2008

Here's a long-term view of the US Federal government deficit.

This past week, I attended an Investment luncheon to hear Greg Valliere, the chief political strategist with the Stanford Washington Research Group. He had a number of important things to say regarding the economic implications of…

I'd say that the UK is looking a lot like the U.S. looked a year or so ago, with high consumer debt loads and high property prices. What's the likelihood of recession. A near certainty."Over to the strategy team at Legal and General.…

I started tracking an odd statistic that I made up in the aftermath of the last recession called the 'Mortgage to Growth Gap' (MGG). At the time, a lot of pundits I respected where saying that American consumers were spending right through…

The credit crunch has claimed the heads of many a financial market since it was prematurely marked as 'contained' to subprime loans. These markets include jumbo mortgage loans, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), asset backed…

Wikipedia has a great entry on the subprime housing bubble for anyone who wants a primer on the bubble and a subprime housing bubble timeline. Follow the link here. This a pretty comprehensive entry with some pretty heady stuff and a lot…

Caroline Baum was asking in her column today: "How can a 2 percent funds rate be appropriately calibrated to promote moderating inflation when inflation is currently rising at almost 4 percent?" The answer: it can't. The Fed is all about…

The United States has gone from saving an average of 8-10% of income for decades to zero or negative savings today. If you look at this chart of 12-month rolling average monthly data, it looks like people actually saved more as inflation…

A great article on the website Safe Haven asks the important question: Can you trust the government's data. I had the same question in a post called "Last week's GDP numbers." Here's what Michael Pento has to say in his article:The…

A leading Spansh newspaper, ABC, reported today that Spanish growth is decelerating quickly. According to the paper, year-on-year growth slowed from 3.5% to 2.7% while quarter-on-quarter, growth was only 0.3% versus 0.8% in the previous…