February 2011

It turns out, according to most interpretations of the SAFE report, that the speculators creating the hot-money inflows are not the much-vilified foreign hedge funds – surprise, surprise – but Chinese businessmen bringing money into the…

By Marc Chandler The time tested way to dampen popular unrest is to provide food and entertainment to the masses. The problem of course is that sometimes the funds are lacking. In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for example, this is not the case…

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Meredith Whitney has kicked up a storm with her 600-page,…

We note that uncertainty regarding potential oil supply disruptions is in a sense higher now than it was during the first and second Gulf Wars. Then, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Saddam would be defeated and oil facilities…

Guest Author post by Steven Hansen, Publisher of Global Economic Intersection. Econintersect is using the Case-Shiller data release to overview the home price situation as of December 2010. Generally, all home price indexes are trending…

This note from UBS' Andy Lees this morning points to peak oil/peak resources as a consideration in the ongoing troubles in the Middle East. Andy writes: Just a few quick figures on African oil production. Libyan production, according to…

Here's a tip on what airline travel is now like. Note, travel on Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific is infinitely better than on the U.S. airlines.

Let us start with honesty about budget deficits and government debt. There is no honest economic argument against running budget deficits when the economy is below full employment. While we can debate about which programs government ought…

The S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices shows that house prices in the U.S. continue to decline this winter.  For data through December 2010, the broad Composite-20 index is down 2.4% compared to December 2009. The Composite-10…

The German strategy appears to be rudderless at the moment. It is not clear what concessions it can elicit in exchange for offering a "comprehensive" solution to the debt crisis. Getting rid of wage indexing,a constitution amendment to…