We haven’t written much about Brexit…largely because, for the life of me, I have been unable to embrace, with any conviction, a view as to whether the Europeans will dodge this bullet, as they have dodged so many in the past, or whether chaos will finally ensue.  Then, if chaos ensues, I’m equally clueless about what the contours of the chaos will be; what a hard Brexit will look like.  I am baffled.  And while it is demonstrably true that cluelessness and bloviation are not mutually exclusive, I, perhaps more thin-skinned than most of the chattering class, have been waiting for some sort of an epiphany before I wrote on the topic.

But birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim and us members in good standing of the commentariat gotta prattle on.  Since I’m not convinced I’m going to get any smarter and since this is likely to be one of the seminal economic events of 2019.  I’m diving in.  Might be ugly.  Hide the children.Continue Reading Do I Have to Talk About Brexit?

Financial downtrend chart and red pencil. Selective focus

The Federal Reserve announced last Wednesday that it is leaving the federal funds rate where it is, for now.  While the United States is pondering interest rate hikes, other parts of the world are plunging further into negative territory.  Last Thursday, in an attempt to bolster Europe’s weakening growth and spur inflation, the European Central Bank (the “ECB”) lowered its deposit rate by another 0.1%, pushing its deposit rate down to -0.4%.

With other central banks lowering rates into the negative, will the U.S. follow? Why is this happening? What could go wrong? How will this affect our banks?  Click through for three things you should know about negative interest rates.Continue Reading Three Things You Should Know about Negative Interest Rates