April 2011

What a cruel month April has been to the peripheral debt markets. Greek 10-year yields have risen 349 bp, more than the cumulative increase over the previous 11 months. Portugal's 10-year yield has risen 180 bp this month and 190 bp over…

The US dollar continued to weaken for the seventh consecutive day, with the dollar index hitting its lowest level since August 2008, ahead of the today’s FOMC meeting. In our view the Fed is likely to reaffirm its ultra-accommodative…

I was on BNN Headline with Howard Green this afternoon talking to Howard and Rob Cox about the housing data, earnings and tomorrow's Fed press conference. Let me add a bit of colour on housing here and link o the videos below.

Australia's powerful coal industry is rocking the country's political boat again. It was only 10 months ago that former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd lost his job over an emissions trading scheme that the mining industry opposed vehemently. Now…

Brazil current account deficit came in at a wider than expected -$5.7 bln in March, but was fully covered by FDI totaling $6.8 bln that month. On a 12-month rolling basis, FDI was $60.4 bln vs. a current account gap of -$49.8 bln, pushing…

The Fed chairman is now crafting the Fed's public image just as politicians do. The press conference is a part of that pubic relations campaign. What should we expect then?

Back in December I wrote an article on how site scrapers were gaming Google's search algorithm in order to make advertising money from articles that they scrape from RSS feeds. Just after I wrote this piece, Google got religion about spam…

Whatever thunder the FOMC meeting usually has is being stolen this week by the first of Bernanke's press conference tomorrow. In fairness, the FOMC's statement is unlikely to change substantively from the mid-March statement. The press…

Grantham: "The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly."

The power shortages and damaged factories are taking a larger toll than was initially evident. Press reports, for example, warn that the contagion via the supply chains may have greater global impact, which in turn could impact the…