I received this query from someone we will call AK via e-mail: Was wondering if you might be help with a mental exercise I’ve been toying with the last few weeks pertaining to the roll of timeframe of consequences, and whether we will be hit with a shock or slow-burn when gravity finally kicks in. […]
Read more...We have the specter of Greece’s finance minister insisting really, no really, it will never never default, or default via restructuring. Now given the unfortunate accident of timing, these protests sound awfully Dick Fuld like, although the better parallel is probably Mexico, which kept insisting in 1994, no way, no how would it need to […]
Read more...Normally, I don’t reproduce or excerpt from John Mauldin’s popular e-newsletters, but today he features a writer I particularly like, uber bear Albert Edwards of Societe Generale. To repurpose an old saw about pessimists, bears are bulls who have all the facts. Some of Edwards’ arguments, while well documented, aren’t new: employment stinks, the forward-looking […]
Read more...Morning all. A spot of short term cover for Yves, who will be back later today after a mini-epic, with the head of Medusa maybe. In Euroland, Ireland (on which more later if I have time), Portugal (whose banks turned out to need still more funding help from the ECB in August) and Greece (where […]
Read more...By Kalpa, who blogs at big picture agriculture. Kalpa’s formal education was in medicine, science, and the humanities. Having seen the destruction that industrial agriculture has done to the biosystem of the Midwestern Plains, where she grew up, she writes on the comprehensive picture of economics in agriculture, ag science, ag policy, food security, energy, […]
Read more...John Cassidy, and following him, Felix Salmon. took aim at Ben Bernanke’s testimony last week at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission explaining why the central bank and Treasury stood aside in Lehman’s extremis. The problem is that both get two fundamental, and critical facts wrong, and that error makes the rest of their claims dubious. […]
Read more...This post first appeared on March 11, 2008 Oooh, the week has barely started and we’ve already had an overdose of adrenaline-generating news. Thornburg Mortgage and Carlyle Capital, both twisting in the wind, battered by margin calls, look unlikely to escape bankruptcy (Thornburg has already defaulted on financing agreements; Carlyle is seeking a standstill). Freddie […]
Read more...Beijing-based fiance professor and commentator Michael Pettis gives a typically sobering outlook in a Financial Times comment today, seeing the seemingly irresistible force of trade surplus countries’ resistance to shifting towards more internal generated demand colliding with the immovable object of trade deficit countries’ inability to tolerate the high unemployment rates that result for a […]
Read more...New York Times writer Louise Story recaps a bold thesis put forward by David Moss of Harvard Business School, namely, that high levels of income inequality stoke financial crises: The possible connection between economic inequality and financial crises came to Mr. Moss about a year ago… A colleague suggested that he overlay two different graphs […]
Read more...One of the minor aspects of the econoblogger session with the Treasury on Monday (more on that shortly) is that several of the invitees said something along the lines of, “You guys did a great job in the crisis.” What is disconcerting is how this view has now become conventional wisdom, despite the panicked Fed […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and fund manager who writes at New Deal 2.0 In a post titled “China Cuts US Treasury Holdings By Record Amount,” Mike Norman makes the excellent observation that while China is moving its money out of Treasuries, interest rates are hitting record lows. In other words, the sky still […]
Read more...This post first appeared on August 24, 2007 This credit contraction is still young, yet we already have the spectacle of a full blown seize up in the money markets which has central bankers flummoxed. Normally, you expect this sort of panic after a few major financial train wrecks and weakness in the real economy. […]
Read more...This post appeared originally on July 27, 2007 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 […]
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...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...