Last week, the simmering threat of trade disputes erupted into a full boil when Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega said that national governments around the world were weakening their currencies in an “international currency war” to gain competitive advantage. Mantega stressed that Brazil was prepared to back his words with action to lower the value […]
Read more...A story up on Bloomberg may be far more significant than its bland headline, “China to Spur Domestic Demand to Stabilize Economy, Wen Says,” suggests. In recent posts, we’ve inveighed about the dangers of the path China is now on. Its economy is unbalanced to an unprecedented degree. Exports plus investment account for a full […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Detox Cures In the first half of 2010, angst about European sovereign debt receded and market volatility eased. In the second half of 2010, concerns about Greece, […]
Read more...A measure passed by the House tonight, which would permit the US to impose tariffs on countries that keep their currencies artificially low, is at this juncture a mere statement of intent. It is nevertheless playing into a dynamic of the hardening of stances between the US and China. Note that the bill has yet […]
Read more...An ongoing China v. Japan/US row is getting interesting, and probably not in a good way. Readers may recall that we took note of a ban on shipments of rare earths raw materials to Japan, which in many ways was also a shot across the US bow. Even though so-called rare earths are not that […]
Read more...I’m running this clip of Satyajit Das for several reasons. First, it gives a very good big picture view of the problems with the Eurozone rescue fund, and is germane given that those concerns are coming to the fore (witness our post earlier today). Second, more generally, it gives readers a chance to see him […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Peter Hessler (2010) “Country Driving: Three Journeys Across A Changing China”; Text Publishing Richard McGregor (2010) “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers”; Allen Lane […]
Read more...When you start advocating Federally backed “moon shots” as a way to compensate for the shortcomings of American management, you know you are in deep doo doo. Tom Friedman has a characteristically breathless article at at the New York Times arguing America better get off its duff because China is very serious about electric cars: […]
Read more...In our escalating currency (really trade) dispute with China, many people argue that China holds the whip hand because it would quit buying US bonds. As we’ve explained repeatedly, that’s the last thing China would do, since stopping buying US debt (or more accurately, US dollars which it then moves into higher yielding assets than […]
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...Let’s see….early in the days of this Administration, Treasury Secretary Geithner said some pretty critical things about China. The Chinese threw a big temper tantrum and Geithner backed down. He had tended to try to play down tensions with China over its mercantilist policies (the most important being pegging its currency at an artificially low […]
Read more...Yves here. I’m a fan of Tim’s work on the Fed beat, and consider this post on the implications of the announcement tonight of Japan’s intervention to lower the value of the yen to be particularly important. By Tim Duy, the Director of Undergraduate Studies of the Department of Economics at the University of Oregon […]
Read more...This blog tends to steer away from short-term market commentary because, as the wags say, “If you must forecast, forecast often,” and keeping tabs on the whims of Mr. Market can easily become an exercise in futility. Getting a sense of conditions on the ground and likely business/economic trajectories is a fraught activity even in […]
Read more...Wolfgang Munchau in the Financial Times gives a good recap as to why the recent spell of good cheer regarding the Eurozone is overdone. His central observation is that the Eurozone, like the US, patched things up with duct tape and bailing wire, and the hope was that the resumption of peppy growth would reduce […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute fellow A few years ago, Chris Dialynas and I wrote a piece which introduced the concept of “renegade economics”. It was derived from a Frank D. Graham’s 1943 essay titled, “Fundamentals of International Monetary Policy.” Graham, a Princeton University economist, wrote: “In international affairs we must […]
Read more...