2011

The financial climate has changed radically from when Norway’s Oil Fund was established in 1990. Norway has built up its savings since then by selling enormous quantities of oil and gas, and employing many thousands of workers. By…

Portugal does not appear to have had the boom that Ireland and Spain had. Portugal's problem is the chronic grind loss of competitiveness due to high costs and low productivity. We note that Portugal's latest inflation reading of 3.6% in…

The three notch downgrade of Greece from Ba1 to B1 by Moody’s was a bit surprising, even to jaded followers of rating agency behavior. While we have remained negative on the country, is it really as bad off as Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Belarus,…

I don't think people realize that the Chinese have just made a rather sizable shift in economic policy. The Chinese are moving on multiple fronts now toward a new economic paradigm that includes slower growth but more domestic consumption.…

Egypt reserves for February were reported today, and fell almost 5% ($1.7 bln) from January to $33.3 bln. This follows a $1 bln decline in January, and the stock market hasn't even reopened yet. While officials are likely very concerned…

We have found that the correlation between oil and the Canadian dollar has collapsed. We conduct the correlation analysis on a 60-day rolling basis, using percent change. The correlation peaked at the end of last year near 0.76. It now…

This note comes from an American equity analyst. I have underlined the most important parts. I will give my interpretation below: Bank Money held by those in the real economy is contracting. Fed Money is a different animal. Fed…

It appears the foreign exchange market is being driven by one overriding consideration and that is that the ECB is going to raise rates as early as next month. The debt crisis on the periphery has been ignored. Fitch cut the outlook for…

Mexico central bank kept rates steady at 4.5% today, as expected. However, it tilted a little more to the hawkish side and supports our view that tightening is likely to start in Q4 11 and not Q1 12 as market is pricing in. Central bank…

This spoof of Apple product videos for the iPad 2 is spot on. "You'll buy it no matter what we say." Great product launch and masterful performance at the launch by Mr. Jobs, though. Here's a link to Apple’s real iPad 2 video for what it's…