By John Bougearel, author of Riding the Storm Out and Director of Financial and Equity Research for Structural Logic Fiscal drags combine with manufacturing drags in 2011 ~ these drags will subtract 2.5% from GDP in 2011 The manufacturing sector has pancaked in June and July after giving roughly a 1% boost to GDP over […]
Read more...We’ve done local colour on China property, plus some horror graphs already today. Now a proper China watcher, Michael Pettis, chimes in, over at Ed’s place, with more background, especially on the interest rate policy bind that the Chinese are in. With respect to rate rises, his verdict in short form: they’re damned if they […]
Read more...Complementing today’s piece on the Chinese property bubble, a cross-post from VoxEU, with some graphical depictions of how wild the bubble has become. The NYT article referenced in the piece is here – RS. By Yongheng Deng, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the National University of Singapore, Joseph Gyourko, Professor of Real Estate, […]
Read more...From Ed …the private sector in the west is in a higher savings and slower growth mode. The only way that the government can net save at the same time is via an increase in net exports to the emerging economies. The FT’s Geoff Dyer is right when he writes the “G20 looks to Beijing […]
Read more...Augmenting Ed’s recent links re Tom Adams, regular readers will remember Yves got a magazine cover and write-up in Calcalist. Now Tom Adams, another contributor to “Naked Capitalism”, (and ECONned helper, Magnetar sleuth, etc etc), has got a writeup by Calcalist. The main article is here, and it’s all in Hebrew, which Google Translate struggles […]
Read more...It occurred to me that this story might not get all that much mainstream air time in the US, for reasons that will become obvious. We’ve been having an inquiry into the background to the Iraq war over here. There was another enquiry back in the Blair era, Hutton, summarised by wikipedia: On 18 July […]
Read more...Cross-posted from The price of everything By Tim Price, Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management, a London-based fund manager “More than half of all workers have experienced a spell of unemployment, taken a cut in pay or hours or been forced to go part-time. The typical unemployed worker has been jobless for nearly six […]
Read more...Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0 By Wallace C. Turbeville, the former CEO of VMAC LLC, and a former Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co. The current system of trader compensation will continue to decay the heart of Wall Street. Which is a greater threat to the nation — terrorism or the relentless decline of […]
Read more...Well, the Saturday hot spot forecast is panning out, patchily. The market is doing its own stress test calculations and coming up with radically different answers: JP Morgan thinks 54 banks fail their version of the tests. Barcap is picking at the funding mechanism that would be needed if there was ‘real’ stress, beyond that […]
Read more...GM, with $75 bn in cash in reserves, bought AmeriCredit, a small subprime lender, in an all cash deal for $3.5 bn. GM is also currently in bankruptcy. AmeriCredit, which is rated BB by Fitch, was put on watch by Fitch, after the deal announcement. Fitch is unsure whether the deal will help or hurt […]
Read more...Economists really do seem to struggle with history – and sometimes geography, too. Brad DeLong needs to remember that the Financial Times is published in London. As far as most combatants were concerned, the second world war broke out in September 1939. Niall Ferguson, FT, 20th July 2010. Goodish point. On the other hand, Ferguson […]
Read more...Update: “Silence implies consent, and the lack of a disclaimer indicates that there is some measure of positive approval of not just Mr. Goodwin’s right to his views, but of his views themselves.” (commenter barefoot bum) Consider that disclaimer added, then: Bob G. and I are well aware that we disagree strongly on a whole […]
Read more...By John Bougearel, author of Riding the Storm Out and Director of Financial and Equity Research for Structural Logic By all measures, the release of the European bank stress test results on Friday was an Alfred E. Newman day for the U.S. stock market. Emerging bull patterns indicate an initial price target of 1313 for […]
Read more...Even if the rating agencies have retired hurt, it does seem that there is one organization still prepared to issue guarantees on, say, Option-ARM backed structured finance. Step forward, the collective of good old American taxpayers! One of my friendly emailers had a complete conniption about an FDIC program, during the week, and I never […]
Read more...Felix guessed how this Structured Finance issue pipeline would get sorted out, for the moment. Three not necessarily inconsistent takes on causes and effects: A neat way to embarrass the government. The rating agency logjam and the GM deal announced yesterday are closely related: if there’s one thing GM will think it still needs for […]
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