2011

I spoke to Tadas Viskanta of Abnormal Returns on StockTwits TV about a lot of different issues this past week. We discussed commodities, bond market, QE, tech stocks, and a lot more. Here's the video below.

As labour costs in China rise, economists are beginning to think about replacing labour with capital, something we have already seen as a major factor in suppressing wage gains in developed economies. This is also in line with what…

As James Galbraith has argued, the problem is said to be no more serious than some clogged plumbing. A bit of Drano in the form of government handouts and guarantees should be sufficient to get credit flowing again. Nonsense. Private debt…

I ran across a post by Robert Murphy over at the Mises Institute blog on Modern Monetary Theory. Since I have been pushing the idea that the centrality of secular debt accumulation makes some ideas from MMT and Austrian Economics…

Brazil is reportedly imposing trade barriers on auto parts imports and a variety of other products. Imports of 27 products will reportedly have tighter licensing requirements that can take up to 60 days to approve. These are called…

QE is, in fact, a ‘crop failure’ for the dollar. The Fed’s shifting of securities out of the economy and replacing them with clearing balances removes interest income. And the lower rates from Fed policy also reduces interest paid to the…

A fall in commodity prices increases the potential for financial market disruption and non-performing loan problems in China.

As workers continue to battle with the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, more impacts from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl are starting to arise. The latest impact will hit car manufacturers, with plants in central Japan…

The narrative has shifted recently with regards to Greece. Greece had been portrayed by many as a small economy one tenth the size of Germany whose debt problems could be solved by throwing EU/IMF money at it. Now, Greece appears to have…

Jeremy Grantham is seriously bearish again. In part 2 of his latest quarterly newsletter, he departs from the peak resources argument he made in part 1 and focuses on the overvaluation in stocks. His advice: sell!