Insights

Renewed economic vigor is upending expectations. Last year ended with a thud, with consumers retrenching, inflation receding, and financial markets slumping.

Slowing Inflation Offers Hope for 2023 Printable PDFMurphy’s Law played out in dramatic fashion last year, as virtually anything that could go wrong seemingly did.

It was a rough 2022, but the U.S. economy survived the myriad headwinds thrown at it, including raging inflation, geopolitical stress, skyrocketing interest rates, declining stock prices, a recurring COVID-19 wave, and the most aggressive pivot towards monetary tightening in more than forty years.

Has the inflation worm turned? It’s still early, but the signs are encouraging as an expanding list of price measures are pointing to slower increases. Whether this favorable trend continues is an open question; many factors underpinned the astonishing inflation cycle of the past two years and many don’t fit into conventional economic models that make predictions a bit easier.

Alarms warning of a recession ring louder with each rate hike by the Federal Reserve. So far this year, there’s been plenty – five since March and still counting.

Enough is enough! The economy has demonstrated an astonishing amount of resiliency against the headwinds thrown at it over the past two years—Covid-19, both short and long, surging energy prices, spiraling interest rates, supply shortages and, not least, stubbornly high inflation.

As summer draws to a close, the debate over whether the economy is overheated or rapidly cooling remains unanswered.

Economic Newsletter       August 2022 Don’t Rule Out A Soft LandingIn real estate, they say location is everything. In economics, timing is paramount.

Economic Newsletter_July 2022 For the Fed, Failure to Curb Inflation is Not An Option Last year the main debate among economists was whether the inflation

Economic Newsletter_June 2022 Fading but still sturdy profits should sustain growth Although the coronavirus recession ended two years ago and the U.S. economy embarked on

BankRI _ May 2022 When Will Inflation Peak? It’s been a rough ride for investors as red ink has spilled profusely so far this year.

Printable PDF Here Come The Rate Hikes The Russian invasion of Ukraine is primarily a human tragedy, but the global economic costs can’t be ignored