Recent Commentaries
A Rate Check & A Rick Check
Last Friday afternoon, the US Treasury directed the open market desk at the NYFED to conduct a "rate check" in USDJPY. And to be sure, a rate check has historically been the precursor to direct FX market intervention. Now, the last time we saw an intervention in...
A refresher on large scale asset purchases
I received an unusual amount of feedback from my note from last Friday on the $200b mortgage purchase announcement. Many folks pushed back on the notion that these large-scale asset purchases, to be executed by the GSEs, were yet another version of QE. They argued...
Trumpitative Easing
Policy initiatives on both the housing and energy fronts are moving at a fast and furious pace to start 2026. The administration's laser focus on affordability, via lower mortgage rates and gas prices, is clearly creating positive sentiment shifts in risk asset...