* Belarus forces airliner to land, arrests opposition journalist
* Bipartisan group of Senators reach agreement on infrastructure spending
* Biden presidency faces crucial phase with its ambitious agenda
* Will consumers continue to spend as economies reopen?
* New US daily coronavirus cases fall to one-year low
* US existing home sales declined for a third straight month in April
* US economic growth continues to accelerate in May:
Global markets posted a mixed but mostly serene week of results through Friday, May 21. The tranquility spilled over to our proprietary strategies, which were essentially unchanged last week.
Will Page
Review via The Financial Times
Tarzan Economics borrows its title from technologist Jim Griffin’s 2009 speech reflecting on the music industry’s response to the file-sharer Napster. Griffin described how successful companies need always to swing forwards, Tarzan-like, by reaching “for the next vine”. Page has done time in the jungle himself, as a civil servant turned chief economist at PRS, the UK music rights collecting society, and Spotify.
He applies his “rockonomist” eye well beyond the music business, which he argues just happened to be the first industry to suffer significant digital disruption, and therefore the first to “grab a new vine” of streaming services and recover. “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling,” management thinker Peter Drucker said. “That’s why you need this book,” Page writes. “It makes you look afresh at what you think you know.”
In this issue:
Long ago and far away, economists thought they understood the relationship between unemployment and inflation. The prevailing wisdom back in the day: higher (lower) inflation aligned with lower (higher) unemployment. Believing in this relationship appeared to be reasonable for the 1960s. But then something happened to shatter this conviction: the 1970s.
* Cease-fire between Israel and Hamas puts 11-day war on hold
* US proposes minimum 15% global tax on multinational firms
* US Treasury wants crypto transfers over $10k reported to IRS
* Eurozone Composite PMI (a GDP proxy) rises to 39-month high in May
* UK private-sector growth in May jumps to fastest pace in two decades-plus
* Japan slips back into economic contraction in May via PMI survey data
* US Leading Economic Index rose in April, surpassing pre-pandemic high
* Philly Fed Mfg Index: growth cooled in May but remains strong
* US jobless claims continue falling, dropping to new pandemic low:
First-quarter growth posted a strong improvement over the previous quarter and a repeat performance is expected for the second-quarter report on gross domestic product (GDP) that’s scheduled for release in late-July.
* Ceasefire expected soon for Israeli-Palestinian conflict
* Israel unleashes another wave of airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday
* US and Russian diplomats meet ahead of Biden-Putin summit
* Biden waives US sanctions on Russian-German gas pipeline company
* GOP defections help House pass inquiry into Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol
* Most GOP states plan to cut unemployment benefits as jobless claims fall
* Fed officials discussed conditions for easing stimulus in April policy meeting
* German producer prices accelerated sharply to 5.2% annual rate in April
* Gold rises to highest level since January:
Inflation anxiety is rising, commodities prices have popped and the consumer price index increased at a pace far above expectations in April. What isn’t increasing is the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield. Let’s restate that: it’s no longer rising.
Identifying which way the macro wind is blowing isn’t getting easier. So far this month the government has published five key economic reports and each one has delivered sharply divergent results relative to the consensus forecasts. It’s unclear how long the surprise factor will remain in overdrive, but for the near term the incoming numbers may be unusually misleading.