Author Archives: Darren Marchal

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The cure for high prices is high prices. The cure for low prices is low prices. That is the message from the hog cycle. When porkers are cheap fewer piglets are raised and a few years later the price of pigmeat rebounds. When pork is pricey too many piglets are raised and the market price…

How Come I Don’t Still Hear About The “Worst Recovery Ever”?...

Just wondering — where is Ed Lazear when you need him? Figure 1: Log nonfarm payroll employment normalized on 2009M06 trough (blue), and on 2001M11 trough (red). NBER defined troughs. Source: BLS via FRED, NBER, and author’s calculations. Normalizing on beginning of administrations yields this figure. Figure 2: Log nonfarm payroll employment normalized on 2009M01 beginning of Obama administration…

Bloomberg’s House Bonehead Clarifies All–Central Banks Should Lit...

The reason there is a terrible financial cataclysm ahead is that mainstream thinking has degenerated into outright quackery. Just read the drivel coming from financial journalists and pundits these days; and recall that the latter are little more than repeaters and amplifiers, passing along to their readers what politicians and policymakers are thinking and saying. Take the case of Clive Crook,…

Here Comes The Year-End Bump

And I don’t mean in stocks, although a possible ramp job (ref. Semi and Bio momentum) has been part of the plan there as well. NFTRH first introduced the Machine Tools data per the graph below from EDA a couple months ago after I talked with a former associate who advised that equipment sales were soft.  But…