March 22, 2019—On Friday, the slope of the Treasury yield curve inverted between the 10-year and 3-month Treasuries (in other words, the yield on a 3-month Treasury exceeded that of a 10-year Treasury), with the 10-year yield falling to as low as 2.42% intraday—the lowest since the start of the year—and the 3-month yield holding fairly steady at 2.45% (Figure 1). Financial media outlets sounded the alarm bells, and equity markets sold off sharply by mid-day.
March 8, 2019— The European Central Bank (ECB) surprised markets yesterday with an earlier-than-expected announcement of policies intended to support growth in the face of persistent downside risks to the eurozone economy. The ECB’s actions might suggest the possibility of reacceleration in the eurozone economy after a marked slowdown in 2018.
March 8, 2019— The February jobs report was just plain awful. With a Bloomberg median expectation of 180,000 jobs added, and our own higher expectation of 200,000, the shockingly low figure of just 20,000 had many of us thinking we were looking at a typo. Along with some other weak data on retail sales and business spending, the weak jobs figure will certainly drive discussions of whether we are coming up on the end of the expansion.
