The ‘Hillbilly cycle’ was a well documented price cycle between the price of corn and the price of pigs. Hillbillies in the US were characterised as the swing producers of either corn or pigs. Basically, high corn prices this year would lead the Hillbilly to switch from producing pigs to corn. As the supply of […]

The backlash from the EU and IMF’s arguably illegal, but certainly immoral, treatment of investors in Greek bonds has begun. The blatant favouritism afforded to the ECB, allowing that institution to swap their Greek bonds for new ones not subject to the write down, has clearly angered investors. The Troika has reasoned that this anger […]

The one thing that Greece has done right (with the approval of the EU/IMF/ECB troika) in the last three years of its crisis, is to finally consult the market in order to get their buyback completed satisfactorily. Two weeks ago, when Bozo was on the job, I was skeptical of their success. Fortunately, the Greeks […]

Casual empiricism is a dangerous pursuit, especially if the commentator extrapolates a few recent observations into general trends. However, sometimes there is no other way to make to detect new market behaviour. So at the risk of overinterpreting a few datapoints, here is my take on what is happening in the US Treasury market this […]

European governments have successfully hijacked the press with their argument that there is a ‘trade-off’ between growth policies versus austerity. What a load of rubbish… …the embarassingly Keynesian argument goes like this. Governments are able to create much needed growth by spending more than they collect in taxes. Austerity programs restrict growth since government fiscal […]