Wow…this was quite the year! I’ll spare you the visits to the politics, wars and similar rips to the fabric of humanity. I will try and focus on some good old fashioned economic bon mots:
Starting with the famed 10 Year Treasury benchmark…it’s been quite a ride:
…and then the all too oft mentioned inverted yield curve has been equally volatile:
…and of course the favorite metric of the Fed – the PCE or Personal Consumption Expenditures, a broad brush measure of how much households in the U.S. spend on goods and services
Are we headed for the “soft landing” we all hope for…perhaps, ask me again this time next year ‘cuz there are too many Black, White, Blue and Green swans on the lake. Golly, we can even throw Bitcoin into the mix for added comedy, confusion and conundrum with an over 157% rise in 2023.
So as I wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2024 I will close by a quote from a personal favorite – Frank Zappa: “In the future, etiquette will become more and more important. That doesn’t mean knowing which fork to pick up—I mean basic consideration for the rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness, whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy’s idiosyncrasies.”