A Wall Street Journal survey of 53 economists found the great majority said that the spike in food and energy prices is the result of supply and demand, not speculation. At the same time, the average forecast among this group is that oil will be at $93 a barrel by year end. While the article […]
Read more...Martin Feldstein, who as a Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan and an advocate of Social Security reform, has been a surprisingly open critic of the Fed’s and Bush Administration’s responses to our current economic woes. Feldstein has been regularly writing op eds opposed to some of the viewpoints and actions of […]
Read more...While George Soros today said that he believed the worst consequences to the financial system are past, he was far from bullish about the economy. The veteran investor believes that the real world impact is only beginning to be felt. Given that the last housing recession of the late 1980s-early 1990s took 15 quarters to […]
Read more...The strength of activity at the major spring art auctions reflects several factors: the falling dollar, the search for a store of value of inflation, and if you are of the bearish persuasion, the fact that art is a lagging indicator. From the Financial Times: Art records fell on Tuesday for works by Claude Monet, […]
Read more...What’s good for GM is not longer what’s good for America. The supposedly good news that productivity is up, reducing inflationary pressures, is due to the fact that businesses cut their workforces and had those who remained do more. This has been a long standing practice in large corporations; a lot of staffers are doing […]
Read more...A sharp increase in business bankruptcy filings is not only a tangible sign of business distress, but bodes ill for employment. Although the Bloomberg report does not break out Chapter 11 filings by size of entity, it’s a no-brainer than they would be concentrated in smaller companies, and it is those smaller entities that have […]
Read more...The rebate checks haven’t yet arrived, and they are already being deemed likely to have little impact on the economy. That isn’t surprising. What is perplexing it that they were successfully portrayed for a short while as likely to do anything other than increase the Federal deficit. Readers may recall at the time the idea […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal so often presents the optimistic case that it’s important to reinforce those occasions when it provides a less than cheery view. Of course, a journalist is only as good as his sources, and the bullish bias is in large measure due to the insistent upbeat posture of CEOs and sell-side analysts […]
Read more...“Mega” is not the sort of word one usually associates with economic analysis. It’s the domain of popular books and obesity-inducing sizes of junk food. The normally sober blog VoxEU may be drifting into pop economics usage, although the focus of its article is straightforward. Dennis J Snower argues that the credit crisis, and more […]
Read more...In a post at the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reviews the case for why the credit markets might be on the mend and finds it wanting. While some of his arguments are familiar, the part I found interesting was his belief (contrary to Wolfgang Munchau at the Financial Times’ piece “Pessimism about the eurozone is misplaced”) […]
Read more...What a difference five weeks makes. Around the ides of March, we had the mind-focusing spectacle of the possible implosion of Bear Stearns, which was feared to take down a lot of the financial system. But Fed and JP Morgan to the rescue, Lehman presents earnings that depend entirely on accounting rather than business activity, […]
Read more...OK, that isn’t what Wolfgang Munchau said in his Financial Times article today. His piece, “The princess’s cake gets an added crunch,” starts with the theory that inflation and our asset bubbles were ultimately monetary phenomena. While the rest of Munchau’s piece, which focuses on why we should be worried about inflation, is useful, I […]
Read more...Bloomberg gives us a pretty downbeat assessment from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (note that Singapore has two sovereign wealth funds, the other being Temasek): Government of Singapore Investment Corp., a sovereign wealth fund that manages more than $100 billion, said the world economy may be facing its worst recession in three decades as […]
Read more...John Authers of the Financial Times uses Passover as a pretext for discussing four perplexing questions related to the markets. They’ve been bugging me too, so I appreciate him having a go at them. From the Financial Times: Passover starts tonight. The world’s Jews gather to commemorate the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt and eat a […]
Read more...The New York Times, in “Workers Get Fewer Hours, Deepening the Downturn,” presents data and anecdote that indicate that low unemployment masks a deteriorating labor market. Some employers are cutting their workers’ hours; the self employed are finding less demand for their services. While this article provides some useful insight into the state of the […]
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