2011

The mitigating factors are the recent manufacturing data and the pickup in small business credit. I especially like to see small business with access to and take up of credit because that could mean renewed hiring. The jobless claims…

Last week I showed you one way to look at the jobs crisis in graphical form. Here’s another from Calculated Risk.

Evangelos Venizelos is dispatched to consider how to prevent the government from sacking tens of thousands of workers in order to prevent the Greek from defaulting on its debt. He suggests that California’s previous IOU issuance is a model…

You get the inevitable flip flop

Now obviously, there are the issues of efficiency and fairness to think about. However, I want to look at this from a pure forecasting perspective. and stick to the tack I began in October 2010 with “Less Policy Advocacy and More Policy…

Japan is set to release a slew of economic data on July 1. Of these the jobless rate is probably the least important. It is lagging indicator, though softness in the job-to-applicant ratio would warn of no quick improvement. On the other…

The following is an outline for a proposed new Greek government bond issue to provide all required medium term euro funding for Greece on very attractive terms. The new bond issue includes an addition to the default provisions that…

Short of a fiscal union, there are other measures which the Greeks could adopt to make their bonds more attractive to external investors, thereby preventing the markets shutting the country down and refusing to extend further credit to a…

As had been anticipated, the Greek parliament has approved the austerity measures along party lines. The parliament will vote on the implementation bill tomorrow. This may be a bit stickier, but it too is likely to pass. Assuming so,…

Since the recession in 1990-91, the recovery of employment in the US has had a U-shape that is nothing like the previous post-World War II employment recoveries. This one will be the worst.