April 2011

In the wake of a sovereign debt ratings downgrade by the rating agency Moody's, Portuguese five-year bonds are trading with a yield of 10%. As a result, Portugal has leapt over Ireland into fourth place on the credit default swaps list of…

By Marc Chandler The BOJ's rep office in NY invited a number of analysts to meet the Deputy Director of the stats office and hear a presentation about the economic impact from the recent disaster. The key take away points from the…

I say fragmentation doesn't matter. Consumers are going to buy what is available and for offer. Distribution trumps ease of use. Ask Apple about Macintosh. And ask Microsoft about Windows. Market share trumps technological superiority too.…

By Marc Chandler Overseas investors have stepped up their purchases of Indian equities in recent days and have reversed the earlier outflows to be net purchases here in 2011. Between last Thursday, March 31, Friday April 1 and yesterday…

By Frederick Sheehan Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has once again received space on the editorial pages of the Financial Times. He does not deserve, so shall not receive, a rebuttal. But, it is probably still worth a…

This is really motivated by being incredibly frustrated with what happened a couple of years ago. Obviously there was a financial crisis; that's not what frustrated me. I am one of the naysayers who was not at all surprised there was a…

By Niels Jensen The Absolute Return Letter, April 2011 “When models turn on, brains turn off.” Til Schulman I have been thinking a great deal about risk over the past couple of years. The depth of the financial crisis…

By Edward Hugh Evidence which would enable us to assess the full economic impact of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami is still hard to come by. There is a lot of talk of supply chain disruptions, but little in the way of detailed…

You normally don't see these two phrases in a single headline, but they are very much connecting. I thought of this this morning when I read a post called Retirement in the Liquidity Trap by Tim Duy. Commenting on a Wall Street Journal…

If there is a single factor that was the main driver of US dollar in the first quarter, it would be the divergence between the trajectory of US and European monetary policy. The Federal Reserve is still engaged in easing monetary policy…