Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, January 28-29, 2025 I thought the most significant statement in the Minutes was this: “the effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy as well as strong consumer demand. Business contacts in a number... Read More

Brace Yourself! Reciprocal US Tariffs. - tariffs likely to be announced April. These are not in market prices. The report sent you on Friday 15, 2025 - The Anatomy of Exceptionalism- deals with the categories of Tariffs President Trump is likely to impose see Chap... Read More

How US "Exceptionalism", and the bull market in the US$ and US equities are linked. Since just before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, foreigners' holdings of US financial assets has risen from US$ 20 trn. to US$ 30 trn. Of this increase 10% was down to increased holding by ... Read More

As a P.S. to the Rules of Thump - the Canadian, Chinese and Mexican Tariffs. My rough calculations of the Tariff hit to economies outside the US were included in the Friday (1/31) Update sent to you. But to summarise: The effect of these (1/31 Canadian, China & Me... Read More

Tariffs: Rules of Thump . This is a follow up to my e-mail to to you on Trump's Tariffs last Friday (1/31) & the 2 reports Astern (1/08) & The McKInley Factor (1/26). Cantext; The Mexico, Canada, China tariffs ("Tariffs 1/31") declared by President Trump so far ... Read More

Trump Delivers. President Trump has announced the imposition of 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and 10% on imports from China. The tariffs will be effective immediately (Sat, Feb 1). At time of writing It is not clear whether there are exemptions (e.g. fo... Read More

Central Banks There were a few interesting things from the ECB and FOMC meetings: ECB Mme LaGarde is convinced that the Eurozone recovery is happening and will accelerate as inflation falls and real incomes rise. Real income will rise because wage increases will ... Read More

DeepSeek Disruption: Tech, Economic, Geopolitical DeepSeek disruption to AI Chatbots/LLMs, like ChatGPT4 and to suppliers of AI semiconductors like Nvidia, is significant. It can also change forecasts for ever rising electricity demand from data centres. But by corol... Read More

President Trump inauguration speech. US$ may weaken for a while due to lack of immediate imposition of tariffs (in contrast with other policies like immigration) and statement that his administration would “ begin the overhaul” of trade with foreign countries. I don’t ex... Read More

FOMC - the future confusion. Some FOMC members included estimates of President Trump's mooted Tariff and Immigration policies in their "dot" estimates. One did not. And some didn't say. Some argued that such policies could damage the inflation outlook. Some obviously did no... Read More