As Russ Winter describes the recent runup in margin debt in “Leveraged to the Hilt.” Needless to say, heavy use of margin is considered a sign of speculative excess. I believe much of the market move can be attributed to synthetic leverage (futures). But now we get more evidence that a parabolic move in the […]
Read more...One of the themes du jour is the overrated reporting that goes on in the Wall Street Journal (and we’ve waxed eloquent on this subject many times before, as the posts tagged ‘Media Watch” will attest). While the Journal’s coverage of company news is generally good to very good, it appears that they put their […]
Read more...The Bear Stearns/CDO drama has taken attention away from other worrisome conditions in the economy, and the biggest one is “global imbalances,” which is shorthand for the US running continuing, large current account deficits that are financed for the most part by foreign central banks, particularly those of China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. We’ve lived […]
Read more...Warning: this post is only for those with sound constitutions. Tim Lee, head of a financial economics consultancy, tells us in a Financial Times article what a carry trade unwind will look like (answer: very nasty) and what it would take to prevent it (the Japanese have to allow a high enough level of inflation […]
Read more...We’ve been skeptical of inflation targeting, no doubt as a result of seeing Paul Volcker use monetary targets very effectively. Witness the proof of the pudding, namely, asset bubbles, deteriorating credit quality, and increasing inflation (at least in overall CPI, although core CPI is better behaved). But serious economists have only started looking into this […]
Read more...Ooh, when it rains, it pours. First Bear, now this. However, readers of this blog will know we have been posting for some time on rampant liquidity, inadequate risk premia, lax lending, and overvalued assets every where you look. We thank Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon for pointing out this story from the UK’s Telegraph. […]
Read more...Marc Faber, who likes a colorful turn of phrase, has a sobering piece in the Financial Times, “Market insight: Beware the driving forces behind surging asset prices.” He looks at the symptom of pervasive asset bubbles (at least until US housing started unravelling) and traces it back to rapid money supply growth, which produced the […]
Read more...Martin Wolf has an excellent story today in the Financial Times, “Unfettered finance is fast reshaping the global economy,” in which he describes the change from “managerial capitalism” to “global financial capitalism.” Wolf takes pains to avoid taking sides on whether this development is a good thing or a bad thing, but one senses that […]
Read more...This is one of those days when there is quite a lot of good material, so forgive me for being brief. The Financial Times, on its editorial page, issued a warning to the US about getting chippy with the Chinese about the value of its currency. It did not stress some of the reasons argued […]
Read more...A Bloomberg story tells us that Japanese retail investors are undermining the forecasts (and worse, trades) of large investment banks. The banks think the yen is seriously undervalued. Unfortunately, when it appreciates, retail investors buy more assets in countries that offer more yield, which leads them to sell yen, keeping the currency in its place. […]
Read more...Below is an excellent post by Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at UC Berkeley, at the new blog VoxEU. The post posits that the biggest risk to Asia is an asset crash, and looks at America’s experience during its industrializing phase to see what lessons might be learned. He determines that whether […]
Read more...The US has spent considerable time and energy hectoring the Chinese about the artificially low value of its currency (although there is considerable disagreement among experts as to how undervalued it really is). The notion that the currency is the chief culprit has become so fixed in the public imagination that Congress is determined to […]
Read more...For quite some time, we have written about indifference to risk, unjustifiable asset prices in many markets, and high levels of liquidity all as different aspects of what John Authers called “overvalued credit” meaning overly bullish (more accurately speculative) conditions in debt markets which fuelled overheated conditions in asset classes that could be financed (and […]
Read more...Bloomberg tells us, “India’s Tata Consultancy Plans to Hire 5,000 Workers in Mexico.” The rise of the rupee is making India less attractive for outsourcing. This development begs a couple of questions. First, will US companies have to go through disruption and risk as they chase cheaper labor to various countries as currency relationships change? […]
Read more...We are late to this excellent post by Barry Ritholtz (which also reminds us of the consistency of Business Week covers as a counterindicator; this example is from February 2007). And I’ve wanted to say something about rates creeping up, but I got beaten to the punch (although we have made the currency-realted observations, #5 […]
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