2020
The Bumpy Road to Recovery Earlier this year, global economies suffered rapid and intensive damage resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. The shelter-in-place lockdowns needed to limit the extent of the virus outbreak caused significant collateral [...]
Economic Perspectives June 2020
Slowly Emerging from the Storm As businesses gradually begin to reopen, the upturn in the global economy has commenced. Trillions of dollars in federal spending and aggressive monetary easing provided the support mechanism needed to [...]
Economic Perspectives May 2020
Uncharted Waters In the United States and around the world, Covid-19 has threatened the health of people and economies. Medical facilities have been overrun by sudden waves of patients, deaths have occurred in large numbers, [...]
Economic Perspectives April 2020
Viral Pandemonium In just a matter of weeks, the Covid-19 virus has wreaked havoc on the global economy. Beginning with a small outbreak in Wuhan, China, this newest coronavirus spread rapidly in a geometric fashion [...]