A good couple of posts from The Big Picture (see the first and second) on the increase in margin debt. The data comes from a Wall Street Journal piece: Such debt is accumulated by investors who trade “on margin” with funds borrowed from their brokers. As tracked by the New York Stock Exchange, margin debt […]
Read more...The Financial Times has had three stories on loose credit conditions in three press days: one on Friday the 12th, two on Monday the 15th, all worried in tone. Apologies for getting this to you on a delayed basis, but the FT website was not cooperating from Friday evening through Monday (colleagues had the same […]
Read more...Martin Wolf is the Financial Times’ chief economic writer and is always thoughtful and balanced. This column in today’s paper presents a more jaundiced view than the sunny forecasts from most US economists. In particular, he focuses on the role of liquidity in the current expansion: What is going to happen to the world economy […]
Read more...Good post this morning on the debate over what the inverted yield curve means for economic prospects by Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture | Yield Curve: Its different this time. The trigger was that Arthur Laffer has been arguing that the negative yield curve does not point to an impending recession, while a story […]
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