20190712_DaliYang_v2.mp3

You won't want to miss Prof. Yang's expert analysis of the US-China relationship, and what the future might hold for both sides of this persistent conflict.

20190628_JimBianco.mp3

Our podcast this week features an interview with James Bianco , market-savvy macro-economic analyst and head ofBianco Research here in Chicago. He shares his thoughts about the Fed, markets, the long-lost world of stock picking, and the role of cryptocurrencies as a new monetary regime unfolds.

There are two reports I always look forward to reading each June: the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and analyst Mary Meeker’s annual report on Internet trends. For those interested in the art of investment prognostication, a stroll through the archives of Meeker’s reports since 1996 is fascinating. They chart the growth of the Internet and the disruption of global communications that have impacted nearly everything.

As some of my more patient friends know, I have been toiling away at a book on Chinese monetary history during the Interwar period off and on for some years.  Immersing myself in the public and private words of the historic figures of the 1930’s has perhaps sensitized me to the propensity of even well-intentioned leaders to glide into chaos.  That which is unthinkable inexorably becomes inevitable.
 

By SUN Xi and Herta Monica Montesino Cucos

Today, five days after he tweeted this deadline and nine months since he first declared the intention to do so, President Trump raised the tariff on $200B of imports from China from the +10% first applied in March 2018 to +25%. The action follows China’s message to U.S. negotiators backtracking on a number of earlier promises to increase intellectual property protections.
 

EconVue is about the Gettier Problem which to simplify means that just because one is justified in drawing a conclusion, doesn’t mean that it is true. For example, we certainly could be justified in thinking that racial hatred has increased in the US based on media and news reports.  However, a fascinating University of Pennsylvania study says that this isn’t true, and that actually racial prejudice has been declining.
 

FMI’s commentary on this morning’s “shockingly low” 19Q1 core PCE deflator.