Central Banks should know by now that you cannot have negative interest rates with low bond yields and strong growth. One or the other.

Central banks have chosen low bond yields at any cost, despite all the evidence of stagnation ahead. This creates enormous problems and perverse incentives.

It is not a surprise that markets have bounced aggressively, driven by the tech sector, after a slump based on concerns about the pace of economic growth. Stimulus package effects are increasingly short, and it was pretty evident in the poor figures of industrial production and the ZEW survey gauge of…

The United States’ jobs recovery is extremely poor, especially if we consider the size of the monetary and fiscal stimulus and the spectacular upgrade to GDP estimates. After a massive consensus increase in GDP recovery estimates to 6.5% in 2021, no one should be cheering a 5.9% unemployment rate, 58% employment to population ratio, and, even worse, a 61.6% labor force participation rate that has remained stagnant for ten months. Furthermore, Bloomberg Economics shows that the United States unemployment rate would be 8.4% excluding the participation decline.

In the European Union, the employment situation is also a cause of…

Despite an endless chain of monetary and fiscal stimuli, the Eurozone consistently disappoints in growth and job creation. One of the reasons is demographics. No monetary and public spending stimulus can offset the impact on consumption and economic growth of an ageing population, as Japan can also confirm.

However, there is an especially important factor that tends to be overlooked. The lack of competitiveness of the Eurozone industry due to rising and non-competitive power prices.

Residential electricity prices in the European Union between 2010 and 2014 averaged near $240/MWh, whereas the U.S. averaged nearly $120/MWh, or less than half…

The United States retail sales and jobless claims weakness, significantly below estimates, coincides with the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in history. Something is not right when these figures come significantly below estimates in an environment of massive upgrades to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Why?

The diminishing returns of stimulus plans are very evident. Artificially boosting GDP with large government spending and monetized debt generates a short-term sugar-high that is rapidly followed by a sugar-low. The alleged positive effects of a $1 trillion stimulus plan fade shortly after three months. I recently had a conversation with Judy Shelton where she…

Historically, meetings of the largest economies in the world have been essential to reach essential agreements that would incentivise prosperity and growth. This was not the case this time. The G7 meeting agreements were light on detailed economic decisions, except on the most damaging of them all. A minimum global corporate tax. Why not an agreement on a maximum global public spending?

Imposing a minimum global corporate tax of 15% without addressing all other taxes that governments impose before a business reaches a net profit is dangerous. Why would there be a minimum global corporate tax when subsidies are…

The first thing any economist should do wen reading a budget proposal is to analyse the basic macro assumptions and the results presented by the administration. When both are poor, the budget should be criticised. This is the case of the Biden Budget Plan.

Same growth, a lot more debt and less employment.

According to the administration, the impact on growth of this budget will be negligible, as their own -and optimistic- estimates see no change in the slowdown of the U.S. economic growth trend.

The CBO (Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2021 to 2031) estimates a…

“The constant refinancing of debt from companies of doubtful viability also leads to the perpetuation of overcapacity because a key process for economic progress, such as creative destruction, is eliminated or limited”.

One of the arguments most used by central banks regarding the increase in inflation is that it is because of bottlenecks and that the recovery in demand has created tensions in the supply chain. However, the evidence shows us that most commodities have risen in tandem in an environment of a wide level of spare capacity and even overcapacity.

If we analyse the utilization ratio of industrial and…

The University of Michigan consumer confidence index fell to 82.8 in May, from 88.3 in April. More importantly, the current conditions index slumped to 90.8, from 97.2 and the expectations index declined to 77.6, from 82.7.

Hard data also questions the strength of the recovery. April retail sales were flat, with clothing down 5.1%, general merchandise store sales fell 4.9%, leisure & sporting goods down 3.6% with food & drink services up just by 3%.

United States industrial production was also almost flat in April, rising just 0.4% month-on-month in April pushed by a 4% slump in motor vehicle…